Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

Episode Summary We live in an uncertain age, one in which wealthy and powerful forces are working tirelessly to overthrow democracy, turn back the clock on human progress and destroy the middle class. The sheer magnitude of the West’s crisis of democracy can be overwhelming, however, and that’s why in this episode, I wanted to take more than a few steps back to explore the Renaissance, a period of world history that is much discussed in popular media, but often in a way that overshadows the real people and their actual intentions. Where did the Renaissance come from and what exactly were the people who made it hoping to achieve with their efforts? And are there any lessons that we can take from that time period for today?These are very big topics, needless to say, and I could think of no better person to discuss them with than Ada Palmer. She’s a historian who teaches at the University of Chicago, and she’s written a fantastic review of the entire time-period called “Inventing the Renaissance,” which also discusses the historiography of one of humanity’s most written-about eras.Besides this and other history books, Ada writes science fiction as well, which we get into at the very end of our conversation in the context of what lessons modern people can take from the Renaissance.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch!Related Content—Ancient Greek Skepticism is surprisingly relevant in the age of social media—Inside the demon-haunted world of Christian fundamentalism—Authoritarian epistemology is as old as humanity itself 🔒—The forgotten story of how the “religious left” birthed American superpower—In the digital age, reactionary Catholicism is making a comebackAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:04 — The continual mythic refounding of the Renaissance09:51 — Solidarity vs. unity in Italy14:13 — Rediscovery of ancient texts16:18 — Petrarch's plan to unify Italy through classical education24:23 — Machiavelli's new interpretations30:18 — The myth of underground modernists during the Renaissance36:52 — The rise of pluralism40:59 — The rarity of Renaissance atheism49:32 — The try-everything age52:31 — Growth through debate57:34 — Diderot and the promise of the future unknownAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So your book is called Inventing the Renaissance; before we get into the stories that you tell in the book, let’s just get into the larger question of the myth of the golden age. Because I think a lot of people may not be aware that a lot of this was kind of concocted by Protestant fundamentalists, which was then ironically picked up by atheists. There's a bit of an irony there.ADA PALMER: Yeah, I mean it's a myth that begins and has its earliest roots in the Renaissance itself and the invention in 14, 12, 14, 15, basically of history into three parts with ancient, middle, and then modern, which begins in the Renaissance itself, gets reinvented very heavily in the 18th century and the 19th century, and then many times [00:03:00] in the 20th century.Because once you have the idea that there is a golden age, you want to be able to claim that what you're doing is like that golden age, with the Renaissance, what we really mean by the Renaissance is the theory that there's some transitional phase at which the way things were pre-modern world suddenly gets changed by the arrival of something that changes it and makes the world start moving toward modern.And world begins to become more modern somewhere in the 14 hundreds or 13 hundreds or 15 hundreds, depending on when you center the Renaissance. And eventually it's to us. so the myth of the Renaissance is really about claiming what defines modern and then claiming that it comes in at a certain point and that this modern process is somehow good.Right. And that the Middle Ages are somehow bad, or the pre-modern world is somehow not as good or not as correct or not on the right path and trajectory of progress that [00:04:00] modernity is on leads to the utility of being able to claim it. And if you can say, X caused the Renaissance and we are continuing X, then that makes we good.And in the 18th century and in the 19th century, there kept being moments when people could claim X caused the Renaissance and then for some reason X stopped dominating in Italy and Spain and where the Renaissance sort of started.But we, whoever we continuing it so that the true spirit of Renaissance Florence and, Renaissance, Venice and so on, used to be in Italy but is now in Berlin, or is it now in London or is now in Boston, or whoever the speaker is, who can claim in some way that the ideology, which shape the Renaissance has its true continuation in.they are, usually not Italy. And so there are all of these constructions in the 18th and 19th century saying, look at all these geniuses, looking at all these beautiful artworks that we all go see on the grand tour. They were enabled [00:05:00] by X and now X resides with us in London or with us in Germany, or with us in America.And we are the true continuation of the ideology that brought us these geniuses and this of progress toward modernity. So the Renaissance keeps getting reinvented and whatever its cause is keeps changing based on what lets people claim it.SHEFFIELD: So it's like, using the, past as a narrative to justify your present tense, your present ideas.PALMER: ones to summarize, which is a 20th century, mid 20th century.One, there's a hypothesis that the Renaissance is enabled by advances in banking and finance and that new methods of lending money at interest and international cur currency exchange and insurance and investment would develop over the course of the 13 hundreds and, create these banking fortunes mean that and therefore exchange of materials and therefore innovation in materials are starting to flow in [00:06:00] this period in a way they didn't, things become more interconnected.Populations mix the stagnant Middle Ages turn into the dynamic mobile, commercial world of the Renaissance, and that's what enables all of the art and all of the innovation, and therefore one can say in 1970 capitalism is the true continuation of the Renaissance and our bad communist rivals are like the bad, no good communal, dark ages, right?This is a really popular theory in the West during the Cold War because it lets you claim that capitalism is the correct trajectory for the future, and communism is backwards. so that particular theory, which competes with dozens of other theories of whether renaissance happens, has a vogue when it's politically useful.And other theories have their Vogues either decades earlier or decades later whenever they approve politically convenient for somebody who wants to be able to claim. What I'm doing is the trajectory of modernity and the future. What my rivals are [00:07:00] doing is the trajectory of the backwards pre-modern, bad world.The continual mythic refounding of the RenaissanceSHEFFIELD: Yeah. and in fact the term, as, you were saying earlier, the narrative about the Renaissance as a, a refounding, if you will, away from the, a dark ages. I mean, that was a narrative that started in the Renaissance itself through one of the key figures who you talk about quite a bit in the book.PALMER: Yeah, through, through, a pair of figures in a lot of ways through Petrarch and then Bruni.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: So these are figures living respectively just before and during, thus just after the year. 1400 bruni being of the student generation relative to Petrarchs, teacher generation. and Petrarch first articulates the idea that was this wonderful golden age, and now we are in a fallen age of ash and shadow.And that the world has become wretched and broken, with the absence of the stability of Rome and that something must be done about this. [00:08:00] He doesn't say the Renaissance is a golden age. He says, we must try to make a golden age in contrast with this bad age we are in now by trying to imitate the arts and methods of the ancients and their golden age.Bruni then, who is one of his successors, invents the three part division of history into ancient medieval, and for them present for us Renaissance. Saying there are three eras, the good past, the bad, recent past, and the present in which we are about to, and in the process of creating a golden age. it's anSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: rather than a factual claim, right?He's saying, we must make a golden age. Now it's just beginning. Here are the exciting new things. Let's do more.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and the thing about all of this is that, the study of history, it is about multiple causes [00:09:00] happening to things. And, I think ultimately that's unsatisfying to a lot of people who want to say no. It was this one thing that of why all this stuff happened.It was this one thing and everything else. it was there a little bit, but it was just this one thing. My favorite thing, as it happens always. But you know, at the same time, there were, as, as there were specific people who were involved with this, and they specific choices.one of them, was as, you talk about it, length, is, trying to. Unifying Italy or at least, maybe not unify, butPALMER: andSHEFFIELD: yeah,PALMER: going bunch. Countries, right? The different city states are different nations, but to get them toSHEFFIELD: yeah.PALMER: with each other, it's not,Solidarity vs. unity in ItalyPALMER: the European Union, but it's one of the bits of earliest rhetoric that the European can Union can look upon as a, we should have solidarity amongst [00:10:00] ourselves in order to defend ourselves against a world that doesn't share as many values as we share, even though we are also still separate countries with deep histories of fighting wars against each other, and in fact, loathing each other in the case of the Italian city states.SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, and they definitely, and nobody achieved that until, many hundreds of years later, in terms of unifying Italy. And so, I mean, ultimately probably the political I. The politics probably were the main that,PALMER: I mean, I,SHEFFIELD: you know,PALMER: toSHEFFIELD: that, that was different,PALMER: I think it'sSHEFFIELD: I guess.PALMER: talk about the difference between unity and solidarity.Right, not no Petrarch does not imagine Italy unifying to one country,SHEFFIELD: No.PALMER: and his peers, if ever they do discuss the possibility of Italy unifying, Dante discusses it in his De Monarchia, they agree the only way this would happen would be if a foreign conqueror cape came over the Alps and conquered all of us. Other than that, is just [00:11:00] not happening. But solidarity is, it's hoped. Could the solidarity in which city states that our neighbors stop viewing their neighbors as arch enemies and become willing to ally with each other, against outside threats, because this is a period in which gorgeous Italian city states of central and northern Italy are so sackable, right?They're so sackable, they're really, wealthy. The great banking fortunes are piled in bags of gold in people's basements. The treasures are everywhere. The agricultural fruits are everywhere. This is also the center of. production fabricSHEFFIELD: They don't have huge armies. Yeah.PALMER: they have tiny armies because they only have very tiny countryside.They can't press the thousands ofSHEFFIELD: Where are they gonna put 'emPALMER: can.SHEFFIELD: where are they get 'em from? Yeah.PALMER: all they can do is spend their money hiring mercenaries. But a mercenary by his very nature can be bought for money and therefore will often be bought out from under you by [00:12:00] arrival. And so if you wanna sack anything, right, if you're a young king and you wanna come home covered with glory and bring loot and make your people like you, do you wanna go anywhere else in Europe or do you wanna go into Italy where these tiny countries with few defenses and more treasure than anyone else?And it's useful to remember, these are large cities by European standards, right? Only Paris and, later on in the Renaissance, London can rival these Italian cities in scale. There are multiple cities over a hundred thousand, which for a period is enormous. Milan, Florence, the edges of Venice and, Padua combined, Naples, which is humongous, right?So there is a very strong incentive for any outside power. Is it the holy of an empire? Is it France? Is it Spain? Castile, Aragon, anybody Portugal, you want to come see some things. Italy is your oyster. It's the best place to have a war. It's also warm. It's agriculturally rich enough that you don't have to carry food for your soldiers.[00:13:00] Your soldiers can just get the food off the land as they move. It's the ideal place to wage a war. And so what Petrarch looks around and sees is. If all these Italian city states agreed to help defend their neighbors against the French, when the French come, or the ese, when the ese come, then we could defend ourselves.But instead, what happens is they arrive are two Italian cities. They hate each other because they're living in the plot of Romeo and Juliet. And the Montagues want nothing better than to see the deaths of the caplets and vice versa. So inevitably, one of them will side with the invader to help spite the other, because they loathe each other and then they both get conquered.Or one of them gets conquered short term and the other gets effectively politically dominated. And so solidarity in which these countries are willing to defend their neighbors instead of sell out their neighbors is very far from unity. But it is what Petrarch is imagining could be achieved if, the values of ancient [00:14:00] Rome, of service to the state of valuing the good of the people above other things.The values of the Roman Republic could somehow be dredged out of the libraries of antiquity.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.Rediscovery of ancient textsSHEFFIELD: and the other thing about that, I think I mean, I guess I, think a lot of people have this idea that nothing from ancient Rome in Greece was known to people who lived during the medieval times. And needless to say that's not true at all. But nonetheless, a lot was kind of buried.And So, so,can you talk, aboutthat if you would?PALMER: and no. the, backbone of medieval education is the bits of Cicero they have Virgil and of it, they're all reading it. They're all studying it. These are books you used to learn Latin grammar to then move on to theologians. medieval kings are constantly comparing themselves to ancient ones.the coins have portraits on them, which are copied from [00:15:00] portraits of ancient Caesars. Ancient Rome is all over the place, all the way through the Middle Ages. The belief that it wasn't is propaganda of the Renaissance claiming, barbaric things have been using the antiquity wrong, and they've been using Latin wrong, and they've been using Aristotle wrong, and now we're gonna use all these things.Half Using things in a new way and using things with a new sense of urgency. Because when people talk about the rediscovery of ancient texts in the Renaissance, people are always imagining, Indiana Jones prying open a tomb, and there is the, tome next to the ancient Knight in his sarcophagus, or somehow finding them in lost places.And the answer is they're on library shelves. They're around, in Europe, they're on library shelves in Constantinople, they're on library shelves and being actively studied because Byzantium is huge and wealthy and thriving. and these studies never cease there. they only cease further west where there isn't the wealth necessary to [00:16:00] sustain large libraries. always useful for us to remember that the further east you go, the richer people are. and that Western Europe, even parts of Italy, are struggling in the Middle Ages to have enough wealth to support libraries due to the economic contractions after the end of the empire. So.Petrarch's plan to unify Italy through classical zeducationPALMER: When Petrarch and Bruni and their peers say, Italy is in this chaos of fractious disunity, we are going to be conquered and sacked by outsiders unless we change our ways.We need to change our ways and create the possibility of cooperation and solidarity. How do we turn Montagues and Caplets into Brutus and Cicero and Seneca, and people who were faithful servants of the state? We need to reproduce the educational system of ancient Rome and raise the next generation of young Romeos and young tibbles and young Juliets on the books that produced the Roman Brutus and the Roman Porsche and the Roman [00:17:00] Cato and so on.And maybe then they will act as the Romans acted and be faithful to the state and care more about the good of the people than about their family honor or personal honor. so this is a new use for the same books. So these books were being read the Middle ages for different ends. and just as a new cultural movement comes about and is like, now we're gonna do linguistics, now we're gonna do game theory, now we're gonna do this the same books, Virgil Avid, that we're already being used, are being used to a new end.Let's revolutionize the educational system we use to raise our elites and make it focus more on ethics than on sort of theology and other worldly ethics make instead make it work on theory and practical ethics, perhaps is a good way to put it. and so they're, going to libraries and saying, Hey, those old books that you don't use very often that were written by people who are peers [00:18:00] of avid infertile that we all know, can we have copies of those?They're using the same books that are already available in a new way. And we can be familiar how, and every amount of time a society will have a new intellectual program, which will make it care newly about some bodies of knowledge that it has had for a long time. Think about how when the first discovery of the existence of DNA suddenly makes people much more interested in the mathematics of helical structures and textbooks about helical shapes that may have sat on the back shelves of a library for decades since their obstru marginal mathematicians were like, Hey, I'm interested in helical shapes suddenly matter to biologists and the fundamental nature of life, those fly off the shelves because they're suddenly people interested in them. But they were always a few people interested in them. They just developed a new application.So similarly, there were always medieval people reading these books. They just developed a new application for them in this [00:19:00] moment of perceived political crisis.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, one of those applications was reading these accounts of ancient battles and whatnot not as moral lessons or, grammatical instruction, but as well, what if we can get ideas for how they conducted themselves and why they won this battle. And that wasn't a, that was one of the new interpretations that, ended up emerging.Right.PALMER: Although there, you've jumped a hundred years aheadSHEFFIELD: I know. Yeah. I am. Yeah,am.PALMER: jumping around in time and the way that people sort of always do with the Renaissance, which is, as one of the themes of the book as well, we have this idea perpetuated by timelines on classroom walls that somehow. In the 20th century, every decade is a unique era, and the Roaring twenties are radically different from the Great Depression, which is radically different from World War ii, which is radically different from World War I, which is radically different from the fifties and [00:20:00] those from the sixties, as if, whole eras happen every decade now, but didn't in the past.The whole Middle Ages were the same, and the whole Renaissance was the same. And when we're jumping from patriarch to what you are just articulating now, which is Machiavelli, people talk about those two texts as if they're from the same moment. And when people say a rival theory to the Renaissance was caused by banking and finance is the Renaissance was caused by nationalism and the birth of national identity and the idea of national solidarity, first articulated by Patriarch and Machiavelli.The two works people are talking about when they say that were written as far apart as Napoleon's childhood and Yuri G's. We would never claim that Napoleon's childhood and Yuri in space light are the same era. We have 15 eras in between those two. And yet we tend to think about the Renaissance as if difference of a hundred years doesn't mean [00:21:00] anything because these eras somehow were longer and moved more slowly.But if you zoom in, as the book does you see all of these fine grain differences so that somebody in the in the 1520s remembering the 1490s feels like it was a different world as much as we in the 2020s feel about the 1990s.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, granted, yes. but I, guess still though, I, the idea of them just to read them, I think that was a, thing that Petrarch was, trying to, put outPALMER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: and to say,PALMER: whatPatrick.SHEFFIELD: let's, just read this history. This is something we to learn from. He didn't, so he didn't even necessarily know what was in it, ​a lot of these books, he'd never read of them himself. So how would he know?PALMER: these books, which we don't have and whichSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: can't read, and which I hope to be able to read if we get Greek back, [00:22:00] ​if, people travel across the Alps and find them, if people gather them as I gather them. And he worked to gather the first library of over a thousand books that had existed in Europe since antiquity.he doesn't know what's in these books when he starts, right. He just has faith that whatever is in these books, reading them birthed Cicero. Reading them birthed Augustus and reading them birthed the good gay emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, under whose Rule Italy knew the only period of extended peace in the entire record of Italian history.And all he knows about the books is they shaped them. Maybe they will be able to therefore shape our ruling class to have the same values that cause the p. And caused the rise of Roman, caused the unification of Italy under the Rams having faith that whatever these books are, they did that. Therefore, if we have them, we'll use them.[00:23:00]it takes then the decades after him to assemble these libraries and start applying this new educational system. And it's Machiavelli, who's one of the generation who grows up with this new educational system where he's reading all these books. He then says, actually, I think we also need to read these books in a new way, as you referenced, about them, not just as ways to osmotically absorb the morals of the people we are reading about, but to analyze them as we do now in modernity as case studies of who won this battle, why did they win this battle?Can we find three similar battles or their patterns to what made somebody win the battle? Can we put these side by side? What policies did these different cities states have? What kinds of Tyrannies ended up ending these city states? Are there patterns between their policies and the way they ended kinds of questions, which are a new way of reading the newly assembled libraries that, in turn, Petrarch just wanted us to say, get the books.Once we have the books, then we figure out what to do [00:24:00] with them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. What.PALMER: more than half a century.SHEFFIELD: It did. Yeah. Because it was so painstaking and expensive to, to have a book in those days.PALMER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: yeah, and, I mean just the osmotic view of, libraries, it didn't really work though to facilitate solidarity.Machiavelli's new interpretationsSHEFFIELD: and so we did, take so, so I guess we'll fast forward then to Machiavelli here for a second not just was he, was advocating new readings of these ancient books, but also I. he elevated one of the Roman concepts, which they borrowed from the Greeks. the Roman concept of Weir two, or virtue as, we, Amer, English people say. And, but, it was not at all what people nowadays who are English speaking think of when they hear the word virtue, that's not at all what these guys [00:25:00] meant. And, I think that's worth talking about.PALMER: Yeah, I mean there are, I have two entire shelves of books about what Machiavelli means by veer two. It's such a, it's such a disgusted topic about Machiavelli that secretly in my classes I make a point of not bringing it up because I can tell when students are plagiarizing 'cause they'll always talk about it.Right. It's the thing to bring up with Machiavelli, I think is very interesting is the way he is pushing against the fascination with virtue is dominant in the new educational system that Petrarch has set up. And there's a very useful term that my own dissertation advisor introduced into this discourse, which I talk about actually the history of the term in the course of inventing the Renaissance.'cause as it's not just about the Renaissance being invented in the 14 hundreds and the 17 hundreds and the 18 hundreds, but also in the 19 hundreds and in the two thousands and in my own education and what it means to be a historian. Now continuing to invent and [00:26:00] reinvent this virtue politics, referring to the idea if they created this new virtue focused of education in which one would read these classics and from them absorb justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, caution, generosity.Courage, the other virtues that are discussed at such length by the agents Petrarch for example, talks about how the Greeks are superior to the Romans in philosophy and via Homer in poetry, but that nobody can match Seneca and the Romans on virtue. And that these are the, books that teach how to hone a soul toward excellence in the platonic sense, right?That theory is saturated in the works of all of the peers of Machiavelli and the authors he is [00:27:00] reading when he is young and aspiring to join when he is writing his first works. And their focus is let's instill these virtues justice, prudence, et cetera, into the ruling class. And Machiavelli is then after observing the fact that this is.The generation that grows up alongside him and then fights the horrible Italian wars that happened between 1494 and 1512 and beyond the, Italian wars as, as it's called in French and English, or the Cal as it's called in Italian, right? The calamity of Italy. These wars that are infamous, the bourgess are the most infamous part, but not the bloodiest.Those were fought by the people who grew up on these virtues. So if that's the case, then the virtues didn't make people successful. virtue politics was the theory that not only would these [00:28:00] virtues make rulers, or wise, they would also make them successful. That they would be able to be successful the way the ancient Romans were successful, that their balance of prudence and courage and careful thought would make them make better political decisions.then watches ruthless and unscrupulous and treacherous rulers succeed and defeat those who are following the precepts of Plato and Cicero and Seneca and goes on to discuss. We usually don't translate it. 'cause if you say virtue, it's being weird. Virtu, which is focusing on a sense of courage and grasping the moment fortitude to some extent, but certainly not.Justice or mercy or temperance or those portions of it, but a kind of a col calculated prudence or what the next generation will call [00:29:00] reason of state or rationalist or what we might call utilitarian political calculation. is to him what makes, yeah, what makes people really successful is the opportunistic, prudent grasping of the moment.the moment when Ezra Borja realizes, wait, at this moment I betray the mercenary captain who has been loyal to me all this time, that will lead me to actual success because I need to seize his land. a well-timed betrayal will serve me better than faithfulness, therefore, I will betray and it works.And the men he betrays who follow all the precepts of Seneca, fail and lose their stuff, and Machi wants to describe this and say. may well be true that from studying these books, we learn the qualities, let's use the word qualities that make a successful ruler, but these qualities do not necessarily include traditional valued faithfulness, charity, [00:30:00] et cetera.They include a kind of a, what we would call utilitarian, opportunistic prudence. And that is the quality, the virtue. Virtue in the sense of the virtues of an object or qualities of an object, right? That is the virtues that we want people to absorb if we want them to be successful. Rulers,The myth of underground modernists during the RenaissanceSHEFFIELD: and, related to that, moving to a more kind of oriented viewpoint of, politics or, when people read Machia Machiavelli a lot of modern day people, modern people look at his writing and they, and, as you talk about in the book that, this is a, that they wanna think, oh, this guy was just like us.PALMER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: And thathe was a person even though, and he was an atheist. and wePALMER: Yeah. Yeah. So I, what you're talking about is, as I discussed in the book, Machiavelli is one example, Leonardo is another, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is a third people in the modern day often really like to claim and, look at and [00:31:00] feel like they've found somebody in the past they would agree with.And there are common depictions, I'm using that word carefully of the Renaissance that make an advance, a of claim that in the Renaissance there was a radical underground was rationalist and anti superstition and anti organiz religion, and possibly anti-religion in general, but certainly sort of pro reason and pro-science that saw their era as in the shackles of superstition.And that breaking the shackles of superstition and opening the door to broad inquiry, was what would shepherd in modernity. And that somehow this. Semi-organized, sort of present groundbreaking of people who were way more modern than their time. And we often use the phrase he was ahead of his time.were responsible for kind of kick-starting a process of change that moves us away from the supposedly [00:32:00] stagnant middle Ages toward the present. And that these are the agents who shape the Renaissance. Machiavelli gets pointed at as an exemplar of them. So does Leonardo and I say depicted because these depictions range from, here is a history book that names these people and gives these specific bits of evidence about what they were doing, or assumes they were doing it and analyzes how they were doing through, here's a video game or a.Second tier fantasy movie, like, of the Delta Knights or Assassin's Creed that just says there is a conspiracy. We'll make up our name for them. They're a secret order of, rationalist proto scientists who carry on the tradition of reason from Arch and are gonna shape right? That, that we, tell this both in nonfiction and in fiction because it's very narratively satisfying and it's narratively satisfying because it makes the claim that the world came to [00:33:00] be our world and have us in it thanks to the intentional efforts of people like us and that people who shared our values.Looked at the world and said, we want to change the world into a world where these values will dominate and then worked hard to do so and then succeeded, and that our world was made by people who would agree with us. This is very narratively satisfying, partly because it suggests strongly that the future will have the values we want it to have.If we are now trying to shape a future that our values, just as we resemble the values that we imagine this to have had, and people who think this way about the Renaissance, often I'll run into them at a party and I'll say, I study the Renaissance, and they'll be super eager to talk to me about their favorite Renaissance person, lead around to the question of my favorite Renaissance person.Wouldn't they agree with me about X, Y, and Z? And if the person is an atheist, they'll often say, wasn't Machiavelli or Wasn't a secret atheist? [00:34:00] but other times it'll be somebody who's strongly Protestant and be like, wouldn't they have shared my anti-Catholic sentiments? Or wouldn't they have shared my values about education?Or there'll be a wide variety of what people are hoping that I as an expert will be able to say. Yes. the shapers of the Renaissance would've agreed with you about this thing. but when you actually read what they are doing in the Renaissance, the answer is a no. They wouldn't have agreed with us about just about anything.and B the people we wanna point to as being in this underground aren't the biggest shapers of it. They're there. But when we wanna look at Machiavelli and say, yeah, Machiavelli sort of causes the Renaissance. Machiavelli's work is incredibly obscure and unpopular except for his comic play. and to some degree his history. Nobody's reading the Prince not for, decades after his death well into when the Renaissance is, mostly over. He's not a shaper, he's a commentator on. And when we look at who are the really influential people that a lot of people are [00:35:00] reading, they're doing wacko awesome, bizarre cult stuff.Like, here's Marsilio Ficino teaching you how to use Plato to project your soul out of your body in order to achieve a rip fan winkles styles medical stasis so that your body can sleep in perpetual youth for a decade, while you fly around the cosmos and spy on your neighbors and cast love spells, right?and that's being read by two orders of magnitude more people than I ever read Machim in the period. it's a messier, more plural, more complicated world. Lots of people were coming up with new ideas, uh, not only the people who would agree with us, and I try to get people, in the, fine grain.Nobody likes plural explanations of things, but this is a desperate time.And as articulated by Petrarch, as articulated by Machiavelli, northern Italy finds itself in more and more dire fear as bits of Italy are being [00:36:00] conquered, as cities are being conquered from the inside through coups, from the outside through wars or from mercenary captains saying, it's about retirement time.Let me look through my menu of nearby cities and decide which one I wanna conquer and make myself the duke of, as I hit retirement age. It's a desperate time, and therefore time for desperate measures. And the desperate measures are incredibly plural, they try a million Jillian things.And in the 19th century historians read through and picked out the like three or four things they tried that felt like what we were doing in the 19th century that felt modern, celebrated them and put those figures on a pedestal and said, look, these people made the future, their ideas agree with us.And the more we studied, the more we're like, no, actually most of their ideas weren't popular until the 19th century. They had small impacts, but they didn't have huge impacts. Other people that we totally wouldn't agree with at all had huge impacts.The rise of pluralismPALMER: But more importantly is the pluralism. This is throwing spaghetti at a wall and 15 strands stick and the [00:37:00] other, a hundred fall and only one of those 15 strands as Machiavelli.others are just as influential and they braid and they counter each other and they disagree and they shape an enormously, complex in which people we disagree with were just as influential as those we agree with. But it was a process of dynamic discovery and above all of discovering that the earlier things people had been confident in were wrong.Right? Before we can get the beginning of modern science and what is sometimes called the scientific revolution, have to get to the state of people looking at their current science and saying, wow. This doesn't describe what we see. this, four humorous theory, this Galen stuff this old tomic geometry, all of it appears your geography, all of it appears to be wrong.get to all of it appears to be wrong. What you actually need isn't one person who's right. It's 50 people have [00:38:00] rival theories andSHEFFIELD: Oh, you have to have the question should let's, is what we know. Correct.PALMER: Right. AndSHEFFIELD: That'sPALMER: isSHEFFIELD: and that's what's key. Yeah.PALMER: rival theories that are making peopleSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: a minute. We don't, this disagrees with this, which disagrees with this, which disagrees with this. How do we sort them out? We need a new method for sorting them out. That new method will be the scientific method.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: the Renaissance as a point at which there's a radical pluralization of how many different rival theories there are about things.As we get the ancients back and discover that Plato totally doesn't agree with Aristotle and neither of them agree with the epicureans and they don't agree with the stoics and they don't agree with the skeptics.And when we get antiquity back, right? There's not one, there's not one antiquity. There's many antiquities. They were expecting a lot more agreement. when Petrarch said, go find the ancients. He was imagining they would all agree with Cicero, and he would've been very surprised to learn how much they didn't.[00:39:00]then there's also the multiplication of medieval authorities becoming more available because the libraries don't only include the ancients, they also include all the commentators on the ancients, some of them coming in from the Islamic tradition or the Jewish tradition, from rival Christian traditions.And then the reformation starts. And that too multiplies the variety of people claiming I can prove X is true about theology. I can prove Y is through true about theology.You need the radical pluralization of truth claims. Before you get to the crisis at which people say, wait, we need a new method to weigh these truth claims.And so you can see the Renaissance is the moment at which Petrarch said, find all the books. People found all the books. All the books totally disagreed with each other. People's theories about the books totally agreed with each other more. as a result, there ended up being an overwhelming competing world of questions, which is what opened the door to people feeling like they needed answers.Now, somebody who is an atheist and somebody who [00:40:00] is an incredibly pious theist can be equal contributors, and were equal contributors to the pluralization of options. That is really what triggered the need for questions. It isn't the case that rationalism and atheism or skepticism naturally breed more questions than theism.Theism also breeds lots of questions. It's having many theisms and indeed many skepticisms. All twining and multiplying and bouncing off each other. That makes an avalanche of questions that makes people say, we need a new shovel to dig ourselves out. That shovel is the new methods of bacon Descartes on the scientific method.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. and, you do speaking of, Renaissance atheism you talk at length about just this, in the same vein of trying to find, trying to project our past,PALMER: Sorry.SHEFFIELD: Ideas or trying to pro let me say this again. [00:41:00]The rarity of Renaissance atheismSHEFFIELD: well, and, you also do talk quite a bit about just how few actual atheists there were,PALMER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: in those days.PALMER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: despite a kind of somewhat recent modern day, series of books that people have been coming out with trying to say that, oh, well, these, ancient figures, actually, they were atheists.But the reality is that even the epicureans were not atheists.PALMER: It's, a reallySHEFFIELD: what.PALMER: it's a really complicated and difficult question to answer because, people always come to the Renaissance and say, well, we know the Inquisition existed and we know that there is this threat of force or indeed death. And that atheism is a capital offense. therefore when we read these texts, we don't expect people to say, I'm an atheist. We instead pe expect people to code and veil their ideas between the lines and make us hunt for it. Right? And so, methods of looking for atheists have always been period, looking for closet atheists, looking for people who don't [00:42:00] express their atheism, but whose other sentiments make it feel like they might be vulnerable or, but whose other sentiments make it feel like they might be sympathetic atheism?My own dissertation, which was supposed to be looking for atheists the Renaissance, took this as a. That I knew as many do that Lucius's de Ram Naura, the nature of things, this poem of epicurean cosmology and physics that denies the afterlife and denies divine action and posits, a materialist universe would be of great interest to any atheists that are around.So the theory of the dissertation was, well, if I study the people who read lucretius, who commented on it, who we know worked with it, my secret hidden atheists will be among them. they'll still be camouflage. They won't admit that they're atheists, but there they will be. In the margins of lucious underlining their favorite passages, right?And so I set out to look at [00:43:00] all the surviving copies of left from the Renaissance, and after looking at 350 of them determined that everybody underlined the sex scene the lines that sound like Virgil and, the bits about moralistic stuff that sound like they're coming outta Cicero and Seneca.And that only two copies underlined any of the aism and atheism at all, which was Machiavelli's. And so, one might say to me, as many people did in conferences, well, aren't people just not underlining the atom because they're afraid of getting in trouble with the Inquisition, which is a microcosmic version of the question.Aren't people hiding their atheism because they're afraid of the Inquisition? Wouldn't they be silent about that? It took a long time thinking on how best to answer that question. And this is me, somebody who's excited to go study atheism, right? I want these people to be atheist. I was looking for atheists and then I was reading their actual statements and I'm like, no, atheist would say this.I wish you were an [00:44:00] atheist. You are a sweetie pie. But I, you sound like atheist. And the ultimate answer that I think really shows it is this. These guys often voiced quite publicly things that were way more dangerous to say in the period than atheism.The Inquisition had certain things that cared about more than others. there were in, if you look at Inquisition records for a particular decade, say the 1510s, there would be a thousand trials. quasi Lutheranism and four for atheism, right? They really are hunting for A and not B and indeed the sex scene and sex stuff is more dangerous to underline than the atheist stuff.The Inquisition had its priorities, and so I use, as this simile in the book, if you worried about. Government agents raiding your house, would you carefully hide [00:45:00] like slightly illegal smuggled Canadian sleep pills and leave a big bag of crack cocaine out on the table? You just wouldn't do that.similarly, if you're afraid of the Renaissance Inquisition, you're not gonna carefully, meticulously hide your atheism and then publish a pamphlet talking about how to summon demons or supporting Lutheran Sofie. No Atheist is going to publish a pamphlet supporting Lutheran Sofie. He's gonna say, I don't care.And go home. And the Inquisition is gonna leave him alone because they care much more about certain things than they do about other things. And it's thatSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: realize no closet atheist is gonna choose to go to the stake for Sofie. The way these guys did. WereSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: of them who are closet atheists?Yes. And there were definitely at least two. I found them. There they are, they're saying that they're atheists or their friends are saying that they're atheists. I love them. but that's two out of 35 people that I thought would be atheists at the beginning and the [00:46:00] other 33. I go through the material and I'm like, no, this is not a thi, this is not an atheist.What it is, a radical weirdo theist who is questioning and applying reason and bucking the system in a theist way. Often in a wacky, nothing like modernity way in a, I'm gonna project my soul out of my body kind of way. are radical free thinkers who are disrupting the system, but they aren't quasi modern.what people have to remember. Our modern values are shaped by our modern knowledge. Right. OurSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: science required us to find those findings first.SHEFFIELD: And none of,things were there.PALMER: exactly. If you don't yet,SHEFFIELD: of evolution.There was no, documentary hypothesis of the Bible, just all these things that came out in the mid 19th century.They weren't there.PALMER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: as, you say in the book, that to be a atheist in those days, in the Renaissance days, it was the equivalent of being a conspiracy theorist,basically [00:47:00] in today.PALMER: turning your back on all science and you have no science on your side. Science is not on atheism side yet. We haven't done that science yet. It isSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: clinging to an extremely radical position without, rather than with consensus being able to be compatible with you.It's a very fringe theory, and so a lot of the times when I talk to someone at a party and they say, I really love these Renaissance people. Were they really atheist like me? What that person is actually asking is, if I had lived in the Renaissance, would I hold the values that I hold?Would I still have found atheism because it's universally persuasive, regardless of time and space. Would my authenticity translate if I had been born a different time? The answer is yes and no. If, most modern atheists would live in the Renaissance, they would be radical free thinkers, but not necessarily atheist, radical free thinkers, because science isn't on that side.They would be experimenting with Plato and Seneca and Soul projection [00:48:00] and medieval stuff. They might be ISTs.SHEFFIELD: Or her, medicist orsomething. Yeah.PALMER: they, they would be interested in Zoroastrianism and the Kian, Oracles and all of the newfangled excited, cutting edge research that was going on at the time. But it wouldn't necessarily lead to the same thing as now.That's natural. The whole point of progress is that we learn new things and we change our attitudes based on our new knowledge. If we would land on the same values without all the fruits of modern science that we do with the fruits of modern science, what are we bothering with? With saying that our values are based on science.Our values are based on science and, our critical reasoning there about, and so we would come to conclusions when we had different science, and they would still be radical and they would still be freethinking they would still be bucking a system, but they wouldn't arrive at the same conclusions even if they arrived at the same question.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I think probably the best person who exemplifies that, or at least off the top of my head is Isaac Newton. [00:49:00] a lot of present day people kind of think of, oh, he's the guy that showed that, God wasn't keeping the planets in line and all that. And he was really the founder of Science and Secularist.But if you actually read Newton and, he was obsessed with Alchemy. He was obsessed with, Bible codes. He was like that, that's whatPALMER: Yes, let's congeal.SHEFFIELD: on.PALMER: Let's congeal sunlight into gold. Yeah. old quest. Yep. because that's where the cutting edge experimental world was.The try-everything agePALMER: and when I talk about Newton's era, which I do in the last section of this book my personal term for the 17th centuries, the try everything age.When people say, okay, the Renaissance showed us that there are so many completing competing truth claims that we cannot sort what is true. there are too many different persuasive authors. We read Plato, we read Aristotle, we read Seneca, we read Augustine, we read Thomas Aquinas, we [00:50:00] read scotus, we read Bruni, we read Ficino.They are all very persuasive and all very smart. We can't figure out what's true. Let's try everything. And this is the try everything age where they try everything. and then the things that work stick and the things that don't. Don't, and I love this quotation from a biography of King Christina of Denmark, sorry, king Christina of Sweden.King Christina of Sweden, who is the complexly transgender ish king of Sweden at this time was really interested in science at Descartes and all of this stuff. And in the biography of her, they talk about her as somebody who believed in all sorts of marginal and super sisters superstitious arts like chemistry, astrology, and the divining rod.And those three are lumped together 'cause they're equally experimental. Right. And, chemistry, astrology in the divining rod are all seriously tried. And then one of the three is continued and the other two, much less so because they were trying [00:51:00] everything and our modern sciences are descended from the ones that worked.was equally vital that they tried all the ones that didn't, or we wouldn't know that they didn't work. So the, try everything, age tries everything. And of course, somebody as curious as Newton is observing movement and objects and also trying to decode Bible stuff because of people in your era say, this might be true.You try it, you try everything.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and the, and, the reason why I think this is relevant to. Today, not just because to push back on some of this, new atheist type discourse, but it's also that, ultimately the main innovation of the Renaissance, it was the pluralism. It was the, governmental forms. And that's ultimately, in some ways you could argue that nowadays with all these conspiracy theories, we're also now again, in a try everything age. [00:52:00] And that because the government has been, cut back so much on public education, on cut back, on, secondary education for the public, college education that a lot of people are never, they're not, they don't know these facts.Like a lot of people, millions of Americans, they were Christian homeschooled. So they have no idea about any of these scientific theories. Like people would say, oh, well the science shows this. It's obvious. anyone would believe this stuff. Well, they've never even seen it.Growth through debatePALMER: Yeah, and I think it's important to remember that another major legacy of the Renaissance is education, as we know it, right? Liberal arts, education, the humanities, studio, human. is the educational system Arch advocates setting up, and he argues that reading these texts and grappling with them ethically and asking big, deep questions about what is right and what is wrong and human behavior and what is just and unjust, [00:53:00] the kind of education where the class reads softly together and then debates the justice or injustice of what happens in Antigone, and whether a law can be a law while it's unjust, or whether you should obey an unjust law.These as formations of a curious and self examined character. That a human being is most human when we debate these big questions and use them to form ourselves through a process of inquiry, that as a backbone of education is core to what the Renaissance gives us. And the Renaissance is very correct in noting as we note now that kind of education leads to change and it leads to innovation, and then it leads to dynamism and it leads to people questioning the way the world works now and proposing ways the world could work better stimulates progress, but it also stimulates rebellion.[00:54:00] And when you see people who are against liberal education and against critical thinking, it's somebody who wants to make sure the next generation agrees with them. Rather than wanting to raise the next generation to be freethinking, self examined, and take the world in the new and rich directions that Free inquiry develops.The Renaissance creates an educational system that in turn creates a world that does not agree with those who created it. And if you could teleport arch from the beginning of the Renaissance to the end, he would find himself scared and surrounded by worrying ideas, incredible innovations. he could tell, import himself him even further to now, he would need decades to catch up with the progress of philosophy and science along the way, and he would look around and say, this is a world that shares practically none of my beliefs, but it does share [00:55:00] my value, that the examined life makes us more human.Through the fruits of that examined life, which are scientific discovery, better knowledge of the world, increasing human power. We have achieved things that Petrarch would weep to see us having done. Like we can cure the black death now. Petrarch lived through the black death and his letters are absolutely heartbreaking.And his attitude coming out of it very much was one of, we are living in a plural apocalypse in which plague and the famine that follows plague When people, when agriculture fails because there's been a pandemic, the shortages those things, we cannot, as human beings battle, we cannot stop. The horseman plague.We cannot stop the dire horseman famine. We cannot stop the dire horseman. Death maybe says Petrarch, we can stop the dire horseman war. If we can achieve solidarity, prudence, if we can make [00:56:00] wiser governments. That's what the educational system really wants. It wants to take on the, one of the four horsemen that people thought was a saleable the other three were not.If Petrarch were here today, he would be amazed to discover that the Dread Horsemen plague was much more defeatable than the dread horseman war. and that we have gotten so successful at it that practically every disease Petrarch was familiar with is either now rare trivial. And we lose dozens of people in a year instead of tens of thousands to the diseases that Petrarch thought would never stop plaguing, humankind.He would weep to discover that we have bested so aptly so many of the weapons of the dire horseman plague. And he would be discouraged. But ready to grapple with the fact that the dire horseman war turned out to be [00:57:00] harder. that creating human polities that are capable of peaceful prudence has been a constant challenge and that we have yet to match the stability the Pax Romana, those days under Trajan and Hadrian when there weren't pirates on the seas or bandits on the roads.There are pirates in the Mediterranean now, right? We have not matched the stability that patriarch dreamed that we could, if we showed him there is no smallpox he would say the work was worth it.Diderot and the promise of the future unknownPALMER: And this is where it's useful to bring up the fact that the Renaissance is an era of very long-term thinking, right?This is still the age of cathedrals. Cathedral thinking is comfortable with things taking 500 years, not. Five years, not 10. Our modern world really wants to judge things on the really fast currents of one election. We judge the president on or the parliament on how things are [00:58:00] doing within a few years of their taking office, when of course, major policies haven't been able to yet actually show their consequences.Medieval and Renaissance people were very comfortable with beginning a project that they wouldn't live to see the end of you dig the foundation, you trust the next generation will build the lower part of the walls and the next, the middle part of the walls and the next, the upper part of the walls, and you begin building that cathedral not knowing how to build the top, but you start it anyway.Right? Petrarch saw Florence's Cathedral going up without knowing how to build the dome that was planned to go on top. It wasn't technologically possible. They trusted that it would be by the time they got there and they were right. That cathedral isn't finished still, they're still building it. Milan finished its cathedral less than a decade ago, right?these are big projects and if you ask Petrarch on what scale should we judge, read [00:59:00] education in order to help us be more examined and become our best selves, we'll bring about peace in Europe. what scale should we judge that? If we ask Petrarch, he would say, on the scale of a cathedral, I, would love if it were faster.But the scale of a cathedral is a scale in which we need to think. I know right now we're surrounded by a lot of things that make us feel fear. the world is very scary right now because it isn't more alarming than it has ever been in most of our lived experience. Those of us who remember the Cold War remember it mostly as youthful memories. our elders remember it more vividly. For most of us, this is the scariest the world has ever felt. And therefore it feels like an apocalypse that's been a common feeling of generations. For centuries, there were moments that felt like an apocalypse to Petrarch. There were moments that felt like an apocalypse to Machiavelli.Shakespeare rants about this in some of [01:00:00] his work. lifetime felt like an apocalypse. Many, eras have, but we have come so far through the aftermath of arch's call, let Us Make Education, and it's continuing to bear fruits and the adversaries of progress. And those who want the past more than the future are the adversaries of it who are trying to dismantle that educational system because they know perfectly well of that it creates change progress, and that it creates a future, which would not agree with our current values, but would replace them with more examined better.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I think that prospect is also kind of threatening to even more centrist people today. And you see that with the, current discussion that, some, more centrist democrats are trying to say, oh, well you shouldn't, Stand up for trans people andThat isn't youlead.PALMER: is where I always think of Diderot right? Jumping forward out [01:01:00] of Renaissance into enlightenment, Diderot, one of the fathers of the encyclopedia project, right? One of the great transformers of that age who advanced this project to enable universal education and universal empowerment, the knowledge that is power and place it in the hands of the whole population.Diderot in his secret private writings writes the philosophical dialogue Ramos nephew. And in that he confronts the fact that the fruits of the educational system he is making the new people who will grow up more rational than his current generation would be scary to him. It would not hold his values and that there would not be a place for him in the tomorrow he's building.He realized that Diderot knew how powerful the power that his knowledge is, and that if you unleash it and give it to everyone and empower everyone that way a generation or two, there [01:02:00] will not be a place in that world for people who were shaped by the world before it. They will be left behind. And in that philosophical dialogue, Diderot looks at this and says, the future will not have a place for me.I will not be at home in it. And I attempt that. It will be a better future.That is a kind of courage that we need. need to trust. generations won't agree with us because they will have gotten somewhere better, if we don't trust that, then there will never be a dome on the top of the cathedral because toSHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALMER: what we've started building requires that our successors surpass us, not merely resemble us.No cathedral stands. If the top level is the same as the bottom level, it's too heavy and it falls down. If we aren't willing to entrust the project [01:03:00] a new generation that will surpass us and leave us behind, then we don't believe in progress because that's what progress demands of us, and that's what it means to.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's right. What are you doing it for if you don't actually believe in the project itself? That's what it comes down to. Yeah. Well this has been a really great discussion. I think that's a perfect place to leave it, Ada. and, I definitely encourage everybody to check out your book. So if, for people who wanna keep up with you what are your recommendations for them?PALMER: if you go to ada palmer.com, it links to everything. You could find me on Blue Sky where I share good news about progress in science every day. If you want a, break from the doom scroll. It links to my blog, Ex Urbe E-X-U-R-B e.com, or I blog about history and ideas and it links to my science fiction and fantasy novels because in my other hat from being a historian, I'm a [01:04:00] futurist and science fiction writer.Iotta is my main series, which is about the 25th century in a future that has left us far behind and is better than our present, but still has a lot of work to go and must face up to leaving itself behind as well. so if you like big meaty, big ideas SF like Foundation series you should check out Tara Iota, which is also linked from ada palmer.com.And it also links to my podcast where I discuss craft of writing, science fiction and ideas with fellow, bookworm and SF novelist, Joe Walton. I. What else is it linked to? My music, which is about Norse mythology and my new fantasy series, which will be out in a year or two is about Norse mythology and trying to dive us into a world.I think it's useful for us to visit because the Norse is one in which the metaphysics focuses on the fragility of the earth, that in a vast cosmos of darkness, emptiness, ice, and fire. there is [01:05:00] one fragile world made with great difficulty in which humans can live, which is constantly under assault by the giants personifications of storm freezing cooling, the dangers of nature and in which the humans and Gods must collaborate with each other to protect that fragile world in which human life is possible.I think this is a very useful worldview for us to visit right now as we, as a civilization struggle to wrap our minds around climate change because so many of our ancestral metaphysics. Assume the strength of the earth and the stability and un fragility of the world and the un fragility of a cosmos in which everything is according to plan.I think it's very useful for us to imagine ourselves for a few hours within the mindset of a people for whom the world was precious, fragile, and in danger, and required human custodianship to keep it going. 'cause that's closer to the mindset we need right now. [01:06:00] So, Smith,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. All right, well, cool. all right, well thanks for being here and look forward to having you on future episodes as well.PALMER: It's been a pleasure.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show. We've got the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And my thanks to everybody who is a paid supporter of the show. Thank you very much.I. And you get unlimited access to all of the archives. And I am very grateful for that. And if you can't afford to be a paid subscriber let your other podcasts that you listen to know or other people on social media tell your friends, your family, hell tell your enemies if you want. I appreciate that.Thanks a lot. And if you're watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode.So that'll do it for this one. I thanks a lot for watching or listening, and I'll see you next [01:07:00] time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.communityEpisode Summary  It seems forever ago, but it has officially been 10 years since Donald Trump announced that he was running as a Republican presidential candidate in 2015. A lot of terrible things have happened since that time, but if you think in terms of the issues that have propelled Trump politically, his two presidencies have been a “lost decade” for his own supporters.Trump done almost nothing to help the people he promised: Food costs are higher than ever before, unauthorized immigration has remained low, and health care is still out of reach for far too many people. Instead of trying to create his own policies to bring jobs to blighted heartland areas, Trump and Republicans are trying to close rural hospitals, terminate disaster-preparedness funding, and cancel the green jobs programs that former president Joe Biden enacted that mostly benefit Republican-voting areas.Despite promising to be a completely different kind of politician, Trump has been a total pawn of the far-right activists who began flooding into the Republican Party in 1964. Less than six months into his second term, aside from his tariff obsessions, Trump’s policies are barely different from those of George W. Bush, right down to the Middle Eastern wars, the billionaire welfare handouts, and the harsh cuts to anti-poverty programs.At the same time, however, in the past ten years, Democrats have also barely changed a thing. Despite losing multiple times to Trump and his congressional allies, the national Democratic Party has continued to be governed as a gerontocracy, and instead of copying Republicans’ billion-dollar investments in advocacy media, Democrats have instead spent almost all of their funds on old-school television ads and door-knocking efforts, hoping that Americans will magically make the connection between Republicans and their very unpopular policies.All of this got me thinking about doing a podcast episode to mark the political milestone, and after reading the Trump 10-year retrospective that Paul Campos posted at the Lawyers, Guns, and Money blog, I realized I needed to invite him and his colleague Erik Loomis onto the program for a live-streamed discussion of the topic which we recorded June 19th, two days before Trump decided to launch airstrikes against Iran.The video of our conversation is available. The full audio and transcript are available only to paying subscribers.Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch!Related Content—Donald Trump was never anti-war, and only lazy journalists and naive supporters thought otherwise—Why MAGA is the ultimate ‘globalist’ movement—January 6th was only the beginning of Trump’s insurrection against America, his attacks on California are his next major step—How labor unions preserved collective memory and why their decline has hurt Democrats so much (Erik’s first TOC appearance)—Why understanding a Nazi legal theorist can help you understand Trump’s domestic political strategies—How atheist technologists like Elon Musk are learning to love the fundamentalist Christian RightAudio Chapters00:00 — Ten years of Trumpism as America's 'lost decade'07:59 — The historical context of Trump's rise11:18 — Why Republicans are both isolationist and imperialist19:21 — Democratic leaders haven't changed a bit in response to Trump28:18 — Right-wing media and the doomed quest a 'liberal Joe Rogan'39:04 — Republicans spend billions on ecosystems, Democrats do not48:09 — Economic vs. social justice is a false and damaging choice58:50 — ConclusionMembership BenefitsIn order to keep Theory of Change sustainable, the full audio and transcript for this episode are available to subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube.About the ShowTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.

Episode Summary  Over the years on this program, I’ve often said that the political differences dividing Americans are really just artifacts of much deeper epistemic divides. In the episode before this one, we explored how those differences manifest psychologically—but psychology alone cannot explain why so many people feel so alienated that they willingly support political leaders like Donald Trump whom they acknowledge to be deceptive and chaotic.The truth is that most of Donald Trump’s supporters back him because they feel like their religious viewpoints are being shunted aside by scientific and educational progress that they cannot refute or even understand. The tension between recalcitrant belief and modernity has always been the core conflict motive of Christian fundamentalism, but how this works specifically in terms of doctrines varies widely across epistemic communities. That’s why in this episode, we’re going to focus on just one faith tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormons. Our guide to Mormon epistemology is going to be Luna Corbden, the author of a book called “Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control,” which discussed various cultural and linguistic methods that the church used on its members to keep them coming back for more. In a lot of ways, not much has changed within LDS Mormonism since Corbden published in 2014, but some things have—and they’re revealing some deeper divisions between the institutions of the Latter-Day Saint Movement and its longtime rival of Evangelical Protestantism.The transcript of this audio-only conversation is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe on Substack or Patreon and get unlimited access.Related Content—The long and tangled history of Mormonism and Evangelical Protestantism—Religious authoritarians have always been at war with democracy, regardless of whether anyone else realized it—The Christian right was a theological rebellion against modernity before it became a political movement—How Mormons, evangelicals, Native Americans, and tourists mix in the state of Idaho—Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley on politics, Utah, and being an ‘emeritus Mormon’—Luna Corbden on the Mormon Stories PodcastAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction04:06 — Challenges of free will and information control14:08 — Mormonism created new doctrinal controversies while solving for classical Christian dilemmas20:12 — Centralization and doctrinal evolution in Mormonism26:47 — Intellectual Mormonism’s conflicted epistemology35:42 — Sweeping embarrassing doctrines under the rug doesn’t make them disappear40:01 — Scientific claims and the Book of Mormon44:40 — Spiritual polygamy remains an actual practice in today’s Mormonism53:49 — Former Mormons and active progressive Mormons are reconciling58:42 — Reclaiming self-worth and autonomyAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So we're going to have a discussion here about Mormonism and Epistemology and all that. But before we get into it, I did want to talk a bit about your book specifically and what you meant by agency, because for people who are not familiar with Mormonism, the term of agency is a core doctrine and something that is very important.So what does Mormonism mean by the concept of agency?LUNA CORBDEN: Yeah, It is a core doctrine to, or what they call the plan of salvation or in recent, the, recent thing they call it is the plan of happiness. When I was still in it was the plan of salvation. And the idea is that in the war of heaven, Jesus and Satan both stood up and had a different plans for the, future progress of their brothers and sisters, spiritual humanity at that point.And Jesus wanted to send everybody down. We can make our own choices, and if we made the wrong choices, we'd have to be punished for them for some reason. And then Satan was like, we're Lucifer. we'll actually just force everyone to make the right choices and then that way we can save everyone and no one has to be punished.And there was a huge war in heaven over that. And Lucifer's obviously the bad guy, and he got cast out and we ended up in this. That's the. How Mormonism solves the problem of evil, which is not something they talk about in Mormonism, but you get out of it and you're like, oh, that's how they're solving the problem of evil is basically free will. It's basically free.Will we have the ability to choose good versus evil? We need evil in order to be able to choose good, because if our only choice was good, then it's not really a choice, and that's really central. So the idea is we are free to choose, but also we have to live with whatever consequences we end up with [00:04:00] except through the saving power of Jesus Christ, who can at least save us from the eternal consequences of that.Challenges of free will and information controlCORBDEN: and it's not entirely true, as I learned when I got out, the concept of free will is a very complicated one. One that has been debated by philosophers for thousands of years. There's no scientists study fruit flies, the see if fruit flies have free will.There's no consensus on it because it is a complicated question. It's not simple. And really the best way to get them to maximize the free will in your own life, regardless of what's going on around you, is through self-awareness and really understanding what your choices really are and what they aren't.SHEFFIELD: The other thing that's interesting about the concept of free agency within Mormonism is that as the growth of the LDS Church has slowed down quite a bit in recent years, they have used it as a way of explaining why the church continues to remain small, despite the fact that they believed for most of their history, that it was going to be the stone cut out of the mountain that fills the whole Earth as a phrase that they repurposed from the book of Daniel to describe Mormonism.So they have to say that this is. A belief system that most people are not going to choose the full truth. And that's unfortunate, but they have free agency.CORBDEN: Yeah. And I've been out for over 20 years, so when I left, they were still able to say, oh yeah, no, we're the stone, we're filling the earth because they were still growing.At the point that I left, I think they were at 10 or 11 million. People members, when I left, according to their reporting on their records, it wasn't really until the rise of the internet, the popularity of the internet, that more of this information that used to only be relegated to what they called anti-Mormon literature.[00:06:00] They were published books or videos and you had to go out and find them. And so it was that milieu control. That's one of the concepts I talk about in my book, restricting people's access to dis-confirming information. It was a lot easier to retain milieu control, whereas in the last two decades someone can go out and they can just search.SHEFFIELD: Hey, I'm sorry to interrupt your point here real quick, but what do you mean by milieu control? what is, what do you mean by that? What does that mean?CORBDEN: Yeah, So milieu control, was identified by cult researchers as being just the idea that in order to keep people from discovering.Negative aspects of your high demand group is you have to control their information intake. And there's various ways that different groups do that. Some have everyone move onto a compound, so there's no unapproved information coming in or out. Like you just cannot access it. Since Mormonism doesn't do that, at least LDS Mormonism, they have to use more softer techniques.And so they'll be like, don't read that information 'cause it's anti-Mormon. Don't watch those movies because they're R rated. Don't listen to anyone who's left because they have a chip on their shoulder. Or they're misled by saying, and so it's basically. Convincing its members to be afraid of or to not want to access information.But the trouble is with the internet is you go on there and maybe because Mormonism has a lay clergy, and so you might be researching a Sacrament meeting talk or a Belief Society lesson, and you're like, oh, I'm going to go look up some cool little vignettes about Joseph Smith's. Childhood and you, so you put in there Joseph Smith's childhood or whatever, and suddenly you're getting these websites from, often from ex Mormons or even just Wikipedia, and they're showing you information that the church was previously when I was coming up in Mormonism was restricted from me.[00:08:00] It's showing them just right there. Oh, the story about the Joseph Smith refusing to have alcohol when he was a boy was, that doesn't make any sense for lots of reasons or other aspects of church finances or all of the information basically that's freely available out there that a member of the church can just accidentally stumble on.That has caused quite a few people to not join the church, to who otherwise would've, or to leave the church or to be what they call female physically in mentally out. And so that has reduced the church's growth rate considerably. And in fact that kind. They hide their numbers a little bit, but many people say that if they were being realistic about their numbers, that the membership is actually decreasing or would be, if not for members having children.SHEFFIELD: and on that point, the LDS church is quite different from a lot of other congregations in that most churches remove you as a member if you stop showing up. Whereas in the Mormon church, they keep you on the rolls, even if they haven't seen you in decades until you're either 110 or 120 or something like that.I always forget the specific decade, that they cut you off. but yeah, they'll keep you there even if they haven't seen you in 50 years, they say you're still a member. Yes. but yeah, and so as a result, I think it's, hard to use public opinion surveys to gauge Mormon affiliation because it's just such a small group inherently and always has been.And so when you're dealing with a group that is smaller than the margin of error in public opinion surveys, it really makes it hard to know how big it actually is, right? Yeah. Yep. So just going back to the concept of free agency a bit here. So a lot of people have compared Mormonism to a cult. and I think one could also compare [00:10:00] a lot of other religious movements to cults as well.but that's a side point because really what you're doing with the book here is you're trying to show people this is what sound thinking actually looks like.CORBDEN: Yeah. Yeah. yeah, and that is my ko eye audience number one XX Mormons. Number two are Mormons. That might. In, but they're progressive or questioning, or like I said, chemo and they're just interested in what's, how they work.And then probably my third layer outer layer of audience are people from other high demand groups who can relate to the content because I do something that I hadn't seen in any literature prior to me, and that is that I, organized all of those manipulation techniques into one place as like a list or I identified 31 of them and put them in order.And then under each one I have examples, whereas. Other literature I'd read lift and had his eight and Ha Hassan had his bite model and everybody had their own little model and I just gleaned all of it, pulled it all out and put it all in one place. So I've had people who were, had a military wife who really related to it for military wife culture that she was in.So evangelicals, I had a lot of people from other high demand groups that really related to it. So those are my audiences and yeah, that's what the cult exit literature largely was saying. The best way to free yourself from that organization that you grew up in, or that you had joined for a few years is to really understand what focus a c look.What those techniques were, because those are still living in you. Even if you've rejected God or you've rejected that religion or that non-religious high demand groups. Those, levers, those less defined and they're not doctrines at that point. They're worldviews and beliefs about yourself and about the world that are [00:12:00] a little bit more insidious, a little deeper.And so that's what this does is goes through and says, okay, here's love Loving. It's an insincere. they love you and they pull you in, but it's not sincere. They just want you as a member, and as soon as they know that they have you, they drop you. they you're in and they're not going to send you cookies every week anymore, right?Or, here's sacred science. It's saying that organization has the truth and is one with God. Here's a doctrine over self that your own desires are less than what the religion or organization says is most important. And so you have to subdue your own instincts and your own promptings.And so then that, that way each reader can go through and say. Okay, that I remember I latched on Luna saying some scriptures here that do that, but I remember a talk that was given by so and so back when, and that really is what stuck in my head. And I still have that belief. And so they can revisit and then maybe decide.And then that's where the free agency comes in. Maybe there's a lot of Mormon doctrines and Mormon core beliefs that Mormonism instilled in me that I still follow today because I've consciously, and then it becomes a choice, right? Because I've consciously pulled it out and gone, that's actually a pretty good idea and I'm going to keep that internalized.Or I can look at other stuff and go, oh, actually that's not serving me. It's not serving other people. And so I'm.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and you make a good point there, because a lot of these high demand religions, people obviously think of them as extremely theological, which of course they are. But really what they are is totalizing philosophies. That's fully what they are. They're full systems that tell you what to think about everything and also how to think.So it's a philosophy with a mystical delivery mechanism, if you will. That's what [00:14:00] we're talking about here. And so Mormonism is not that unique, as you said, compared to these other groups like evangelical Christianity?CORBDEN: Exactly.Mormonism created new doctrinal controversies while solving for classical Christian dilemmasSHEFFIELD: The other way that Mormonism has a lot of similarities with other fundamentalist religions is that while Christianity itself had always had a very long tradition, in fact in the Roman Catholic Church of saying that the Bible was not to be interpreted literally in all places, and you didn't have to consider things that you thought were unreasonable or were unscientific, you didn't have to believe them.But a lot of Christians, especially Protestant Christians, they did see the Bible as a literal document, and Mormons did that as well. But they also have had some additional controversies on top of that. So while the. Fundamentalist Protestants have had to deal with the lack of evidence of the ancient Hebrews being in Egypt, or the fact that there is a lot of evidence that the God of the Bible is just one of several Canaanite deities that existed at the same time that he had a wife and things like that.Ban. Mormonism inherits all of those controversies and also has its own as well, because they make some extra historical claims, not just about the alleged ancestors of Native Americans, but also about the Book of Abraham, which is an additional scripture that Mormons have, that a lot of non-Mormons might not have heard of.Can you tell us a bit about that for people who aren't familiar with that controversy?CORBDEN: Yeah, so the Book of Abraham is LDS scripture. It's part of what's called the Pearl of Great Price, a couple of small, smallish books that came from different places. And specifically the book of Abraham was said to have been back in the 18 hundreds, there were these touring shows, and one of them would have these Egyptology artifacts, and one of them was a [00:16:00] sarcophagus with a mummy in it, and it had some books in it.And Joseph Smith comes across it and he's I want to buy, I don't know if it was Joseph Smith, by the way, I'm not a Hi Mormon history buff. There's people who get really deep. So I'm glossing over, and I might get a couple of the little details wrong, but whether it was Joseph Smith or one of his missionaries or apostles sees that and is oh, I'm going to buy that.So they buy, up the, these, papers, these old papyri, and Joseph Smith gets ahold of it and he has his y and thumb, and he's a prophet. And he says, ah, that was written by Abraham's own hand, the prophet Abraham from the Old Testament. And so he, he translates this, these papyri, and it's the book of Abraham.And Abraham tells us. His time in Egypt and there were some hieroglyphics or some, pictures in, there. And he says, oh, this is Abraham being sacrificed by the priest of Egypt. This is before the Rosetta Stone, so he could just make up whatever he wanted about the hieroglyphics. And that is what he did.and there's some core doctrinal things in the Book of Abraham. it's, it's not one of the most quoted scriptures within Mormonism, but it certainly is very pivotal. If, for instance, if the Book of Abraham were to say, be proven by Egyptologists who understand hieroglyphics now to be just another copy of the Book of the Dead, which were often included with mummies, which is what happened, that, that would yank the rug out from underneath Joseph Smith's prophetical ability and, his credibility as a prophet.and that is exactly what happened. Other Rosetta Stone was discovered. and then conveniently, the actual original retire were missing for, they were thought to have been destroyed for the rest of, after the Rosetta Stone was discovered. But we still had those, I'm not remembering the word right, but the, those, the art [00:18:00] basically.And that's where Egyptologists were like, first of all, these look doctored, and second of all, that's not Abraham and that's not a priest. That this is, these are actually gods and this is the thing that it's depicting. And again, I'm not an Egyptologist, so I'm glossing over the finer points, but they were like, that is not what those images are depicting.And they've been probably the doctor. And then, I don't remember when it was, but it's been in my lifetime, three decades ago, two decades ago, they actually discovered the original prop retire in a museum. I want to say Chicago, I don't know. They, were discovered in, some archives and they were like, ah.And they were able to prove that it was actually the ones that Joseph Smith had translated to from, and we're like, yeah, this is just. The Book of the Dead, they put copies of these in every sarcophagus. It's just describing how to prepare very taxes is the word. And so yeah, that's been a big linchpin for a lot of people who love the churchSHEFFIELD: whoCORBDEN: go are like, yeah, this pretty much proves that Joseph Smith is.SHEFFIELD: And then chronologically speaking, Mormonism and Evangelicalism also have a lot in common because they got started around the same exact time period.CORBDEN: Yep. The, second great awakening, Joseph Smith came a little bit after that, the sort of revival period, but he was definitely part of those at the time.what the time would've been new religious movements. We had that in the sixties as well, where there's just a lot of people who were spiritually curious and wanting to get back, and a lot of Americans don't realize that there had actually been a period where atheism and deism and just secularism and not being very interested in religion had happened right before that awakening.And so that was a backlash. and so we're now in that we're the nuns, right? The, not religiously affiliated or on the rise again. And so we might expect to see like, we're seeing with Christian [00:20:00] nationalism, a sort of a backlash to that. And that's where Joseph Smith was as well, is, was people were like, wait, maybe we should get back to our religious roots.Centralization and doctrinal evolution in MormonismSHEFFIELD: One of the core organizational differences between Mormonism and Evangelicalism is that they're very different in how they're run. So Evangelicalism is extremely decentralized. If you don't like a pastor, you can go and start your own church anytime you want. As long as you can get someone to pay you to preach, then you're good.You can set it up. Whereas in Mormonism, that's not allowed. And in fact, they will kick you out of the church if you do something like that. And so the interesting thing about that centralization is that when the LDS leaders moved the congregation to Utah after they were being threatened with extermination by the Missourians, and after they had gotten involved in various political controversies in the state of Missouri, the doctrines of Mormonism became much, much more divergent from conventional Christianity.So in some ways this isolation and control by the top leaders made them have doctrines that are, that are very unconventional, we'll say, compared to other Christian denominations. But as time went on, the centralization has probably made the LDS church less extreme compared to evangelicals because evangelicalism is so decentralized and so emotional that it incentivizes this kind of anti-intellectual extremism that is so common now among white evangelicals.But before we go there, let's just talk about some of these other doctrines that came along once the LDS Mormons began centralizing power after they moved to Utah. And I think a lot of people do know about plural marriage and its association with [00:22:00] Utah Mormon, early Utah, Mormonism. But there were a lot of other doctrines including one saying that.Adam, the first human was actually God himself.CORBDEN: Yeah. And a lot of those doctrines. So yeah, the Adam God theory led atonement, some of the Brigham Young sort of weird stuff, the Quakers on the moon, a lot of that was disavowed in the 20th century and completely suppressed to the point that.Coming up with a fairly nerdy family who really got into that sort of thing. Did. We owned a full copy, a print copy of the Journal of Discourses, which took like a whole shelf. My family didn't know about Blood Atonement. My family didn't know about the Adam God doctrine. So those super weird ones were just oh, we don't teach that.That's Brigham Young was speaking as a man. It led as a prophet.SHEFFIELD: they never said it was wrong though. They just said, we don't teach that.CORBDEN: Exactly. Yeah. Yes. The plausible deniability, which is one of the indirective directives is what I call it in recovering agency. You you hint at something, or maybe someone said it, but you just dis, we, that's not really what we meant, or whatever.But then you can still create that effect in believers because some of them still believe it and others. Don't know about it. And so it still keeps those hardcore believers who want that, those more violent or wacky beliefs, they, that keeps them strong. So a lot of Mormon doctrines though, in the way that it differs from evangelicalism and many of those originate with Joseph Smith, I think, answer a lot of problems, contradictions within Christianity, within Protestant Christianity and Catholic Christianity that I kind of respect Mormonism for doing that.For saying, okay, yeah, it would actually make more sense if it were this way. For instance, God not being a Trinity, God [00:24:00] being, it's more of a materialistic religion. It's a more grounded in rationality, if you will, which doesn't survive. The 21st century rationality because we have more scientific evidence about the world, but certainly in the 19th century with the evidence that they had at the time, and even a large parts of the 20th century, those made more sense.A, a more materialistic, it's a more enlightenment based religion. A free agency being a strong point, God having a body, God being actually three distinct individuals. Some of the Godhead, the idea that the God, the glory of God is intelligence. Therefore, science is a good thing. Science is the study of God's creation.a lot of those beliefs. Really, I think, appealed to an enlightenment mind and solved issues like the problem evil and other contradictions. The atheists talk a lot about disproving God through these rational means. Mormonism can be like, up to a point, can be like, no, actually we're, good on that.I think that, again, as science has developed more and more, it's gotten harder to stand on that ledge, that Mormonism definitely at least gave it a good effort. And I, if admire is the right word, and I'm, a science fiction buff, and I, do think that in terms of Mormonism World building off of, if you consider it say fan fiction, Christian fan fiction, I think that they're rec cons, if you will, to use all those terms.They're, they've gone back and fixed a lot of the problems with, the Christian world building as it stood when Joseph Smith. Appeared on the scene. I don't know if I got away from your original question too much there, but that's, my stance on it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's a very good point to make because when you look at the historical record and the doctrinal record, it seems very clear that Joseph Smith was trying to solve for these [00:26:00] problems of classical Christianity, which you're describing there.And among those controversies is the idea of do unbaptized infants deserve to go to hell? And Mormonism says, no, they don't. But other ones say, yes, they do. Yep. and so yeah, he was. And so Smith was basically trying to solve some problems, but of course in that process he created some other ones as well.But that's why I do in the end, think that it's unfair for people who come from other Christian traditions to say, oh, look at Mormonism and all its wacky doctrines. And my reaction is, have you looked at your own doctrines and asked somebody outside of your own tradition whether they think they make sense or not?You're just used to these doctrines. That's really what it comes down to.CORBDEN: Exactly.Intellectual Mormonism's conflicted epistemologySHEFFIELD: But at the same time, circling back to the question of centralization and doctrinal resilience, if you will, you alluded to the idea that the glory of God is intelligence. And that actually is the literal motto of Brigham Young University.The church owned university, and that's quite a big contrast compared to evangelical Christianity, where intelligence is often seen as something that is suspect, something that you should be scared of, something that you should be suspicious about. The wisdom of the flesh, the learning of man, that we should trust the spirit and who cares about all this book learning stuff that's become much more of a dividing line between Mormonism and Evangelicalism.And we've seen that with the percentage of Mormons who oppose Donald Trump being higher than the percentage of Evangelicals who do. But we saw that also in the COVID-19 pandemic, where the Orman Church actively was telling its members, you should get the vaccine and vaccines work. Whereas in evangelical communities, if you said things like that and you were a religious leader, you could get fired for saying things like that.You could lose your job or you could have your members leave because they didn't want you to be [00:28:00] placing your trust in science. So while they may not believe in snake handling or things like that, they did think that God would keep them safe from COVID-19 and that it was no big deal for them.CORBDEN: Yeah. And it's caused a lot of issues at BYU. The I attended BYU briefly and one semester, and, I, know people who graduated BYU obviously, and the controversies, the excommunications of, professors over time said the wrong thing and BYU is really accurate for any of the fields that do not directly contradict core LDS doctrines From my own attending, there were a lot of professors who would say things that were not directly LDS doctrine, but that's what the science said, so they would say it and they wouldn't get into too much trouble 'cause it wasn't.Too challenging. But now we have things like the, some of the biology stuff. They're not going to go as hard into evolution, although you will find professors who will say it. So that's a little tricky. The, then there's just like LGBT stuff. That's a really big con controversy right now. It has been for at least a decade, a lot of protestors and activists like activists will stand out in the quad and hold their signs, and then BYU will say, oh, we have free speech zones.And so we're going to, that was a decade ago, I think, when that was going on. And so there then BYU, then the activists will do something else, and then BYU will one up them. I think it was a year ago, they, the activists cleaned up and they have a, one of those giant why's a le the letter for the university on the, on a hill, a giant white Y and they made it rainbow.And so it's just been this like. Issues with.BYU with Provo Police [00:30:00] and how someone can report a sexual assault to the police and they will report it to BYU Honor Code Office. Honor code is basically when you go to BYU, you agree to the honor code, which is extremely strict. In terms of sexual morality and alcohol and curfews and all these kinds of things.And if you violate the honor code, they can kick you out of BYU and keep your tuition. So it's, severely a, severe control on students. And so there's all these controversies where they'd tell the police that they've been sexually assaulted and then the police would tell BYU, oh, they were drunk when they got sexually assaulted.And then either because they were assaulted and it was sex or because they were drunk or whatever. There are all kinds of stories. They would get expelled without tuition and their transcripts would be withheld until they went through their repentance process. So yeah, that, dichotomy of the glory of God is intelligence.if you follow that to certain conclusions. You end up with things that are doctrinally, oppositional to core LDS doctrines, which is enough to warrant your excommunication as in the September 6th in the, A bunch of BYU professors were excommunicated in the nineties, and since then there have been BYU professors who have been fired or excommunicated because of their stances that scientific investigation has led them to, and they've taught it or written about it, even outside of BYU grounds.Maybe they've published a book about it or had a blog and been communicated. So yeah, it's, really the only way out of that trap is to, have a doctor and that says there are many ways to happen. There's many ways that we can understand. The world and we can understand what God wants us to understand.And that kind of belief is not high demand, it's not cultish And, I would fully support an LBS church that took on that sort of doctrine that like, yeah, if you want to accept evolution, if you want to accept [00:32:00] being gay and get married, if you want, you're allowed, we're going to let you do that.That said, they'd probably lose a lot more members. So it's a great dichotomy. Like what are they going to do? So I know what I want 'em to do.SHEFFIELD: and speaking of, there is another Heritage Mormon denomination that was originally called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that was actually headed by Joseph Smith's first wife, Lucy Smith, and one of their sons.And they really have evolved away from both fundamentalism and even Mormon doctrine itself. They don't believe in the Book of Mormon, and they also have women priests and things like that. So they have done some really interesting and positive things from a religious standpoint, at least in my opinion.Yeah.CORBDEN: Yeah, I think so. And they're still incredibly small. They're not very wealthy. That's the problem is these high demand organizations, they keep people in through all of these. Mind control techniques, and when you loosen up on those, yes, your members are freer, happier health healthly, you're creating a culture that fosters like true and genuine connection and people being able to be vulnerable with one another.That said, you're probably not going to be able to get their tithes or their hardcore dedication and volunteer hours. Like they're just not going to be into it. And so I think the church, the community of Christ, I can, I think of them as Mormon Unitarians. they're a bit unitarian in the sense that yeah, you can be an atheist and.Go to church and say, I don't believe in God that here's how I'm relating this doctor into my life and be totally okay. And with that said, that means when you raise up your kids, they might be like, yeah, that's not for me. I want to sleep in on Sundays and I'm going to follow my own new age ideas, or whatever they, and [00:34:00] yeah, it's tricky.But I had to tell you, I, I went to a, I've only been to a couple of COC actual meetings. This one I was at the COC building in Seattle for a sunstone conference that was there. Sunstone is like a intellectual academic conference about Mormonism. And so I was there at a sun and not very many people were there.But as, as I was mingling in the hall, I met this woman and shook her hands. And she was a former apostle of the COC and to shake the hand of a woman who. I was considered a, seer and revelator for the COC church was just really quite an experience and I would love to see that for, LDS formats to be able to, for, different kinds of people, whether it's gender or a person of color, or someone who's queer, to see themselves in the leadership of their organizations.I think that's really what Christ metaphorical for me, the metaphorical Christ bid us to do was to, think about how we would want to be treated and to think about what it would be like to live in a world where it's only white men, straight white American men that you see in leadership positions.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. I think it would be great for a lot of people to see that and to be able to realize that they have a chance to be a part of a tradition that's really important to them and the family that they came from. So I think it would be great if the LDS leadership could realize that there are a lot of people who have a lot of things to add to their conversations and can really bring a lot of great skills.Exactly.Sweeping embarrassing doctrines under the rug doesn’t make them disappearSHEFFIELD: Just circling back to this quote unquote, we don't teach that principle. It's that yes, they. Have discarded from instructional materials, the more embarrassing or offensive doctrines. But they can't wholesale admit that teaching that interracial marriage [00:36:00] was a sin that should be punishable by death.They don't actually do that. They haven't actually disavowed any of these doctrines. They just don't talk about them anymore, and they don't say, our past leaders were wrong. And probably the reason this hasn't happened is that there are a lot of crazy Mormons who have clung to these doctrines, even though they're not officially taught anymore.And if the church came forward and said, yeah, those past pro prophets, as they call themselves were wrong, and what they said was a sin or that it was actively wrong what they said it would be like pulling the bottom out from a house of cards, that everything would collapse, that a lot of the crazy people who were Mormons would take their tithing and leave.That's what would happen. And that's not just conjecture on my part because something like that did actually happen in the community of Christ. When they decided that they didn't believe that the Book of Mormon was real, their already small church became even smaller because a lot of people said, no, we do want to continue to believe in the Book of Mormon.And these controversies that now are so big and prominent within LDS Mormonism, they really weren't there in the beginning. Because in a lot of ways Mormonism was a religious re-imagining of the science because that is in fact what people in the 19th century did believe about where the Native Americans came from, or at least a lot of them did.CORBDEN: and I think it's important to say that there was an active colonization and genocide against Native Americans to justify stealing their land.SHEFFIELD: it was almost an ideal narrative, frankly, for that time period because not only did it accord with many people's viewpoint of what the science said, but it completely intellectually, it intellectually de-legitimized Native American cultures because it said that they were sinful and degraded, and so taking their land and forcibly converting them [00:38:00] to Christianity, it was actually a good thing.It wasn't just not bad. It was actually positive.CORBDEN: That wasn't Joseph Smith's idea.SHEFFIELD: No.CORBDEN: In the 1820s, I. That was something people thought. A view of the Hebrews, what came out in the 18 hundreds, and it was based before the Book of Mormon, and it basically said that, yeah, the, Native Americans descended from a group of, a group from Jerusalem of Israelites who settled in the Americas, and that's where all of Native Americans came from.And so it wasn't even Joseph Smith's idea. he took that idea and wrote it as a more of a fictionalized or not fictional, more of a narrative. The Book of Mormon was a narrative telling of that. And another doctrine that was prominent in America at the time was Manifest Destiny, which is this idea that God had preserved the Americas for as a sort of promised land.For Europeans to settle and that because of that, they were justified and had every right to kill off the wicked Native Americans and destroy their culture, to destroy their population. And that was all used to justify. So when Bergham Young takes off for the American West, with all of those doctrinally encoded in the story of the Book of Mormon, that they had every right to take that land.From the Shoshone and the Paiutes and other tribes that were in, in those regions that they took over that, that had consequences, right? That had like deep and abiding consequences for the people that they stole the land from. And for those of us who were descended from people who stole that land like that's a toxic effect on every single person that was invol involved in that.Like even though as a white person, I ended up on the better end of [00:40:00] that.Scientific claims and the Book of MormonSHEFFIELD: Basically they were projecting their modern day technologies onto ancient peoples who simply did not possess them. There's just simply no evidence that there were any kind of ships that could make a transpacific voyage made by people in the Levite area that just did not exist.But they left Mormons in a bit of a trap because here they had made this scientific claim, this historical claim, and now they have no evidence for it. So they've been gradually. Distancing themselves increasingly from it. and it all started going south in the 1970s because Brigham Young University had spent millions of dollars in Central America trying to dig around in the dirt to find the ruins of the ne fights, which is the main people that are described as the Book of Mormon.And of course, they didn't find anything because there were no fights. And so since that time, the church has been slowly trying to back away from the much more expansive claims that it used to make about the Book of Mormon. And, but on the other hand, if they went all the way, I think they would lose a lot of members.What do you think?CORBDEN: and then there's the DNA evidence. So it, it's very clear. So Book of Warming says that there's the Lamanites and the knee fights and the, they were originally had the same father, that both groups of people split off when the wicked ones were cursed with dark skin because God's.A racist anyway, and that's, that was their story. then that would mean that, the Native Americans should have some sort of like Middle Eastern, Semitic, DNA and they, don't, their DNA is Asian. And so the, and this is one of those areas in BYU where they have to be careful like they're in their archeology departments because they're, it's, just not true.And not to mention deeply and horrifically offensive because it is. Misappropriation [00:42:00] in the worst possible way to look at a group of people and say, we know your ethnic history better than you know it. And we're, saying this to justify our own ethnic history and our own doctrinal position, and we're going to use that to wipe out your culture.So it's pretty awful in, in multiple layers. But yeah, the, DNA evidence, and that happened after I left the church and the, there were two, two men involved in publishing that information. Both, both LDS, one of 'em, Thomas Murphy, I've met him. he's from the Pacific Northwest and he was an anthropology teacher at a little school up north of Seattle, and he published a paper that said.Yeah, the DNA evidence isn't here for the la the Layman Knight speaking, the native arrogance. And then he was about to be excommunicated and he got media attention and they backed off within, Simon Suton published a book, a whole book about it, and he was excommunicated. And so they, they don't want that information out there.And they've tried, oh, it's a, the limited geography theory is oh, all of the Book of Mormon actually just happened in one little tiny place. It wasn't, all of the Americas are not even North America. And that is absolutely in contradiction to what I was raised with. A hundred percent.That is not what I was taught as a child coming up in primaries and, as you pointed out the introduction. So they're trying to walk it back. But really the only factual direction that is actually factual is that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction. And if you want to find, and it has some deeply problematic aspects to it.Not just in its claims that it happened in the Americas, but also just in some of its moral positions on like nephi killing Laben when he didn't have to. A lot of things like that. And if they just came out and said, okay, we're going to correct some of these problematic [00:44:00] things. So this is a new version of the Book of War and it's to be taken figuratively.And there are some good stories in there. Like just we can find all kinds of figurative lessons in the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and like all of these like completely fantastical inventions. It doesn't mean they're not true in the sense that they have moral truths and they have truths about the human condition and they have characters that we can relate to and they can be inspired by.And so that's what the perform is like the community crisis done. But again, they'll lose a lot of members if they do that. so they can't do that.Spiritual polygamy remains an actual practice in today’s MormonismSHEFFIELD: and that's the unfortunate paradox in all of this is that by sweeping the doctrines under the rug, the LDS leaders are keeping the main body of the members away from these destructive and malicious doctrines.But on the other hand, because they're not completely disavowing it, it gives these doctrines a kind of cache in a certain sense that breeds extremism among Mormons because these doctrines, which are ludicrous and harmful, they're granted as deep doctrines, ones that are so true and so serious that only the Lord's elect can possibly know of them.And that's why Mormonism continues to breed these various cult members, one of which was profiled in the, recent miniseries that came out called Under the Banner of Heaven, which was based on a book.CORBDEN: Yeah, I've read both. Yeah. Yeah. and that's, that is a huge, and usually they tend towards polygamy because if you're going to go fundamentalist Mormon, you cannot avoid that.It's still canonized scripture. And the Mormon church tries to present it of, oh, this is actually about eternal marriage. But celestial marriage, [00:46:00] that those words, when Joseph Smith wrote them meant polygamy. It didn't mean that you, yeah, it did mean that you got married in the temple, but it also meant that you got married in the temple with multiple wives, not all at once, necessarily.And the fact that those polygamist ideas are still encoded. I know they've changed some of the temple ceremonies recently because they were still encoded in those, it wasn't like, and thus the Lord is marrying you to multiple women. But that, but the way that, that it was worded, it was. The woman was giving herself to the husband and the husband was just giving himself to God, and it was completely open for that.And the original meaning of a lot of those words were polygamous meanings. But it's still in it in the sense that if currently in LDS policy, if you are a man and you marry a woman in the temple and then something happens, she dies or you get divorced, the man can go on and marry another woman and he is still spiritually sealed to both women.and there were famous Mormon men who this is true of they are spiritually polygamous and, but it doesn't work the other way. The woman, in order to, if she, if her husband dies or his divorce, she has to get special permission from the first presidency to get a temple divorce from him in order to go on and get a temple marriage to another man.So polygamy is saturated throughout modern Mormonism, whether you want it or not. And even mainstream, I had a, Sunday school teacher when I was 14 years old. He was one of the families that everyone looked up to in the ward. He had Utah ancestry, even though this is in Washington state. And he sat there and told this group of teenagers that he personally thought that polygamy was an eternal principle and would be brought back.It is. It is [00:48:00] dripping. Mormonism is dripping with polygamy as much as it tries to distance itself from it. So it's very easy. The number one recruiting ground for these fundamentalist groups is LDS Chapels, and they go in there and they pretend that they're LBS and they're looking for young women to recruit for to wives.They're looking for men to recruit who might eat that, more of those traditionalist thinkers. And it's sometimes you have polygamists who are still attending LDS church and members of the LDS church, but they're also members of this secret polygamist group. So it's, and it's a problem, like I don't got no problem against Look, I'm polyamorous, so I get non-monogamy. I totally do be non, Not in a patriarchal way, not in a way that is unequal towards women and not in a secret way where there's a lot of abuses that occur and not in a way of God is commanding to marry this man. that's, disgusting to me.SHEFFIELD: That's why the term that I use to refer to the position that the LDS Mormons have settled on as this kind of compromise between extremism and reform. I call it neo orthodoxy, and so it's not full orthodoxy or fundamentalism, but it's neo orthodoxy. So it's trying to uncomfortably reconcile science and dogma in a way that really only works for people who were born into it by and large.Essentially after more than 150 years of just flat out denying that the church has a lot of problematic historical aspects and that its early leaders were involved in all kinds of scandalous things, they have decided to address them at least in some way through a series of essays on various controversial topics on their website, but they just don't seem to be very persuasive.So ultimately Neo [00:50:00] Orthodoxy is a very untenable position, I think. What do you think?CORBDEN: Yeah, and even the essays. So even the essays, they're not exactly coming clean. They exist. It's that plausible deniability, right? Where they have it on the website, so they can't, people can't say, oh, you're hiding it from the member.Maybe they can say, no, it's right here. Like here's the link, but. It's not exactly like you have to search for the specific, did Joseph Smith look in a hat when he translated the book of warming? You have to actually be looking for it. Or if you go to the bishop and say, oh, I, I heard about this, it's really troubling to me.Then the bishop will give you the link, right? you ha you have to be someone who has already struggling with that. They're not getting up in general conference and saying, by the way, we have these essays, you should go check them out. Or they're not putting that on the front of their website of saying, here, look at these race in the priesthood.go check out our history. They're not advertising it. And so most mainstream LDS members have no idea those essays even exist. So they, again, it's that maeu control, right? They, want the best of all worlds. To their credit, they've juggled that pretty well for many decades, but they're, it's getting harder for them to do that.And this is maybe where the nationalism comes in. Because if they want to retain control in that Mormon corridor to maintain that maloo control, they're going to need a compound. And when you got people living in suburban Utah, what better compound than all of Utah being a the, so get my conspiracy theory out, but it's not that big of a conspiracy theory.The church already, most judges, police officers, legislators in the state of Utah are LDS. Most are like, no one knows if [00:52:00] the prophet actually gets on the phone with any of these judges or legislators, but at the very least, they're influenced to be. Pro Mormonism. And so anytime it comes down to I was there, I have those biases.If it's a divorce proceeding and, one of 'em still a priesthood leader and the, wife is maybe got some of those stigmas on her for whatever reason that court case is going to go against her and for him, if it's someone getting arrested, And so as we start seeing American fascism creep up, I think that a lot of those people in power in Utah, whether in religious power or in secular power, are looking at that they're rubbing their hands together on Okay, bring it because, and you can see them cooperating with these sorts of things because I think that they foresee a potential theocracy style of theocracy over the state of Utah where they can physically, forcefully control the people who live there.I think that there are people who have their, sights on that and with the justifications being there, preparing the way for Christ.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that is definitely a great point because Utah actually has passed a number of very, anti-free laws among them, forcing various local school districts to ban books from their libraries that, the legislature thinks should not be allowed.Even though they supposedly like the ideal of smaller government and letting localities do what they want, they simply don't. And they've shown that also by trying to ban fluoride and also trying to, force various laws against pornography based on completely made up science which they have imagined for themselves.So yeah, there is this coagulation of right wing extremism within Mormonism.Former Mormons and current progressive Mormons are reconcilingSHEFFIELD: But I think it's also fair to say, and we should talk about it, I think that there has also been a coming together between people who have been more progressive, [00:54:00] Mormons, who still believe in the church, and people who are former Mormons who don't necessarily believe in it, that they have been realizing that maybe they aren't so far apart after all, and that really they might have some things in common despite their religious differences.CORBDEN: Yes, there's been a lot of activism since I left the church, facilitated by the internet. I. Both from ex Mormons and from current Mormons, progressive Mormons to have these certain issues. There's LGBT rights issues. There's gender equality for, or the ordained women movement. There's protect LBS kids, which is about the abusive grooming tactics of interviews of teenage children about sexuality and other sorts of things like that.A lot of the sexual abuse coverups, a lot of, and I could just go on all day with all the activism, whether they're organized groups or whether it's just people writing about things or talking about things or just getting together and, advocating for change within the church. We were raised like, this fires me to this day.This is one of those. Doctrines that like I've examined in myself and have chosen to accept and continue with, is I was raised from my earliest memories. Like I, I am a daughter. I'm now both a daughter and a son of heavenly father. I was brought to this earth in the latter days to fight against the forces of evil.I have to be valiant in order to achieve the highest level of heaven. Now, a lot of these are figurative. I don't believe in heaven or hierarchies or any of that, but like that gives me fire. I, have these both Old Testament and Book of Mormon prophets that were held up all the time as examples. ABAI spoke out against wicked priests and the wicked government and priests who were co coalesced [00:56:00] in and he was burnt at the stake for standing up against religious corruption.And that's in the book of women. And that inspires me to this day. And, that's, and, not only that, but I was taught sp public speaking. I'm an introvert. I have social anxiety, but I was taught how to, overcome that stuff as a three-year-old with a microphone in front of the, congregation in SA fast and testimony meeting, right?We're taught, especially men are taught leadership skills and organizational skills. How do you put together a relief society homemaking meeting and what kind of crafts are we going to do? Like I was raised with that. I had leadership positions as a, teenager, right when I was, IEI president?Something like that. So you have this group of people that when they realize that it's their own church, that's corrupt. We're not talking about those wicked worldly people like it's us. we're the baddies. They get fired up and they have energy and they redirect those energies not to missionary more missionary work and not to more homemaking meetings and not to more ser service projects.It's no, we're going to change the system. And that's what in a lot of these when these indivisible protests are happening, they're happening in Salt Lake City too. And those people are out there with their signs and thousands of people show up to those. And it's, yeah, a force to be reckoned with.And again, I think that's why the fascism crackdown is happening because it's, backlash. It's an extinction burst. Hopefully it's an extinction burst because sometimes extinction burst bursts work to prevent extinction. That's why they happen. But that's where we're at right now. And when you look at prophecy and you still look at separating the wheat from the shaft.That's what I see happening only, I like to think of myself as the weak. And that those [00:58:00] fundamentalist more fascist Mormons, they're the, chaff. They're what? They're, what they're going against the greatest command. They're going against love one another. They're going against all, or like unto God.And to me, that's, what Jesus himself said was the core commandment. And so the d the DEI is, that's what we're fighting for. We're fighting for DEI because equality and inclusion and diversity, that's the planet that God created for us. To me, that's, Zion. That's what we're working for.And yeah, there's a lot of other passionate former Mormons and progressive Mormons who are very on board.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.Perpetual inadequacy and self-worthSHEFFIELD: we're coming up to the end here, so maybe we can wrap on the idea of something that you talk about also in the book, that you talk a bit, you talk at length, a number of, in a number of places, you talk at length in a number of places about the concept of perpetual inadequacy in the book.yes. But you talk about it in the context of not just reclaiming your own agency, your own ability to make choices, but also in reclaiming your selfhood and understanding that is something that is valuable in and of itself. Can you talk about that? Tell us more what you mean by all of that.CORBDEN: Yeah, So in the book, it's that idea, and you see this in abusive relationships. All high demand groups have this, even, in like self-organized anarchist groups, there's this like psychological pressure sometimes for purity, right? Like we're going to reject. Anyone who doesn't fit this exact very narrow list of standards, it's what puts the, high demand in a high demand group.and so it's, that idea is we're going to hold the bar so high up and you don't count as worthy or good enough or allowed to be included unless you can pass that bar. And the bar is always moving up. [01:00:00] So you might get close, you might get to the bar, but all of a sudden it's Lucy. With the football, she's always going to yank that football away.And what it does is it keeps, someone in that cycle of feeling like they're in control of their fate. When they're not really in control of their fate. The person in control of their fate is the person who's setting that bar. And so you are always going to, this, ties in all of these control techniques tie in with each other.And so it's going to pull out blame reversal. You're going to want to blame yourself. It's going to pull out us versus them. they're, suffering because they didn't meet the standards. All of these different cycles that get in into you. And there's actually a number of studies out of Utah Valley University on talks of perfectionism within Mormonism.And it creates this, this is one of the, things that's still very deeply watched in me that I have to fight. I. Constantly is that I'm not good enough, that I'm not trying hard enough that I am, and I, have disabilities now. So this has really come to a head because I can't, I cannot even do what I used to do when I wrote this book.I'm not a, I can't write another book like that right now. I'm just not capable of it anymore. And so proactively coming to understand that, that, first of all, I'm of value just because I exist and because I can sense the world and perceive like I'm the only person in the universe who can perceive the universe the way I do.And that's a value no matter what, even if I'm not telling anyone what I perceive. It's still a value. And so that's the belief that I've adopted to replace that.And that I, borrow a lot from Eastern philosophy because they have a lot of ideas about how never expect any result from your actions that you're doing your action because of the action.And so if it doesn't happen the way I thought it did, or I am not able to do it to the degree [01:02:00] that I wanted to, that just the action itself is of value. And just the doing of it and the being a person while I'm doing those actions is good enough that I don't have to accomplish, constantly accomplish things to feel okay about me.yeah, that's, how I address thatSHEFFIELD: one. Yeah. And that's such an important message because we have to be able to develop meaning within ourselves to understand that the meaning of life is something that is inside of you, not something that someone else provides to you. Yes, exactly. You discover it.Within yourself. Yep. And within the things that you do. And that's the ultimate freedom. And that can be a little scary if you've never known it, but it's worth it.CORBDEN: Yes. It's, yep. Never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it.SHEFFIELD: Ah. And there we go. Looping it around by the quote from Mormonism.Yes. For post Mormonism. I like it.Alright Luna. for people who want to keep up with what you are doing, can you give us some various websites and social media handles that you recommend for everyone to.CORBDEN: All right. My main social media home is Mastodon. I am @corbden@defcon.social.I do have a blog and a website about Recovering Agency, although I haven't updated it in while recoveringagency.com. I would like to get back into blogging, but there's also, there's a lot of my old posts and basic resources there, and those are my two big things right now. So I also have a point you if, obviously if you're listening to this, you like podcasts.So I did a, five part series, like if you're not a reader, as people are, more of an audio processor. I have an audio book by the way, as well as the print books, but also I did a podcast with [01:04:00] John Dehlin on Mormon Stories. It's a five-part series, 15 hours, where I basically cover most of the content that's in my book, but in more of a podcast dialogue sort of setting this.SHEFFIELD: Cool. All right. thanks for being here. It was great to have you.CORBDEN: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that does it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show and you can get unlimited access to the archives if you are a page subscribing member.And for those of you who are already, thank you very much. I really appreciate that. And if you aren't one yet, please do consider doing that. and if you can't afford to do something like that right now, then just give us a written review over on iTunes or on Spotify, something like that. That's much appreciated.It actually helps people find the show. So if you could do that, would be really great. Thank you. I'll see you next [01:06:00] time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryPolitics in the United States and everywhere else has always been about policy—which party wants to do this, which party wants to do that. But in the 21st century, a new dimension has been added: true and false.That reality has become a serious problem for left-of-center political parties, because they have traditionally oriented themselves around an affinity for science and reason.As a result, right-wing parties with policies that are inherently anti-populist—policies that take money from the middle class and the poor and give it to the rich—are nonetheless able to get the votes of many lower- and middle-income people. Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and a host of other right-wing authoritarian leaders are proof that this is indeed the case.We’re going to talk about these questions in today’s episode with Eric Oliver, a political science professor at the University of Chicago. He argues that American politics has become divided along epistemic and psychological grounds between “intuitionists” who think with their guts and “rationalists” who prefer science and logic.Originally the divide between the two epistemologies cut across political partisanship, but since he came along, Trump seems to have attracted the support of former Democratic intuitionists like Robert Kennedy Jr., a trend that Oliver and his co-author Thomas J. Wood all but predicted in their 2018 book, Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics.You can also check out his podcast, 9 Questions, which will soon be distributed additionally via the Flux podcast network.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep going. Please become a paying subscriber and get unlimited access.Related Content—Tulsi Gabbard and the art of ‘post-left’ grifting—Despite its lofty language, Marianne Williamson’s self-help politics leads nowhere—Covid contrarians got much more wrong than public health officials, don’t let them forget it—Originally, staunch libertarians saw themselves as centrists—not any more—Why political extremism often derives from personal insecurity—The Christian right was a theological rebellion against modernity before it was a political force—The forgotten history of how William F. Buckley tried to steal away the John Birch Society’s supportersAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction02:19 — The intuitionist and rationalist spectrum07:04 — Intuitionism was originally cross-ideological, but Trump consolidated it11:47 — Intuitionism in everyday life15:24 — How to measure intuitionism vs. rationalism17:42 — Where Moral Foundations Theory falls short28:21 — How views about everyday scenarios can correlate with political opinions33:40 — Democrats' epistemic disadvantage countering Trumpian intuitionism38:52 — Case study: Lucy's contradictory beliefs43:16 — Conspiracy theories existed long before the internet46:05 — Conservatism vs. reactionism57:03 — Democrats are perceived as the status quo party01:00:44 — How intuitionism fueled conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemicAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: The book here we're talking about today is not a newly released one, but on the other hand, I think that what you guys put into it and your general thesis and research, it really did accurately describe the phenomenon of Trumpism and the enduring popularity of it.J. ERIC OLIVER: This didn't start as a book on Trump. It actually started as a book on conspiracy theories. So, um, a few years earlier I had started doing research on conspiracy theories. I had some room on a survey and I put some items on, 'cause I had a long interest in conspiracy theories and came back with these very large percentages of Americans who were endorsing conspiracy theories.And this is in the early mid two thousands that. These data were coming in. And my co-author, Tom Wood, was a graduate student with me at the time. And I said, wow, we're getting back these crazy numbers. Let's see what's going on here. 'cause is this measurement error or is this really something that's kind of floating beneath the radar, at least a political science. And so we started doing more research into why people believe in conspiracy theories and to the extent that they do. And the two things that kept. Popping up again and again we're kind of what we would call magical thinking, so having a lot of paranormal and supernatural beliefs as being a very big predictor of whether or not people believed in conspiracy theories.So if you believe in UFOs or ESP or even general sense that there is a God who will respond to your prayers, you're far more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than not. Sort of across the board. And what we also found was that people who believed in conspiracy theories were also more likely to believe in a host of other [00:04:00] kinds of things.Like, for example, natural medicines. Homeopathy. Uh, they tended to be more nationalistic in their orientations. They were a lot more populist in their orientations, just generally mistrustful of elites and sort of established groups. They often tended to be wary of foreigners and more xenophobic.And so we saw this kind of interesting constellation that seemed to defy normal ideology and it didn't necessarily align with race or even partisanship yet. It was this factor that really explained a lot of how people are understanding the world. And so we're in the process of doing all this research, this is 20 14, 20 15. We're fielding survey after survey to kind of generate all these data and who appears on the political horizon, but Donald Trump and he is emblematic of a lot of the things that we're studying.And what we, we came to realize was that with the popularity of Trump and this welling ground swell, um, around him in 2015, that American politics weren't simply divided by ideology or partisanship or race, but there was another dimension.And we ended up labeling this dimension kind of intuitionism. And most people are in the middle on this, but you can imagine the intuitionism dimension is anchored on two poles. On one side are people we call rationalist, and those are people who are products of the enlightenment. They believe in science, reason, logical deduction, empirical fact. And on the other end of this spectrum are people we call intuitionists and they believe in gut feelings, um, their own kinds of just intuitions about things. How they're very susceptible to feeling as a guide to understanding the world as opposed to say, for example, maybe thinking. Um, and they place a lot of weights and [00:06:00] then, inferential weight on their own feelings.And so what we found out and what we were, we were, we were speculating about was that this dimension can divide and kind of describe the American population and how far you are on one end of the other of the spectrum. We'll say a lot about your political beliefs, especially your willingness to subscribe to conspiracy theories to, and, you know, believe in homeopathic medicine to be hostile to vaccines, uh, to be more populist in your political orientations. And so we were devising scales to test this out, and when Trump entered the election, we started doing polls around, around testing these measures during the campaign. And sure enough, like his supporters scored really, really high on our measures of intuition. And so, uh, we ended up writing this book called Enchanted America, and it's really trying to describe what we think is this other dimension that organizes political thinking in the United States.Intuitionism was originally cross-ideological, but Trump consolidated itSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's, I mean, fundamentally the division is epistemic rather than ideological. And I think the intervening years since you, you two published the book, only made the thesis even more, visibly accurate. Especially I think with the, the migration of Robert Kennedy Junior into the Trump coalition.I mean, that was almost, you know, you, you guys basically kind of methodologically predicted that that would happen in, in your research and in the findings that you.OLIVER: Yeah. You know, the, the thing that really struck us about this was that you know, at the time in particular, intuition is cut across ideology and party. And I had a sabbatical year, uh, back in Berkeley where I had done my PhD and I was surrounded by a lot of very, very liberal people who are very strong [00:08:00] Intuitionist, for example.And you could see this a lot in sort of their opposition to vaccines and traditional medicine. And the idea of really, and, you know, their, their apprehensions about corporate power their fetishizing this idea of something as being natural. And the interesting thing is they have that a lot in common with if you, when I would go to Texas to visit my family a number of whom are evangelical Christians, and they share a lot of the same beliefs. And you know, really, and that was kind of surprising to me. It's like, oh, okay. The Berkeley hippies and the Evangelical Texans have some strong commonalities here, and particularly around questions of, of health, of seeming, naturalism and a real susceptibility to conspiracy theories too.And, and these people were really what we would call kinda strong intuitionist. And so when I was thinking about sort of the political scene, it was inevitable to me that Donald Trump would probably draw into his orbit, not just people who believed in conspiracy theories, but probably a lot of people on the left who. Share this kind of strong intuitionist proclivity. And it's not that surprising to me, for example, that a lot of people who were formally, enchanted by Bernie Sanders when he didn't get the nomination, then switched over to Trump. Because Bernie tapped into a lot of those types of things that Trump, uh, those sentiments.There's some big differences between Bernie supporters and Trump supporters, by and large, but at least in some dimensions, especially this sort of political populism that is often embodied in intuition is uh, there, there was a strong commonality there. I,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. well, and yeah, and, and you guys did find that the Bernie Sanders supporters that you had surveyed did have a strong support for science. And if I remember right, they were the, the most strong supporters of science. Wasn't that right?OLIVER: well, I think, I think this is what, what's what separates a populist from a socialist and you, you can imagine that. [00:10:00] Populism is, the way we define it really aligns on three dimensions. There's kind of what we would call political populism, which is, uh, real mistrust of political elites and people in political power. There's what we would call, there's a cultural populism, which is mistrust of dominant cultural institutions and apprehensions about dominant cultural institutions. So, fear of Hollywood fear, fear of the media these types of things, um, medicine in that regard. And then there is strong nationalism. That's a big element within populism. And the interesting thing is, bernie supporters and Trump supporters both had very, very strong political populism scales, but where the Bernie supporters broke away from the Trump supporters was on the cultural populism. And, you know, particularly their embrace of science, and they're not nationalists, socialists don't tend to be nationalists.They tend to be more internationalist in orientation, whereas populist, um, tended to be much more, much, much more strongly kind of nationalist in their orientations there.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. And, and it's also, and, and you do, you guys do talk about in the book that it, it, there's also more of a fearful orientation. and as an example would be somebody like Joe Rogan, who is, seen, he is constantly talking about various things, and he's afraid of, even though he has the image of being a tough, macho guy, he's constantly afraid of in his food.Or, things that, uh, he think can, can hurt him in, you know, in the air or, you know, fluoride or things. These are all things that, that you, that have a, sort of intuitive fear of things he doesn't understand.OLIVER: Yeah.Intuitionism in everyday lifeOLIVER: And, and maybe this is a good opportunity for me to describe what I mean by intuition is here, because it's, that's since this is sort of the central focal point, because what we were trying to do is try to figure out what what was underlying all of this, these [00:12:00] beliefs, why were the same people who believe in conspiracy theories also tending to be more populist or, um, more afraid of vaccines and all of these things.And, and so with this, this idea of intuition is based on kinda a long anthropological literature on magical thinking. And within this are sort of two key elements. When people draw on their intuitions to make inferences about the world, there are two key components that are gonna influence the way that epistemology works.And so one of them is gonna be their emotions. And so they're gonna utilize their beliefs to both manage their emotions. So if they are feeling fearful and they're feeling anxious, they're gonna look to those beliefs that will help kind of quell that anxiety, but they're also drawing on those emotions to inform their beliefs.And in the book I describe a story when my son was little and he was awoken in the middle of the night with, terror about, you know, monsters in the closet. And we went back and forth and back and forth, and finally he said, well, dad, you know, if there are no monsters in the closet, then why am I afraid I. And that's really a strong intuitionist proclivity. Children are big intuitionist thinkers. They don't really, they haven't been trained in rational thinking yet. So if you wanna really know how intuition is works, look at your kids. And their kids really draw on their emotions as informative of their realities.And someone like Joe Rogan does too. I think he's a guy who lives in a lot of fear. And, you know, both in terms of then his ideology, but you know, also his like performative masculinity. This need to like bulk himself up and, you know, and assume this like, like that he needs to be capable in some case because there's some threat that's imminent that's about to face him. The other thing to know about our intuitions is that they have a grammar that organizes them. So if you look at why certain kinds of magical beliefs hold the forms that they do it's because they reflect what are in our sort of innate judgment routines and psychologists have a word for this called heuristics and heuristics [00:14:00] are these kind of information shortcuts that we use to make quick decisions about the world.And so I'll give an example of this, like, I am in the wine store. There are lots and lots of wines to buy. I don't know which one is a good one. I'll typically just buy a wine from what is the emptiest rack because. That seems like, oh, a lot of other people are buying the wine. It must be a good wine. I assume that they know something. I don't. I'll buy it. That's the ex, that's an example of a heuristic. We have a lot of natural heuristics that shape our psychology. So for example, we have a heuristic around contagion. We are extremely, extremely sensitive to any kind of cues of contagion. And you can see this a lot in political rhetoric where, you know, you can say aliens are invading our borders and despoiling our lands.And that really taps into that kind of political taps into this, this heuristic of. Anything that's contagious is like a cootie. Oh, is yucky. Has to be kind of avoided. We also have, uh, what psychologists call a representativeness heuristic. So we think that things that look like one thing have the same qualities of the thing that they look like. So you can give someone an ambiguous symbol, and if it looks more like a spider, if it's spidery shaped, people will think it's a lot more dangerous than if it's like coconuty shaped. And so what we did was there are these emotions and there are these heuristics that tend to sort of, drive intuitionist thinking.How to measure intuitionism vs. rationalismOLIVER: And we were like, well, can we measure a proclivity toward intuition? Is that doesn't rely on existing existing beliefs in and of themselves. And so we came up with some scales that tried to capture this and I'll, I'll, I'll share some of them because they ended up being pretty colorful. Like we asked people for example, would you rather, um. Stick your hand in a bowl of cockroaches or stab a photograph of your family five times with a sharp knife. Or would you, um, rather yell out loud, I hope I die tomorrow, or read, or, [00:16:00] or travel in a speeding car without a seatbelt. And what we were doing with these measures was trying to give people a trade off between something that had a, a tangible cost.Like, you know, sticking your hand in the bowl of cockroaches, or the physical danger of riding without a seatbelt versus something that had a symbolic cost, um, which is like stabbing the photograph or yelling a curse, something like that. And what we think is that, you know, intuitionists are much, much more sensitive to these symbolic costs because of their emotional toll.So, you know, stabbing a photograph of your family, you know, it's just a piece of paper. But in, for a lot of people that feels like they're harming someone by doing that. Um, and, and Intuitionist, really fall into that. We also tried to measure people's, you know, sense of anxiety that they carry, carry around.Like, um, did they believe that a terrorist attack was imminent or that recession was imminent or war was imminent? And so we had sort of this kind of pessimism scale around that. And so we, we put these things together into what we, uh, described as an intuition scale, and it ended up being a very, very strong predictor of people's belief in conspiracy theories, their populist orientations their belief in natural remedies their opposition to vaccines, the whole really, the whole constellation of things that we were seeing in our survey data.And there was this underlying dimension that really seemed to capture them all. And so we, we came away thinking, oh, this, I think we've, we've got something here. This is actually something that's, we can find in surveys again and again and again. Um, and seems to be pretty evident in the population. And then I have to say the. Politics of the past 10 years have just really validated what we found, kind of, in 20 15, 20 16 in our surveys.Where Moral Foundations Theory falls shortSHEFFIELD: One of the things that I was struck with when I was reading the book is that there are a lot of concepts that you talk about in terms of, intellectual and psychological development in terms of intuitionism and rationalism that parallel, uh, a lot of the research and developmental psychology.But [00:18:00] there also are, I mean, fundamentally this is a moral dimension in a lot of ways, not just cognitive or epistemic. And so there's some, you know, there's some overlap not just with, uh, the, the developmental stuff, but also with research by people like Jonathan Height and, uh, other of some of his collaborators.OLIVER: Yeah, I, it's funny 'cause Tom Wood, my co-author and I wrote a paper that was critiquing, uh, John Height's work on kind of moral foundations. And just to reiterate I. I before his most recent set of set of books kind of around the anxious generation and the coddle generation and all this sort of stuff, had had a very popular idea that, you know, liberals and conservatives were di divided by these kind of strong, what he said, moral foundations, which were these innate proclivities around concerns of, you know, liberals tend to really be oriented around concerns of fairness and caring. And conservatives were really oriented around, you know, concerns of, of purity and authority andthese types of things. And,SHEFFIELD: Yeah.OLIVER: Our, our problem with, with that formulation, at least in the way that he was measuring it, was that once you took into account people's religious beliefs, those differences vanished.That what he was prescribing as something that was innate, as an innate difference between liberals and conservatives was really just a function of their religious beliefs as far as his measures, measures go. But I think I. And in engaging with, with Jonathan Height's work on that. Which was very stimulating for us.It helped us kind of reframe our own understanding about what we think intuitions are, which is intuitions being drawn from emotional proclivities and the reliance on these heuristics, these kind of inborn heuristics. And so once again, like, you know, children tend to be very, very intuitionist in their thinking.They tend to, like, for example, anthropomorphize their stuffed animals or, you know, make believe that there are these hidden forces that are out there. Understanding the world. I mean, children are just natural conspiracy theorists. We can, we can think of that way. And then, you know, what happens to greater or lesser extents that as we get educated, we move out [00:20:00] of that epistemology and we, we learn alternative ways or we don't learn alternative ways of understanding the world. And so I. I, I think that's a probably, it's, that's that kind of way of describing it is much more in line with what the psychological literature would suggest as opposed to suggesting that there are these kind of innate moral proclivities that we have that differentiate that, that can now explain the sort of our ideological differences.The, the fact of the matter is, you know, most people are very concerned with fairness. And most people are actually very concerned with purity too. ThatSHEFFIELD: express it in differentOLIVER: they just express it in different ways and understand it in different ways. And that, and that's and, and so that in of itself is not necessarily gonna be predictive of, I think, ideologies.And I think the other thing to, to important to remember here that ideologies are social constructs. They're basically, they're groups of, thinkers and intellectuals who are trying to amass political power by building political coalitions. And the way they do that is sort of say, okay, you know, like, say, take for example the right, right now, and I could do the same thing with the left. Why is a political movement that's so preoccupied with the sanctity of life and preserving life, tolerant of having weapons of mass destruction, IE you know, semi-automatic weapons or automatic weapons in this populace. And the, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that this is a way of bridging this coalition of, gun enthusiasts and, evangelical Christians.And there's overlaps between those groups. But those, you, you would think that those are inconsistent, beliefs and in some kind of rational way they are. But you know, you could put them together and, and, you know, build an ideology around that. And you could say that, find the same thing on the left too.Uh, there, there are a lot of seeming contradictions in, in liberalism or the sort of liberal, what we call liberal ideology in the United States as well. And it's just a faction of a function of, of you, you try to build [00:22:00] together a political coalition and then you try to give some archy overarching belief system to it.But, oftentimes it's pretty flimsy, uh, in its orientation.SHEFFIELD: yeah, I think that's right. And, and the other thing about the moral Foundation's theory of, of height is that, three of his, his axes are basically the same thing. And he's, and, and so in other words, the, the three additional axes are, loyalty, betrayal, authority, subversion, sanity sanctity degradation.But those are all the same thing,OLIVER: Right.SHEFFIELD: It's all expressions of, of, of ingroup loyalty. And whether you view, uh, certain things as a, of a violation or unnaturalOLIVER: Well, andand the.SHEFFIELD: the categories aren't, oh, I'm sorry. And, but, and the categories themselves are, are, there's no basis in the empirical research that these things exist.That, and as you said, that, they're, they're just kind of arbitrary, frankly, that they're, they're looking at epistemic outputs and presuming that they are inputs, I think.OLIVER: Well there, there are also a lot of code words that they use in their survey measures that I think tap into. Um, you know, you might say all these epistemic proclivities, particularly amongst like orthodox or evangelical Christians, um, to, to, oh, these are, keywords for them. 'cause this, this is something that's within the rhetoric of their belief systems.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I, yeah, that's a great point because, you know, just going back to what you were saying about like with sacredness, that if the surveys that they had constructed, used language that was meant to evoke sacredness of things that people on the left view is sacred. So like, racial equality or something, you know, or, or, um, ju just gen, you know, general things like that or, or like like that is in the survey.And then there's also not even an access about, I. which is, like, I mean, you look [00:24:00] at, uh, whether it's conventional liberalism of the Adam Smith variety or, the various 19th century people or even Karl Marx, I mean, left centered ideologies claim to be centered. Uh, and that, you know, even going so far as Marx, you know, to have the scientific socialism.And so a fundamental value of a left centered, uh, you know, of, of, of a left epistemology or political ideology. And it's not even there,OLIVER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: within, the moral foundations, which is just, it's, it's, it's so contradictory. I feel like.OLIVER: yeah, yeah. But I, you know, I, I think people are talking, you know, these, these, kinds of frameworks. Come Inish waves. And I think that's gotten a lot of attention. I I haven't seen a lot of research that has gone forward with this. It, it seems to, I mean, Heidi is himself has moved on. He's now, you know, writing bestsellers, soSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. On other subjects. Yeah. and,OLIVER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: and, and, that's a good point because and I think perhaps one of the reasons for that is that people actually did to apply these concepts. So was, uh, some anti-Trump, uh, groups that were very well funded, created a series of ads trying to criticize Donald Trump as violating of these so-called binding moral values.And none of the ads worked.OLIVER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: which suggests that there is something that is much deeper than allegedly foundational beliefs.OLIVER: Yeah. 'SHEFFIELD: cause literally it's never worked that just simply. Uh, you know, trying to reframe I ideas that are, are, are opposed by Trump supporters in language that they allegedly believe in.doesn't work. And so what that means is that we have that there is more of a, that, that is more of an epistemic endeavor rather than an ideological or even a [00:26:00] value-based endeavor.OLIVER: Yeah. And, and I think the other thing that's important to notice about this is that you know, our, our political beliefs are pretty core for people. And one of the things that, uh, came out within political science by, uh, a political scientist at Pen named Michelle Margolis, who wrote a really great book a few years ago, uh, from Politics to the Pews is what's called, and what she basically found was that people are much more likely to switch their church than their political party. So if I, if I have a set of political beliefs and I go to church and I don't like what the minister is saying, I'll find a different church. And it, it's much more likely to happen that way than the other way around. And so, you know, the ability to sort of, um, people's political opinions tend to be kind of, you know, resistant to a lot of, kind of counter programming, so to speak. And I, I, I, I want, I suspect that might've been the, the fault or the value of some of these anti-Trump ads is not sort of recognizing what was really going on in terms of, like why, like, for example, you know, like this is one of the things we bring up in the book. Like why is it that there are these evangelical Christians who are so enthusiastic about a political figure who himself seems to adhere to none of their beliefs? In terms of just, one of the least Christian kinds of people you can imagine in terms of his, you know, there's no modesty, there's no charity. Um, there's just,SHEFFIELD: explicitly says he doesn't He doesn't, he doesn't know any of the scriptures. Obviously. HeOLIVER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: Corinthians soOLIVER: yeah, yeah, yeah.SHEFFIELD: doesn't know the Bible at all.OLIVER: Right, right. And, you know, and that, that was, you know, to me, like one of the great sort of mysteries. And I, I think what it, what it speaks to is the fact that he is actually speaking in a language that they understand and it's, you know, it's a language of dichotomies, of right and wrong, of good and evil, [00:28:00] of, imminent apocalypse. Yeah.Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, imminent rapture. Only in in him, in this case, he's the savior. And, and he puts himself in that role. And, you know, his, his ability to sort of, and I think it comes from, 50 years of relentless self-promotion in some ways and learning what works and what doesn't work.You know, particularly for certain groups of people.How views about everyday scenarios can correlate with political opinionsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think it might be a little counterintuitive still though, for people to think that how can there possibly be, I. A correlation of somebody not wanting to stab a photo of their family or to say, I hope I die tomorrow with their political viewpoint.So let, let's delve into that a little bit deeper if we could.OLIVER: Sure. So I think this comes up a lot when I, when I give talks on the, on the book. And if you look at most of human, uh, American history, I would say that I. This kind of intuition is, would be orthogonal to traditional ideology. And so far as you would have a lot of people who would describe themselves as conservative or as liberal who were a rationalist.And you would have the same numbers who would describe themselves as intuitionists. And so I think if you, even if you go back to like the 1960s, 1970s, uh, you'd find plenty of intuitionists on the left. And, you know, conservatives at that time often prided themselves on their rationalism too. I mean, you can look at the history of conservatism and say there was, you know, this John Bertan, John Burch society, kind of, barry Gold, watery kind ofintuitionist constituency but, mainstream conservatism at least up and through the nineties and two thousands, probably culminating in George W. Bush, was definitely a, you know, a rationalist movement and prided itself on its rationalism compared to those, weak carded liberals, you know, who are always doing things e emotionally speaking.And what's interesting is how that's shifted particularly in the past 10 years. And so, for example, uh, here in IDE Park, which [00:30:00] is a pretty liberal neighborhood where I live, you can walk around and you can see these signs that liberals put up in their yards. And it's this laundry list of things that liberals believe in.Like, we believe that science is real, that, you know, uh, all people deserve love that, you know, it's a, it's a laundry list of this very rationalist way of. Ordering their, their political ideology. And then you can go to areas where, people put up Trump signs and they tend to be very symbolic and they tend to be very fraught.And to me what's interesting is how, what was a dimension that I think in some ways. Was not peripheral to American politics, but not necessarily a, a major explanatory of American politics has become more predominant and this, this, and that's because conservatism has tilted much, much more towards an intuitionist bent the way conservative ideology is understood.So if you go to like, say for example, cpac the convention of conservatives, um, you'll see a lot more kind of populist intuitionist kind of language and rhetoric than you would've say 10 years ago. Or 15 years ago. And conversely, liberalism has become much, much more oriented around scientific elites.And if you think that, think about the main targets of the Trump administration right now. It tends to be, uh, media. It tends to be, you know, law firms. It tends to be scientists, it tends to be universities people who are highly educated and tend to be tilting much, much more towards the rationalist side of this dimension. And the Democratic party has, I, I think in a, in a lot, in a lot of sense, its leadership is very, very rational, rationalist in its orientation and to some extent at its own failing because its inability to communicate with a lot of ordinary voters comes from the fact that its leadership is so rationalist in their orient, in their understanding of the world.And so that is, to me is a. As a political scientist and, and, and a [00:32:00] rationalist admitted, admittedly, I'm a pretty strong rationalist, but I, I actually think of democracy as a pretty rationalist enterprise. And what's alarming to me is when intuition is, captures a dominant political party and a dominant political leadership.And you can see this around the world, it's democratic institutions that typically suffer. So the rise of populists, you know, this could be an Ugo Chavez on the left, or an Adolf Hitler on the right. These are people who are not very patient with political, I mean, democratic political procedures, and they typically tend, tend to squash democracy around that.And it's important, uh, I think to me that one of the most troubling things about the evolution of conservatism as, as it becomes increasingly dominated by this intuitionist rhetoric, is not so much that rationalist conservatives are now in the wilderness, uh, which I think they are right now. You know, these folks who are like in the bulwark. For example, our, uh, Charlie Sykes you know, who have taken a strong stance, you know, as principles, conservatives against Donald Trump, and, and they're in the wilderness right now. They're, they're, they're really marginalized within both the Republican party and sort of conservative circles. And, these are people who are important elements when within democracy. I think democracy, you know, really needs strong, rational elements in its major political parties. And when we move away from that, we, we are, we are seeing the example of that, I think with the current Trump administration in terms of the nature of the appointees, the types of policy initiatives they're pursuing that tend to be not very well thought out, that tend to be very reflexive. and that's, I think what in some ways to what we're seeing is the crystallization of this kind of intuition is now within the halls of power.Democrats' epistemic disadvantage countering Trumpian intuitionismSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. And and I would agree with you that the, the, the parties seem to have, have epistemically sorted themselves. And this has been a challenge for not just the Democrats either, but just the broader left in [00:34:00] general, is that it is now so much more rationalist oriented, there is kind of this just default to think that everything is about economics and that and so what, when, when, when you guys come along and say, well, no, people are choosing not just based on that they're based, they're choosing based on how they think.That, that's Uh, paradoxically is not something that a lot of people, brought up in conventional left paradigms, which are economically centric. They can't, they seem to have great difficulty grasping what you guys are talking about, even subsequently, despite the fact that, uh, you know, Trump is, I mean, uh, going out there and, saying Harvard University can't admit international students or saying that you can't say certain words in your, in your scientific research even, and basic ones like woman, you can't even say the word woman.OLIVER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: Um, and or banning books, you know, or censoring authors. It's, so here, you know, here you have very clear totalitarian censorship. Um, but there's still kind of this lingering impulse for people to think, well, we, if we just talk more about economics, that's all we have to do.OLIVER: Yeah, I, and I, I think there's some important things to, to keep in mind. So if you think about, kind of the dominant anchor groups in the Democratic party, um, there's still unions that are important and African Americans. And the interesting thing is in our measures, African Americans are much higher in their intuition scales than say whites are.And I've, I've always thought that, um, or I should say that, you know, Trump's gains with black voters and Latino voters were not that surprising to me in so far as. He speaks a language that resonates with them. And one thing you can say about Trump for his his political skill is talking in the language of an [00:36:00] intuitionist.And, and it, 'cause it's heartfelt. I think he's a, he's a strong, strong intuitionist himself. I mean, and he has all the, the symptoms of it. You know, he is terrified of germs, he's terrified of, of poisons. He's incredibly ethnocentric. And, you know, I think he would've made much, much bigger inroads into sort of the Democratic coalition had he not been so racist.But it's, it's, he kind of stumbles on his own racism as far as his ability to, I think draw more black and Latino voters kind of into his coalition. Um, but he's so captured by kind of the white. Intuitionist base that itself has deep deep racial apprehensions, especially white evangelicals.That he, he's a little hemmed in politically. But the Democrats had, you know, had Trump been more artful or more skillful in his intuition is I think he could have made much, much bigger inroads into the Democratic coalition.The flip side of it is that the Democratic leadership, by and large is not, is, is a, is a very rationalist oriented group.And when they approach voters, they say they, they're trying to approach voters. Having that kind of conversation that you and I are right now big ideas, fancy words, logical deductions, and, you know, that just doesn't coincide with how the majority of Americans who frankly don't pay a lot of attention to politics don't wanna pay a lot of attention to it. Um, I. In the, in the sense of not wanting to have a lot of information, they just wanna go what their gut is telling them. They need things that sort of cue in to their own emotional proclivities.And, you know, I think effective leaders are, uh, democratic politicians are able to, to speak to that and find those ways.But too many of and I've, I've addressed a lot of democratic politicians and I try to, you know, explain this research to them and then say, uh, you know, approaching the Americans and talking about policy prescriptions and the way that you're doing is gonna tune people out. That's not what mobilizes, people outside of a very small segment [00:38:00] of the electorate. And, um, there's gotta be different ways of communicating and, and you know, and acknowledging that people actually have fears and that their fears are valid and that their fears drive. How they understand the world. I mean, this is another thing that Trump did to great effect, which is, his constant negativity about how the US is falling apart and how we are surrounded by enemies and both, you know, internal and external.And they're all out to get us, and they're all out to get us. And, you know, he, he amps up that anxiety that people have. And then when people are in that greater anxious state, they're much more likely to look for salvation. And I don't use that term lightly, but, you know, some sort of sense of relief from their own anxiety through a conspiracy or through some sort of very intuitionist oriented narrative about how politics goes forward.Case study: Lucy's contradictory beliefsSHEFFIELD: Uh, yeah. and, uh, you, you talk about a particular person that you had surveyed, um, in the introduction to the book. Or I guess early on in the book this woman named Lucy, who had a very. Kind of a contradictory set of beliefs. Can you, uh, tell the audience about that?OLIVER: Yeah, I, I, we, we tried to have a few illustrations in the book of people who we thought were emblematic of this and, and at one level, Lucy seems like a, kind of like, similar to what I would describe earlier, like an organic kind of California hippie in terms of prioritizing natural foods and herbal remedies and health supplements and homeschooling her kids and really just being, you know, of the earth.But she's also a very strident, evangelical Christian. And you know, believes that the end times are upon us and that, God's wrath is imminent and has a lot of apocalyptic visions [00:40:00] of the world. And when we were speaking to her and trying to talk through some of these and try to make sense of her orientation you know, we, we would talk about basic policy issues with her.Like, so, you know, she's somebody who on at one level seems very liberal. She's very concerned with, social equality and seeing people not suffer and preserving healthcare for the poor. Um, and I think that reflects her honest Christian beliefs. And yet she would support Republican politicians who wanna, cut all those programs.And you know, we would try to go back and forth and she'd always have some sort of rationale and say, well. Those democrats, they're just out for that particular group. You know, they, she would kind of echo a lot of, I think, what she consumed from Fox News and her rhetoric. And it finally, we, we'd go back and forth and back and forth, and then she just sort of stopped us and she said, you know, the, the difference between you and me is that you believe in reason and I believe in the Bible. And I, I thought that was a very prescient thing for her to observe, which is she just, she wasn't interested in having rational consistency. Uh, the, the thing that we know I would pride myself in as a, as a professor, a so social scientist that just, those criteria meant very little to her, you know, and what she, what meant to her is this sort of what was important to her was just this, I, you know, kind of a more mythic, uh, worldview, uh, kind of situated around a set of stories that she was interpreting. I, I, in a very particular kind of way, in, in a way that sort of, I think, satisfies her own emotional needs. And she was pretty upfront with that and saying that, you know, I, I I don't really have much need for your science. I, I've got my myth.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, I thought it was very revealing comment, but it, and it, it matches. The epistemology that I have seen in evidence and, in my former life as a fundamentalist Mormon, but also, you know, in as a Republican activist that I would, I, I I I used [00:42:00] to sometimes do training speeches and lectures, classes, et cetera, and various groups.And it was very interesting. I, it was, it was very bizarre to me at the time because after I had finished the lecture I would open it up for questions from the audience. And very, very often first question that I got was, well, why aren't you telling us what you believe about the world?aren't you telling us in your speech about how to make a website? Why aren't you starting with, here's what I believe. And my response was always, well, because I'm not here to tell you what I believe. I'm here to tell you how to have a nice website and what you can do to get people to read it. and, you know, and, and, and one person responded back to me, he said, well, I'm not sure that I can trust you if I don't know where you stand.OLIVER: Yeah, I, I mean that's, I think in our increasing digital age, that's becoming, that's becoming more and more common. And so something that comes up a lot when I'm giving talks on this and people ask, are conspiracies now more common than they were? I. A hundred years ago or 50 years ago or something like that. And I know the answer I don't think is yes, I think the answer is no.Conspiracy theories existed long before the internetOLIVER: I think if you look in American history, there's a long, long, rich history of conspiracies. You can, for example, the during the revolutionary period where we have all of these old newspapers and they're rife with conspiracy theories about, king George and loyalists and all of this stuff, and this continues.We, we even had, you know, the anti mason party, we had a political party that was kind of based in the early 19th century on. Conspiracy theory about masons and, you know, fear of masons. Uh, so there's a rich history of this in the United States, and it and it kind of goes in line with the United States as also a country where you have these periods of evangelical fervor, you know, these, these [00:44:00] great awakenings that come up that throughout our history where, um, not only do, uh, compared to our European counterparts, we're far more religious in our orientation and far more kind of orthodox and seeking orthodoxy in our orientation.So there's these, these currents have always gone through American society, excuse me.But what changes is the media environment and I think they, they sort of arise when media, new kinds of media come, come in. So you can see this with, the rise of the penny press. You can see this with the rise of radio which is sort of widely disseminated.And then it tends to get kind of consolidated and then you have. Organizations that curate kind of information and, but what we've seen in the past 20 years is this explosion of information. And there's, the sources of curation are now things like, Facebook or Twitter are now XI guess it's called, and their curatorial inclinations are unclear.And we're seeing far less kind of content curation than what we've seen before. And what this allowed for is what were typically transgressive kinds of beliefs have become a lot more visible. So, uh, and Alex Jones now has a far greater vi visibility than he would've had or been allowed to, been, you know, capable of having say, 30 or 40 years ago.'cause there just wasn't the means for it. And you know, one of the interesting stories about this is like William F. Buckley, when he was founding National Review and sort of laying the foundations of modern conservatism. It went to great links to kind of keep the John Birchers, on the margins.And really, really stifled those elements within conservatism that, you know, have now I think come to grip the party to grip the movement.SHEFFIELD: yeah, well, I, I would disagree with you on Buckley in that regard, but I would say there were other Republicans who did that, like, uh, George HW Bush or, uh, Jim Bak. [00:46:00] But, uh, I, I have a separate episode about Buckley actually,OLIVER: Oh, really?SHEFFIELD: that I'll, uh, I can send you and I'll put it in our show notes.OLIVER: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: that as well.Conservatism vs. reactionismSHEFFIELD: Um, but yeah, I mean, generally I, I agree with that and, and that is why I do think it is important for people in the center to left to distinguish between conservatism and reaction is because conservatism is a, is a political philosophy that believes in extrinsic exchange so that they have to modify their beliefs to fit with reality.Whereas reaction says, no. Reality is wrong and we're going to attack it. And that's, I think, is the difference between the second Trump term and the first Trump term is that first Trump term had a lot of, conservatives who were out there constraining his iil and his extremism. I mean, you know, his like, and, and, and there was always this constant refrain from a lot of people who were more conservative Republicans back in those times.Like there would be anonymous reports from the, you know, in the New York Times or somewhere that said. Donald Trump says he wants to buy Greenland. And, uh, the Trump communications people in that first administration would say, that's a lie. We're not doing that. That's, that's liberal bias to say that he's gonna, that he wants, that when in fact, of course, it was the truth.And that they were lying to themselves and lying to the public, uh, or at the very least, you know, lying, yeah. Lying to the public who knows about lying to themselves. is who he always was. I think a, a lot of people who have more conservative beliefs, they want to believe that the reactionaries are not in control of the Republican Party.But the reality shows that that is obviously the case. I mean, you got somebody like Russ Vote, the OMB director saying that America has a duty to obey God. [00:48:00] That's who's in charge of the budget of the UnitedOLIVER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: America. And you're, and you're saying that the Democratic party is more extreme than the Republican party,OLIVER: Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: But you know, there's this fiction that I think a lot of conservative people have sold themselves, uh, about Trump and about the people who actually run the Republican party.OLIVER: well, in, in, in some ways it, it, we talk about polarization in this country and, you know, the sort of strong, larger gulf between liberals and conservatives than there used to be, and especially between Democrats and Republicans than there used to be. But there's also a wider gulf in this epistemology in so far as if you went back and look at surveys from the 1960s, 98% of Americans believe in God. Uh, it just, atheism was just one of the strangest things you could be. In fact, it was, we have surveys from this time and where people are, one of the, the groups that they're most tolerant of is atheists. Now within that there was, you know, big diversity of beliefs about what God was. But there was a general sense of, you know, like everybody went to church and everybody believed in God and nothing was open on Sunday.And, it was, we, we were, there was a greater kind of consensus as that's changed a lot with, I would say, you know, about a third of Americans now, uh, they won't call themselves atheists, but they, you know, will not subscribe to any kind of particular religious belief. And you, you've got kind of a third on that, that end.And then you've got, you know, about, probably around a third who, you know, would describe themselves as conservative, Orthodox or evangelical and their appreciation. And with that comes, you know, a set of beliefs which are really, as you would say, reactionary or, really magical in terms of the belief that the Bible is the inherent word of God.That in times or upon us. And so this, this is one thing I, I like to point out in my surveys is like. Typically around 30% of our survey respondents say that they really believe the, that the end times are upon us. That, you know, we're, we're, we're about to, to see the, you [00:50:00] know, the return of Jesus Christ.And the, you know, there's a certain narcissism to this, and this is what's I think important to, to highlight about intuition, is that there's a certain kind of infantile narcissism because it's a, it, it, it's based on the idea. Like if I'm feeling it, it must be true. And, you know, unquestioned, you know, itgoes back to like my son when he was a kid, like, you know, if he's afraid there's gotta be monsters in the closet.That's, that's sort of what drives reality is one's own internal experience. And and, you know, wow, we have those people, like you said, who are now in the upper echelons of power and our government and are using that.So, you know, taking the example of Carolyn Levitt you know, the Press Secretary of the White House, like she does a prayer session before she goes out, uh, and says, you know, dear God, Jesus, help me, you know, show the truth to the American people. And then, you know, of course she goes out and, you know, tries to, paper over all the, excesses of the, of the administration.SHEFFIELD: and lie,OLIVER: Yeah. And there's lot, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Jesus, please help me lie.OLIVER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: essentially what these are. But you know what? That actually, actually, she's a great example though because, the press secretary, the final press secretary for Donald Trump, Kaley McEnany also had this similarly narcissistic and delusional religious worldview because she actually wrote an article saying that she believed that you know, she was that, that liberals were, were going to.Kill her. Almost like she had a fear of liberals killing her for being a Christian. And that she was going to stand because, and so there's this whole myth out of the Columbine, killing that there was this one girl who was shot. Um, and, and that she was supposedly asked, and this never happened by the way, but they all think it did.There that, uh, that she was, she was asked before she was shot,OLIVER: Just like.SHEFFIELD: a Christian? And she said, yes, and then she was killed. And so like there is this, [00:52:00] this huge martyrdom fetish with a lot of these reactionary evangelicals and I, and I think you're right to say that it is a, narcissistic impulse.OLIVER: Yeah, I mean, and just, you know, watch 10 Minutes of Fox News and you'll see that too, like, you know, we are victimized by those evil forces. It's a very mannequin worldview, uh, which is, understanding the world is divided into good and evil. And, um, ultimately this kind of apo apocalyptic struggle between good and evil.And of course, if we have our beliefs, then we are the good by virtue of that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. So at the same, so we, we've kind of talked about it a little bit but I wanted to circle back to just the, the, the problem that Democrats have now because, their, their political paradigm is, well, people vote based on their economic interest and based on policy. And now we're in an environment where people do not vote on their economic interest and they do not even know what the policies are.I mean, in the, in the last presidential election, as I'm sure you probably saw the. Various exit polls. The people who knew the least about politics are the ones who supported Trump the most. And the people who paid the most attention to the news were the people who supported Trump the least. So we're in a situation where you have a democratic, so the polis itself to use the Aristotelian word, the polis itself doesn't know what it wants and has no means to acquire that knowledge.Um, at least in the current environment. It seems to meOLIVER: Well, I mean, so this is a critique that. I have been hearing as long as I've been an adult. In fact, it was one of the reasons I became a political scientist becauseSHEFFIELD: it.OLIVER: I was really intrigued why, you know, I, I had gone to college and I had read, uh, all this marks and [00:54:00] said, you know, mark says basically, if you wanna understand politics, look at people's class interest, and that's gonna explain everything. And, uh, yet here were all these people who were voting against their class interest. And I was, as a liberal, I was looking at it in terms of working class people who were supporting conservative causes. But, you know, you can also say it on the, on the left too, that, you know, the left is comprised of a lot of very educated, wealthy people who are willing to tax themselves to support the poor.So it's, the discrepancies kind of go both ways. You know, just as there was that famous book by Thomas Frank, you know, what's the matter with Kansas? And, you know, you could write a book, you know, what's the matter with Brooklyn that was kind of saying the same thing. Um, but. So I, I, I wanna be careful about like, sort of, I don't wanna pathologize or demonize people and their political beliefs as a political scientist. We tend to see these things in much more tectonic terms as far as they shift. So, you know, right now it's very common to bash on the Democrats and, you know, rightly so in terms of their capitulation of going along with Biden's reelection decision. Uh, and I remember you know, a couple years ago pointing out my hair.It's sort of saying, you know, this is not a good candidate to run for reelection. Not simply because of his age, but the, the, the bargain everyone made was we, we, get behind Biden because he's the one person who can. Everybody could get Trump out with, but he was only supposed to be there for one term. And but even if the Democrats had nominated, uh, Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro, or, they had had a competitive, uh, primary process, I'm skeptical that they, the results would've been necessarily much different. Um, and you know, there, there are sort of large forces that kind of drive the, the electorate.And one way to think about it is that, you know, probably about if we, you have an election, if we had [00:56:00] an presidential elections every year, you would have about 90 to 93% of people who would be voting the same every year regardless. That they're just, they're very much stuck in their partisan orientations. They kind of arrange their worldview around that, and it's very, very hard to dislodge them off of that. It, it takes a pretty a. Pretty big shock to do that. And the last time we probably saw something of that magnitude was in the 2006 to 2008 period when the Iraq War went bad and the economy went south. But even then, a lot of those people shifted from the Republican party to claiming themselves to be independents. And then, but then they ended up sort of drifting back. So the question is this, you know, sort of this small group that's in the middle and, you know, there's a lot of soul searching in the Democratic party about, well, what should we be doing?And, you know, how should we be doing things differently? And I, I think there's, there's some reasonable things to say about it. Well, how are you messaging the core? Tenets of what it means to be a Democratic party.Democrats are perceived as the status quo partyOLIVER: And I, you know, part of the problem that Democrats have is that in some ways they're a very status quo party right now.There there's not a lot of sort of big innovative change that they're seeing. They're, they're thinking like, for them the big innovative change is like the Green New Deal. But, you know, most people, that doesn't speak to most people 'cause it's addressing a climate change that's happening very, very slowly.SHEFFIELD: Or having a, leader who's not 80 years old but is 70 years old.OLIVER: Right. Right. Yeah, I, I mean, so the, there, there isn't that kind of like dynamic visionary that's offering, you know, a, a fundamentally different vision about how the country should go. And there, there is a certain irony that liberals in some ways are much more like traditional conservatives now and conservatives, at least under Donald Trump's leadership have become the sort of agents of change.SHEFFIELD: The, reactionaries. Yeah.OLIVER: yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, you know, and I as part. part. of what I think on this is just that it's, it's waiting for those, [00:58:00] uh, I mean, my joke on this, and this is maybe the James Carville idea, which is just you let them drive the, into the bus, into the ditch again, which, they often do. And then people realize that this is what's gonna take to sort of disabuse people of their kind of, the power of, of this reactionary impulse.And you know, I think it's important to notice that, you know, for all of the soul searching of the Democratic party, uh, Trump remains a very unpopular president. And, um, and I, I don't see any indications that his popularity is gonna increase over the next few years. And so, part of it is that then the next, whoever gets the nomination next is gonna come in and they're gonna be able to sort of. Reclaim the mandate of the middle and say, I, you know, I represent, you know, the real American voice. And, uh, and that will have some power. And then, you know, the discussion will be talking about, like, particularly after Trump, what's, who, who are the Republicans? I think in four years we'll be talking about, you know, it's the Republican party more likely than not to be in the wilderness.So may be wrong, uh, but this, you know, these tense things tend to go in kind of pendulum swings. But in the short run then the, the question is, is what can the Democratic party do to sort of reclaim at least some faith? I mean that the, the challenge that Democrats have right now is that the party image is, is, is pretty tainted and tarnished.And, um, and so I think it's finding, uh, it's both finding an agenda that speaks to people's real concerns. And that is people are, are not happy with the status quo for a variety of reasons. And so when you're a party of the status quo. You know, that's a little bit of a harder message to get out and then articulating it in a way that speaks to people's fears, uh, which are driving a lot of their understandings of the world.And, um, and I, I think some democratic leaders do this much better than others. And, uh, you know, the, the person that comes to mind who I think is a great communicator is Pete Buttigieg. He's really capable of sort of bridging this divide. I mean, [01:00:00] Pete Buttigieg himself is a total rationalist, but he speaks in a way, in ways that I think appeal to people's intuitions you know, their sense of decency and fairness and justice.He's very articulate and, and, clear in that way without being condescending.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I would say that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez does a pretty good job at that as well.OLIVER: Well, yeah, and I, she's got a remarkable political talent that I think people dismiss. At, at their own peril. Like her ability, her once again, she's kind of an intuitionist, really. And, and her, her ability to, to speak to that kind of the, I think the intuitive impulses within sort of, at least the left, the left turn flanks the left flanks of the Democratic party are very astute.How intuitionism fueled conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemicSHEFFIELD: Yeah, well definitely. Well, we could probably do this all day, but I know you, we both have things to do here, but let's, maybe if we can end on, um, talking about the idea of, of confidence in institutions because that is another, significant part of the, of the book. and you, you guys published this before the pandemic and, uh, you found that Intuitionist people had a lot of doubts about public health agencies and about vaccines.Um, and the subsequent event since then proved that there was, uh, a, know, this what you, what you guys had predicted was this latent anti-vaccine, anti medical constituency. emerged during the pandemic and, and, uh, really has become a significant part of the Republican party in many ways.OLIVER: Um, at least in its rhetoric. I mean, one of the things that's important to bear in mind here was that, you know, for all the anti-vaccine rhetoric that was out there, if you look at people who are over 65, regardless of their political beliefs, they were getting vaccinated at the same rates. You know, the, the people who were not getting vaccinated were people who were arguably, you know, least vulnerable to COVID, and so it became [01:02:00] kind of, kind of convenient as a, you know, as a political talking point.Now that's still a convenient political talking point. I, I think the, you know, if, like, for example, the current rhetoric around, you know, apprehension around measles vaccine is because we haven't had a huge measles outbreak. And people forget like, well, how terrible measles actually can be and how many people can actually die from it when, you know, that's, it's actually a deadly disease. 'cause the things all me measles is maybe this unfortunate thing that you get as kid. No, it kills people. And so, you know, in, in some ways the rhetoric re reflects a divorce from reality. And, you know, um, uh, like, people can't update their beliefs when, when faced with that kind of cold, hard fact.The, the question of the matter is, is, you know, with with COVID it became. It, it did encapsulate this, this deep apprehension a about kind of a fear of medical authorities and, you know, Anthony Fauci cast as sort of the great evil Satan that he, you know, is, uh, on the right, you know, is I think emblematic of this, of, of wanting to have kind of a scapegoat for their own apprehensions.And they're, and they're, it's a, I think it's what it reflects is a, a, a feeling of a lack of autonomy and control that people have in their lives. Uh, a sense of vulnerability and in, in that vulnerability wanting to, not having faith in public institutions that they were be protected anymore.That, and and that, and know a big problem with the way that COVID messaging was laid out was I think in, twofold. One, not. In some ways, recognizing what were the deep social costs of isolation and masking, and particularly keeping kids outta schools for a long period of time.And kind of a bli ignorance or almost a willful ignorance of like what those costs would be and what they were asking people to bear relative to the probabilistic cause of like, oh, getting COVID and, you know, and then turns out, well, maybe COVID isn't so bad, and people not [01:04:00] recognizing that COVID, in fact, you know, killed Amer a million Americans. Um, so I, there's, there's a lot of complicated messaging around that. But, COVID became, because it, it was such a big anxiety inducing event and in some ways the public health messaging only exacerbated that. Andso.SHEFFIELD: because it didn't, it did not correspond to the fears in the opposite direction that people were having. And nothing wrong with people, know, having a suspicion of something that they had never heard about, like mRNA vaccines like it was, this was a technology that was moved to the finish line in response to the pandemic.And people would naturally be skeptical of something that hadOLIVER: Well,SHEFFIELD: pushed like that.OLIVER: I, I, I, I think that, you know, part of the, the issue was nobody was being frank, I said, listen, we have this pandemic. It's out of control. It's going to kill a certain number of Americans, particularly vulnerable. What we are trying desperately to do is not overwhelm our health infrastructure right now. And what the real safety measures in place was to keep from the country, from having what New York experienced kind of in, you know, March and April of 2020, which is just, you know, these vans filled with bodies, that because they couldn't handle them. With respect to the public health infrastructure, but of course, nobody wants to use that kind of message.And and so there, there was not, I, I think there was, there was a lack of candor and clarity on the, on the, on the behalf of sort of public health messaging on this. And then, and an understanding of, okay, how do we, how do we talk to people's fears in an honest way? And, um, and, and, you know, in, in, instead of sort of, you know, giving out advice, I think that people had reason to be skeptical of, and in so doing kind of undermine their own faith in their own public institutions.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, it was, it was very unfortunate. And I think even now people are, [01:06:00] are missing the opportunity to, have some, at least, you know, emotional reproachment in that regard.OLIVER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Um, all right. Well, so, we talked about this book which you published a few years ago. Uh, but you, uh, personally have a, a newer book which we will be discussing on a subsequent episode, but I wanted to give you to the chance to plug that on here.Very.OLIVER: yeah, sure. So, um, just in addition to doing research on conspiracy theories and public opinion one of the other things I do is I teach a class here at the University of Chicago and how to know yourself. And I've taught this class for about 20 years, and I've met a lot of adults who, when they hear about the class are intrigued and they say, oh, do you have a book to recommend?And I said, well, no, I have hundreds. Um, so I thought, well, maybe here was an opportunity. And so I wrote a book on how to know yourself. So it's gonna be coming out this January. And the book is called How to Know Yourself, the Art and Science of Discovering Who You Really Are.SHEFFIELD: All right. Yeah. And it's a good book. I have read it. It's, uh, you got a lot of good stuff in there.OLIVER: Oh,thanks.SHEFFIELD: uh, so for, uh, people who want to keep up with you where, what's, what are your recommendations for that?OLIVER: so if you wanna find out more about what I've written, you can go on j eric oliver.com. And I'm also host of a podcast myself, which we are about to launch the third season, uh, this summer. Uh, and it's called Nine Questions with Eric Oliver. And it's a podcast really about, uh, it was originally about how to know yourself, uh, and it was me going around asking kind of the profound questions to interesting and smart people about how they found purpose and meaning in life.And it's now kind of a more general interest podcast, but there's still a lot of kind of strong content around how do we understand things like consciousness or finding happiness or, you know, finding health.SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. And, uh, what's the, uh, website address for that forOLIVER: Oh, that's, uh, nine questions.com.SHEFFIELD: Okay, great. All right, well, uh, thanks for being here today, Eric.OLIVER: All right. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to talk.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program [01:08:00] for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where you can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And my thanks to everybody who is a paid subscribing member of the show.Thank you very much for your support. And if you can't afford to support the show financially, you can give us a review on iTunes or wherever you may be listening to the show. If you're watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button as well. Thanks a lot and I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary Many people expected that Donald Trump's fate would be decided by women last year. It was, after all, the first presidential race since the Republican-dominated Supreme Court had decided to roll back a national right to abortion.But Trump upended that possibility by deciding to run a campaign that was focused very heavily on men and trying to attract the votes of men who didn’t commonly participate in voting.That’s why I wanted to bring Juliana Menasce Horowitz onto the show today. She’s a senior associate director of research at the Pew Research Center where she and several colleagues have come out with a very interesting report about how gender is presented in American society and how people think they present in that regard.The transcript of this audio-only episode is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch and get unlimited access.Related Content—Tradwives, Instagram farmers, and performative gender roles—Male pop-culture is obsolete, and men are suffering because of it—Trump, Nietzsche, and the politics of gendered religious despair—Seeing the bigger story behind Moms for Liberty’s narrative—Yes, fitness and politics have a history—How an oversharing Christian blogger inadvertently documented his own radicalizationAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction04:15 — Less of a partisan divide on whether men are valued for being caring11:57 — Why the Pew Research Center no longer uses terms like “Baby Boomer” or “Gen Z”20:07 — The challenge of sampling smaller demographic groups27:04 — Does self-reporting introduce error in polling?30:16 — Age differences in self-perception of femininity and masculinity32:43 — Influence of family and media on gender identity37:10 — Role of religion and coaches in gender identity38:29 — Marital status and gender identity41:40 — Societal acceptance of non-traditional gender roles46:26 — Republican voters seem to think hobbies are biologically based52:06 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: You have so many interesting findings in the report here, but one that really stands out in particular is that the Republican men that you talk to really seem to see the topic of masculinity and being a man quite a bit differently compared to other demographic groups.JULIANA HOROWITZ: Yeah, sure. So yeah, that's something that we sought throughout the report. We asked several questions about, um, you know, to, to sort of get at some of the topics that have been out there in the, in the public discourse and the political narrative about men and masculinity.And one of the things that we wanted to look at is whether the public perceives masculinity as being under attack. And so we asked the question about, um, you know, about whether people think other people in the [00:02:00] US have mostly positive or negative views of men who are manly or masculine. And, and for the most part, Americans don't see masculinity as being under attack based on that question. But Republican men were the most likely to say that people in the US have mostly negative views of men who are mainly or masculine. Um, and then we also asked some other questions that got at, um, you know, different traits that people think society does or doesn't value in men. And personal ratings of masculinity and femininity. So basically how people see themselves and through, you know, throughout the survey, through all these different topics, including the self ratings Republican men really stand out in being different from democratic men and from Republican women and democratic women,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, they do. And just zooming out on the question a little bit. So only 25% of the entire sample said that people have a mostly negative viewpoint of manly or masculine men, but among Republican men, that was 45% who said that?And that was, as you said, pretty unusual. So what was the finding with Republican women? What did they think on that same topic?HOROWITZ: Right, so among Republican women, we saw that about a quarter of Republican women said that people have mostly negative views, um, compared to 20% of democratic men and only 13% of Democratic women. So Republican women and democratic men actually had fairly similar views on this. And then democratic women were the least likely to see masculinity as being under attack. Under attack. And one of the things that's interesting too, is that for those who say, especially for Republicans actually, who say that people have negative views of men who are masculine, um, the vast majority of those Republicans say that that's a bad thing, right? So it's bad that people have negative views.It was different. For Democrats, it was a little bit more mixed. So for Democrats who say that people have negative views of masculine men, um, 45% said it was bad. Only 17% said it was good, and 37% said it was neither good nor bad. And so they had more split views as to whether it was a bad thing or sort of [00:04:00] neutral.Neither good nor bad that people have negative views of masculine men. Before Republicans, both men and women, um, who said that that was the case, they, they overwhelmingly saw that as a bad thing.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and that is interesting and we will come back to that in a little bit.Less of a partisan divide on whether men are valued for being caringSHEFFIELD: But one thing that also is interesting is that you and your colleagues also asked the survey respondents whether Americans place enough value on men being caring or open about their emotions, or soft spoken or affectionate. And the partisan divide was not nearly so great on this question, which I found kind of fascinating.HOROWITZ: That's right. And, and I wanted to mention, I wanted to, to be clear that we didn't present these traits as being masculine or feminine. I mean, we chose. A balance list based on, you know, based on what, what we read and based on what we know of how society sees these straits as being more associated with masculinity or femininity. Um, but we didn't present it that way to, to our respondents. And so, yeah. So a majority of Americans overall say that there's not enough value placed on men who are, you know, open about their emotions, soft spoken, um, caring, affectionate. There were differences. You know, Democrats are more likely to say that there's not enough value placed on, on men who have these traits, but even among Republicans, um, you know, the, the balance of opinion was that there's not enough, even if it wasn't a majority saying that, that Republicans were on the side of saying there's not enough value placed on men with these straits, it was a little bit different.Um. On the traits that might be considered more traditionally masculine. So confidence, assertiveness, um, being a risk taker, being physically strong there. Overall, we saw more, um, more mixed views among Americans overall. We didn't see a majority saying too much, not enough or about right, but we did say we did.See for the most part, people tended to be on the side of saying there's too much value placed on these traits for men than saying there's not enough. But Republican men were more likely to say that there's not [00:06:00] enough value placed on men who have these more traditionally masculine traits.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and just to underscore your earlier point, the traits were not said to be associated with any particular expression of being masculine or feminine or male or female.But you did also talk about some other traits on the list here. And they were broken down, including some traits that are perhaps associated with quote unquote toxic masculinity. And there with these traits, the partisan dynamic did come back a little bit more. Isn't that right?HOROWITZ: Yeah, well, so actually there, there, there is a little bit of a party of party division there, but for the most part, so, so in this list we ask about certain behaviors and, um, we, we ask people the extent to which they find these behaviors acceptable for men to do. Some of the things on the list that majorities of Americans, um, and this really crossed, you know, crossed parties even though there, there might have been differences, but it's majorities of both Democrats and Republicans who thought that things like throwing a punch of provoked, um, drinking a lot of alcohol when out with friends, having many different sexual partners or joining in when other men are talking about women in a sexual way. Majorities of Americans across party saw these as, as unacceptable behaviors for men. And so there were differences of degree, there were differences in the share saying that, but for the most part, this was not one where we saw or sort of our, our biggest partisan gaps.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I guess it was, uh, more of a difference, uh, uh, by gender in this case, right?HOROWITZ: We did see some differences by gender here too. Yes. Um, but again, like it was, um, you know, women were more likely to say these behaviors are unacceptable. But majorities of men also also said that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It was just by a higher percentage,HOROWITZ: exactly. There's a, mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no. And then there were some, some age differences with some of these, uh, behaviors, such as, uh, [00:08:00] a divide between, uh, what people thought about the idea of men putting a lot of effort into their style and fashion, and also playing a lot of video games.There were age differences there that were interesting.HOROWITZ: Yeah. Those were interesting. Young people, both young men and young women, were more likely to say that those were acceptable behaviors for, for men to do. And so it was interesting to see that, that age gap there. Um, it was picking up more than, you know. I think sometimes we do focus on gender and party because that's where we see a lot of our gaps. But in this case, when it comes to, yeah, to putting a lot of effort into how you look and playing video games, both young men and young women we're the most likely to say that those are acceptable things for men.SHEFFIELD: Now, what about in terms of. Of whether, uh, men can take care of the house or, uh, take charge in day to day, uh, activities and things like that.HOROWITZ: Yeah. We asked a series of, of questions about behaviors or, you know, or things that men do that we presented as being specifically, you know, when thinking about men who date women or who are in a relationship with women. Um, and this was, um, well the one item where a majority said it was acceptable was, um, we asked about men, you know, focusing on taking care of the kids and taking care of the home while their wife focuses on, on working for pay. And 57% of Americans said that that was acceptable for men to do. Um, we, um, you know, we, we do see that as more acceptable among younger adults, but a majority across the board say that's the case where we saw a little bit more. Um, you know, when, when it was interesting was when it comes to splitting, the bill went out on a date. Um. It was interesting because we, you know, like that was more acceptable for, um, that that was more acceptable for older women. So it was, it was interesting because we saw both, um, this was a really interesting one. Like younger men thought it was [00:10:00] acceptable to split the bill on the date, and younger men were more likely than young women to say that that was the case. And then for women, it was the older women, women 65 plus were more likely to say that it was acceptable, um, to split the bill when, when, on a, when a man is out on a date with a woman. So I thought that was interesting, but that was one where we saw a difference between young men and young women where young men said, yeah, that's acceptable.And, and young women were less likely to say it's extremely or very acceptable. I mean, they, they thought it was acceptable too, but they tended to fall more on the somewhat acceptable and not firmly on the, on the extremely, very acceptable side.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, uh, but then also on the partisan, uh, their, uh, differences that they were pretty significant on that question as well, splitting the bill. Uh, there was a 20 point gap, uh, and yet, so while Democrats, 44 percent of them said that it was extremely acceptable, uh, to split the bill, it still wasn't a majority.of Democrats. So I found that kind of interesting,HOROWITZ: It wasn't the majority. And you know, what I didn't do was look to see the age differences within parties because we know that, you know, a lot of young women also lean democratic. And we know that young women are less likely in young men to say this is highly acceptable. And so it would be interesting to go in and kind of look at the, whether it's young women who might be pulling Democrats out, you know, not. Getting to a majority saying that. So I think that'd be an interesting thing to look at. But yeah, on a lot of these, so for example, on taking care of the home and children while their wife works for pay, there was a difference there too. Um, with, you know, two thirds of democrats say that that would be acceptable compared with about half of Republicans saying that that would be, again, like, I should say, highly acceptable. 'cause we did have a, a, um, a category that was somewhat acceptable. So it's very few people saw that as like,not unacceptable,SHEFFIELD: yeah, or inappropriate. Um, yeah.Why Pew Research Center no longer uses terms like "Baby Boomer" or "Gen Z"SHEFFIELD: And now one thing that [00:12:00] is, um, different also, if, if people are reading the, the web version of this, um, is that you guys are not using, generational labels, uh, which is a pretty big difference, uh, within the Pew Research Center. Um, the center was a big proponent, uh, historically of, of, of generational labels, but now, uh, you and your colleagues have decided to move away from those types of labels.Can we talk about that?HOROWITZ: Of course. So that's something that's happened over the last few years, maybe the last three or four years. And as we were gearing up to start looking at Gen Z, as Gen Z was moving into adulthood, we started doing some mythological explorations to see, you know, over time our surveys have moved from the phone to the web. One of the things that we started exploring was whether we could compare some of those surveys, because we have surveys going back a long, a long time, and we wanted to be able to look at other generations where they were coming into adulthood like Gen Z, and we realized we weren't able to do that because of the methodological and the mode changes. And then during that time, we started talking to different people, um, and there were some public, um, critiques of our, not just our work, but of using generational lens in general in social science research. And so we engaged with some of our critics. We had a lot of conversations with our critics, with other people, um, other researchers who used generational analysis and just really thought about. You know, and also thinking about the changing landscape and how generations have been used more recently, not by us, but you know, by people using it to really, um, you know, propagate stereotypes and talk about millennials, avocado toast, and those types of, those types of things that weren't really useful for understanding people and how they think and how they behave. Um, and so in thinking about all of that and doing some of the methodological explorations, some of the conversations that we've had with [00:14:00] other, with other social scientists, what we decided to do is that, you know, in something like this, we're not really looking at generational differences. These are just really age differences, right?To understand generational differences, we need to look at people when they were the, the same age to make sure they were not talking about life stage. We need to be able to, right? We need to be able to isolate some other effects. So, um, one example that I like to give is, you know, if we're studying parents and. Let's say that we find that millennial parents or Gen Z parents or tend to be more overprotective, and then we can create a whole narrative about overprotective millennial and Gen Z parents. But when you control for the age of the children, right? Gen X parents who have young children, let's say children younger than five, are just as overprotective. And so you might look at it and call it a generational difference, but what you're really picking up is that they're raising little, little kids. And so maybe when those millennial and Gen Z parents are raising high schoolers, maybe they won't be as overprotective. So it's not something inherent in their generation.And so, Yeah.And so it's important to, to, you know, and then, and so, you know, we're still gonna be, we're, it doesn't mean that we're never gonna do generational analysis, but we will do it when we have the data to be able to, you know, there, there are some long trends in government data, for example, that do allow us to go back and look at people, you know, generations when they were at the same age. And then we can compare it that way so we can isolate the life stages. Um, you know, there are times where we might decide to not use sort of the predefined generations. And so for certain things it might be interesting to look at people, you know, look at four year cohorts, like people who turned 18 during a certain president's time if you're studying voting behavior or so. So just be more intentional about the research questions that we're asking when we're using, um, generations. But we, we think that age is a really important, um, it's a really important [00:16:00] demographic characteristic to look at. And so we'll still be looking at at age like we do in this report.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. When it's, it's. that, you know, it can be easy to mistake, you know, a generational value with a moment value. So like, you know, the idea of children having unsupervised play outside of the home, you know, that's, that's, uh, often talked about as some sort of generational. Divide, but it could be just simply a function of, well, this is what everybody thinks at that is, you know, having kids, um, as you're saying, um, but then also there was, uh, some of the other, um, In the research for the reports that I've seen released from the center on this topic is that generational analysis also tends to, um, agglutinate too much.In other words, taking people who age groups that may actually have significant differences and implying that they're the same. So, and I think perhaps, You know, the, maybe one of the more discussed differences or examples of this is the idea of some scholars, what they, what they're calling zillennial group is older and older millennials are different, either one of the, of the stereotypical two groups.Yeah,HOROWITZ: like the, sort of these predefined generations or, you know, span many, many years. And so, you know, if you're, if we're thinking more in terms of, you know, certain events that might have been influential in people's lives, depending on what age they were, um, right. It might be that the, that where you'd break that, that generational category might be [00:18:00] different. Um. Yeah, so then you end up with these different names for the older, you know, older ex, younger X-ers and um, older millennials and, you know, and maybe it would've been better for some research to talk about people in their forties, for example. Right. And maybe you're comparing people in their forties now to people in their forties 20 years ago, or when, right.And, and so maybe there's a life stage too that's happening in their forties, and doesn't matter if you're calling them, you know, millennials or X-ers, but, you know, and, and so yeah, I think that, um, I think that, that sometimes these categories can be useful and sometimes it's just too big a group that came of age or experienced the world at, at very different times.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly.So there does seem to be some real significant divides. Between older and younger Gen X people. And then also we could say the same perhaps with people in the quote unquote millennial generation, that the older members of the generation came of age before social media was a thing, and then the younger members came of age and once it had been, and so that could present some differences as well, and why generational talk is perhaps not as useful .And at the same time, there are also some intergenerational differences, at least if you talk to some people with regard to political opinions and gender. So some researchers have said that there is a very large gender gap within what is commonly called Generation Z, that it's bigger than in previous generations. But in this survey, that is not what you and your colleagues had found in terms of political identification.HOROWITZ: Yeah, I mean there's, you know, we've always seen a gender gap in political identification. That's, that's not new. We're not seeing some of the same, you know, the magnitude of the gender gap among young people that some other organizations are seeing. Um, but you know, in, in some elections the gap is [00:20:00] wider and some elections still narrow, but it's been there. Um, you know, we, we've seen it for the last few decades. It's not necessarily new.The challenge of sampling smaller demographic groupsSHEFFIELD: And it is a tricky question because in a lot of surveys that are done, let's say 1500 voters or so, something like that, when you get into the subsamples, the subsets of the overall samples, so specific demographic groups that are a little bit smaller, the statistical significance can be a lot harder to determine.And so that's a problem in and of itself. But then there's also the question of waiting of the polls, and that has become more of an issue within polling. And it's also very common, but at the same time, it's not very commonly talked about. I think in the press, uh, people talk a lot about various other techniques, but waiting is something that I have not heard a lot about in terms of the pollster discussion about polls.So could you talk about that a bit for us, please?HOROWITZ: Yeah. I mean, before I talk about waiting, one thing that I wanna mention, um, you know, you were talking about the subgroups. And I think that one thing that people don't realize when they're looking at, um, right, when they're reading an article about a poll or they're seeing, you know, there's a chart and it has all the different, the subgroup analysis and it has like the overall and then they look at the margin of error, right?And it's usually in the bottom of the chart, I'll say the margin of error, but that margin of error is for the whole group. That margin of error is for the whole population. There's a different margin of error for each, for each of those different categories. And so as you get into smaller and smaller groups, your margin of error gets bigger. And so a survey that has a margin of error of plus or minus three points, that's for the overall survey. But when you're talking about young people, it'll be like, that margin will be bigger depending on the size of that group and other factors. And so I think that's something that people don't always realize.They're just applying that same three plus or minus three points to every subgroup. And the smaller you get, the smaller that group gets the. Bigger that margin's gonna be. So that's something that I think [00:22:00] is really important for people to, to know as they're,as they're looking at, at some of these things. Um, in terms of waiting, I mean the right, like ideally we would do a random survey and we would end up with a sample that looks like the US population or whatever population you're trying to, you're, you're trying to get. Um, that doesn't always happen. People respond to surveys at different rates. And so, you know, your goal really is to get to something as close to representing, you know, people representing the share of their population that their group should be. But that doesn't typically happen. And so we have statistical adjustments called waiting where we, you know, assign more weight to, to balance out their responses, to be representative of the population that you're targeting. And you know, we're talking about nationally representative samples here 'cause we're talking about. Elections, but then people also have to model the electorate. So when you're talking about registered voters or you're talking about likely voters, then you also have to think about what did the electorate look like last time? What do we, you know, what, what is the electorate gonna look like this time? And then make adjustments also based on that. But a lot of those adjustments, um, you know, the demographic adjustments are usually done to account for the fact that there are certain groups older, more educated, for example, that are more likely to respond to surveys. But you don't wanna have a sample that is like overeducated or a sample that skews older. Um, you know, and so usually we will look at parameters from the government, right? We're looking at census data and we're waiting our data to be representative of the population overall.But the goal really is to reduce the weighting as much as possible, because then that introduces not to get too technical, but introduces design effects.And then, then your margin of error gets bigger and. You know, so that really the goal is to have to manipulate. I, I use manipulate. It's certainly not the best word. It's a technical word, but it's not, I don't, I don't mean it in any nefarious way, but like, you don't wanna, [00:24:00] right, but you don't wanna, you wanna have to, youwanna adjust, you wanna adjust your data as little as possible, but you want your data to be representative.You don't want it to be skewed. Um, it's not helpful to anybody if you have a highly educated sample that doesn't reflect the electorate or doesn't reflect the population.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's still a little bit tricky because you don't know how representative these people in the smaller groups that are being weighted up, whether they themselves are representative of the group from which they are weighted. It's almost a little bit circular in some sense, right? Right.HOROWITZ: Well, , most pollsters, when they draw their sample, they are doing all they can to really work that sample to get a response from people. So for example, um. You know, back when we did phone surveys, it was the num, you know, usually there were at least seven calls made, seven call attempted calls attempted before you decided that that person is, is not responding.Right? Same with the online surveys. Like you're, we're sending a lot of reminders to people. So it's not the type of thing where, you know, we send out our invitations to take the survey and then, you know, let's say people with four year college degrees or people over a certain age or they respond, people in other groups maybe don't respond as quickly, and so we just give up on them and figure we'll just weigh up whoever's in there, right?Like we really do, um, do as much as we can to make sure that, that people, that, that we're really trying to get those people in to make sure that we are getting a representative sample of those groups. And so, um, so that the, so that those adjustments can be really kept to a minimum.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's only in the context of that while pollsters are trying to keep things as scientific as possible, there still is a bit of an art in terms of determining how much weight to give to different groups. And that this can cause some misunderstandings when polls are read by the general public. And [00:26:00] probably the most prominent example of that is with regard to racial demographic groups. So oftentimes you'll see people saying, oh, look, there's a study that says. 45% of black Americans like Donald Trump. And that may or may not be true, of course.Uh, but at the same time, it's easy for people to draw these broad conclusions when the group, the sub-sample of Black Americans is just a very small group with a very high margin of error for that group.HOROWITZ: Yeah, I mean, and I, I agree. I mean, like some of the subgroups, especially if you're, if you're starting out with, um, you know, with a survey that might be perfectly appropriate for a national representative. At a sample, but when you're drilling down to small groups, you might end up with very large margins of error.And so it's, you know, without really knowing the size of those subgroups, and, you know, and it's often the case that, um, a survey will tell you the overall sample size, but then it's not necessarily telling you the, the sample size of some of the relevant groups that you're looking at. Um, and so it can be hard to, to assess that too.Does self-reporting introduce error in polling?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. But while we're talking methodology here, I think there's another. Issue worth discussing, which is the problem of self-reporting and self-diagnosis.Because it can be hard sometimes, I think, to get the respondent to a poll to understand the question in the same way that the pollster sees the question. And that can result in different answers across people's perception. And one example I think perhaps that might fit with that in the current poll that we're discussing here today is that when you ask people, are you feminine, are you masculine? They had some very different perspectives across gender and also across partisanship, and that might reflect some of these perception differences. Do you wanna talk about that?HOROWITZ: So what we did was we asked everybody to rate themselves on a masculinity and a femininity scale. So, [00:28:00] um, and then we subtracted their scores that they gave themselves on the femininity scale from their scores on the masculinity scale, and created one continuous scale on one end as high people who see themselves as highly masculine.On the other end are people who see themselves as highly feminine. And then we have people who lean masculine, lean feminine, and then the, the midpoint, which is neither, or they gave themselves the same rating for the, for both scales. So they're equally masculine and feminine, or, or they gave themselves zeros for both.And so what we found is, um, we found a big party gap among men. And so what we found was 53% of Republican men seeing themselves as highly masculine compared to 29% of Democratic men. We didn't see a gap of nearly the same magnitude among, among women. We did see a small, a modest six point gap with Republican women being more likely to describe themselves as highly feminine. But it was a, it was a very small gap. Um, and, um, you know, but, but with, but with men, we saw a very big gap. And it was mainly driven by conservative Republican men. 60% of conservative Republican men placed themselves in the highly masculine side of the scale. Um, and with more moderate, more moderate Republicans and more moderate Democrats, um, it was around 40%.So they were more similar. And then liberal democratic men were the least likely to rate themselves as highly, um, highly masculine.SHEFFIELD: Well, and there was a partisan difference among women as well, or an ideological as well. So like the conservative women, 44 percent of them said that they were highly feminine. Whereas 28 percent of liberal women said that they were. Um, femininity.HOROWITZ: Yeah,that's right. I mean, like, not to the same. Yeah, definitely not the same magnitude of difference that we see among men, but you're right, there is a, there is a difference among women too.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I found this particular breakdown interesting though, because.They're, these are two very subjective questions, and they're based on self-reporting [00:30:00] because what someone labels as their own political ideology might be different than what a more neutral observer might describe them as. And the same thing might be true with regard to whether they are feminine or masculine, quote unquote, on both of those.Age differences in self-perception of femininity and masculinitySHEFFIELD: Now further on this, on these two questions though, there were not a lot of racial differences, but there were some interesting age differences that I think are worth noting here.HOROWITZ: Yeah, I thought the age differences were, were more interesting. I think in part too, because there's been so much talked about in terms of young men today and you know, are young men drifting to the right and I mean I can, I think again, like different. Surveys were showing different things. And for some surveys it's really showing women, young women drifting farther to the left. But one thing that was, was interesting is that we didn't see the sense of hyper-masculinity among young men. Young men were actually the least likely to describe themselves as highly masculine. It was older men who saw themselves that way. And um, and we saw that among both parties, right? Because we looked to see is this just picking up the fact that young men lean more democratic overall than older men?And so is that what it's picking up? But it, it wasn't, I mean, with Republican men, the difference was more younger than 50 and 50 plus rather than the 18 to 29 year olds. So, um, Republican men younger than 50 were less likely to describe themselves as highly masculine than Republican men, 50 and older. Um, and then with Democrats, we did see differences across age groups with the, um, under 30 group being the least likely to describe themselves as highly masculine.But yeah. But we saw the same pattern with both parties, that it's the older men. Who are more likely to place themselves on, on that highly masculine end of the scale.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And that, you know, may have some correlation likely with the fact that You know, uh, the groups that the age groups that Donald Trump does the best with tend to be older men, uh, compared [00:32:00] to other demographic groups.HOROWITZ: Yeah. And I mean, again, like those older men are more conservative and, you know, and we also, I, I took a quick look at this by Trump supporters and Harris supporters, and we didn't publish it because it looked very much like the, the party differences that we see as you, as you might expect in the strong, the strong Trump supporters, um, you know, look more like the conservative men that we saw.And so, and so it wasn't super interesting because it really was just telling us what we already knew, but looking at the party differences. Um, but. But yeah, as you would imagine, men who are strong Trump supporters are more likely to rate themselves as highly masculine as we see here with conservative Republican men.Influence of family and media on gender identitySHEFFIELD: In terms of gender expectations or, um, concept gender self concept, um, there, there are some interesting differences, uh, across genders among younger people about social media versus television and movies.HOROWITZ: Yeah. So we have this question in addition to asking people to rate themselves on these, on these two scales, we also wanted to get at. Where are people hearing or where have they heard, right? Like some, some people are still young in their young adulthood and some people are older, but where have they learned, where have men learned what it means to be a man?And where have women learned what it means to be a woman? And we asked people the extent to which, you know, different sources or people in their lives, um, had an impact on, on them in learning how to be a man or how to be a woman. And a couple of interesting things there. Um, before we get to social media and, and, um, TV and movies, one thing that I thought was really interesting was that both men and women at the same rate.So about two thirds of men said their father was highly influential for them. Um, same share of women say their mothers were highly influential for them in learning how to be a woman. But men are more likely to say [00:34:00] their mothers were influential than women are to say their father was influential to them in learning how to be a woman, which I thought was really interesting. Um, interms of that was, a,SHEFFIELD: I can just say the number, uh, yeah, it's 47 percent of men said that they learned from their brother and 32 percent of women said they learned from their father,HOROWITZ: yeah,so I thought that was really interesting finding. And, um, in terms of social media and, and TV and movies, one of the things that we were wondering about is whether we would see young men more likely to say that they're learning from social media, right? We've heard a lot about through the man is fear and the, and the influencers are out there.And so we really expected to see, um, maybe young men more than young women saying that social media has been a highly influential source for them in learning how to be a man. But that's not what we found. We found that, um, young women are actually considerably more likely than young men to say that they, that a lot of what they learned about their own gender, um, came from social media and also from, from pop culture, from TV and movies. And so I thought that was an interesting gender difference where, um, where women are the, are more likely young women especially, are more likely than young men. To say that these are, these are important sources for them and how to learn to be a woman.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, when I looked at this, to be honest, I thought that this might be another example of a self-reporting potential problem. Because most Of the time when you ask people, do you trust the media, the majority of them generally will say no.But then at the same time, clearly they are using it to know about the world in some sense or another. Whatever they think the media is in their minds isn't necessarily mapping how they use it. So they trust it on some level, even though they say they don't trust it. It. And so, I mean, is this just young men not knowing where they're being influenced or they maybe are not telling the truth?I mean, who can we even say? Um,HOROWITZ: have to be aware that they're [00:36:00] being, that they're being influenced by the source. Like in this case in particular, I mean, like, I, I take your point with the question about do people say they trust the media? In this case, um, I don't think that this is necessarily a response that's controversial, right?Or something that people might wanna not say that they turn to, to some of these sources. And, um, and you know, I do think that, you know, this is a self-administered web survey. And so I think sometimes when people have to say something to a live interviewer, we know that there's social desirability that sometimes makes people not wanna answer a certain way. Um, and you know, in this case we do know that there's also, there are also, um, you know, influencers that are talking about, you know, about things that might be related to being a woman, um, from, you know, policy issues to clothing, to different things. Just like there are male influencers talking about clothing and, and things like that to men. Um, and so we are right. I mean, people need to be aware that they're, you know, it, it, it is possible that they're consuming certain things. And certain media and certain, you know, and things on social media without necessarily being aware that that's an influence on them.Role of religion and coaches in gender identityHOROWITZ: But I think it's interesting also just looking at it relative to, to some of the other things that they say are influential to them because we did ask about religion and about, and again, about their parents and about coaches and, and friends.And so we can also, um, you know, we can also look at that item relative to some of the other ones. And that's, that's pretty low for, for men and for young men.SHEFFIELD: now you guys didn't have it in the report, but I am curious if there were any age, uh, differences with regard to, uh, religion or religious leaders, uh, impacting people.HOROWITZ: Yeah. I'd have to go back and look. I mean, if we didn't have it in the report, it's usually because we didn't see a big significant difference.SHEFFIELD: MmHOROWITZ: Um, but yeah, I [00:38:00] don't, I don't have that number off the top of my head. But, but in general, where we saw big differences, we, um, you know, we tended to, to report on them because we, we knew that, you know, for us, age was an important one to look at.And that, in that question in particular, um, in terms of, you know, both, we wanna look at men and women separately, but then among men and among women, we were interested in,in how different age groups were, were learning about these things.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Marital status and gender identitySHEFFIELD: Now, did you have a question about marital status in this survey?survey?HOROWITZ: We did. Yeah, we did. And we did find that for, um, for people who were married and, you know, like men, married men, um, often say that they're, that there were, we, we looked at married or living with a partner that, um, they're likely, very likely to say that they learn about being a man from their, you know, from their, from their partner, from their spouse or partner.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Now, were there any other notable differences that you can think of? I'm not, I won't put you on the spot if you can't, uh, think of that. It's justHOROWITZ: I, I know. Yeah, there. Um, yeah, I mean, like the one, I think the most notable one really was the one that we already talked about with, um, the share of men saying they learned from their mothers about what it means to be a man compared to women saying they learned from their fathers. And then some of the, and the ones we talked about with young people in particular on, on social media, um, for the most part they were very similar.So for example, 33% of men said that they learned from religion or religion, religious leaders, what it means to be a man. And you know, 30% of women said the same about learning from religion and religious leaders about what it means to be a woman. Um, the one, there was one that was different. Um, men were about twice as likely to say they learned from sports coaches. You know, and, and some might have been thinking about coaches they've had many years ago, um, depending on where they are in their lives. But that was, you know, it was 28%. So it was lower than some of the other things that we asked about. Um, but [00:40:00] men were more likely than, than women. 12% of women compared to 28% of men pointed to sports coaches. Um, but other than that, like in terms of their teachers and their, their friends, you know, we asked men about their male friends and women, about their female friends. Um, and we saw similar shares of both pointing to their friends of the same gender as being highly influential. So we didn't, we didn't see huge differences on a lot of these.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, so just continuing this a little bit further, some. People who do political analysis have tried to argue that relationship status might be another dividing line or a source of political identity in recent years.What do you think about that?HOROWITZ: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting, right? Because we can't, like, right, because so, so married or partner men were, you know, slightly more likely than married or partner women to say that they learned from their partners. So it's 45% of men and 38% for women. So it's not, it's not a huge, a huge difference there. But I mean, it's, we can't, we can't compare them to, but we can't ask somebody who's not partnered. They've learned from their non-partner, right? Like, we can't, you can't compare those, those groups and, um, but the, but the, but the fact that so many people who are partnered, you know, either married or living with a partner, say that they learned about being a man or a woman from their, from their spouse or partner, I think is, I think is interesting.And I think it's, um, you know, it's, it's something that people who are not partnered don't have that, a partner as a resource for, for that in particular.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Societal acceptance of non-traditional gender rolesSHEFFIELD: Well, and in terms of some of these changing values, uh, one of the topics that you asked about was, did people think that society was sufficiently accepting of men taking on family rules that had been typically associated with women? And there were not a lot of differences, generally [00:42:00] speaking, across various subgroups, but there were some party differences here.HOROWITZ: Yeah, there, there were a big party differences here. Um, when it comes, I mean, we asked both about being accepting of women. Who take on roles are more associated with men and men who take on roles more associated with women. And, um, you know, overall people answer those two questions pretty, pretty similarly.So I wanted to mention that. And 43% said that society is not accepting enough of men who take on roles associated with women. And 44% said the same about women. Um, and in terms of party differences, I mean, um, big differences between Democrats and Republicans on this question about men who take on roles associated with women. Um, we have a majority of Democrats, 59% of Democrats saying the society isn't accepting enough. Republicans were more split. They were split almost exactly evenly between those who say too accepting and not accepting enough with 45% saying it's about right. Um, and so a more neutral, a more neutral answer.So we, we do see big differences and, and we see differences. We see differences by gender. They're not nearly as large as the differences that we see by party. And then we see some differences by gender within each party. Um, so we have, um, Republican women are a little bit more on the side of saying society isn't accepting enough than they are on, um, society about right.And Republican men are the opposite. They're a little bit, or I should say that again. Um, Republican women are more on the side of saying society isn't accepting enough of these men than to say society is too accepting. And Republican men are a little bit more on the side of saying society is too accepting than not accepting enough. Um, but half of Republican men say it's about right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So that would be an interesting thing to keep tabs on for sure. Um, and I'm, I guess, you know, when I was looking at this, it did make me think, you know, there's, uh, not [00:44:00] very, not a lot of stuff that you're having to hear about, about dating and relationships. So it made me think that perhaps that, uh, you guys are going to be getting into that a little bit further.Is that right?HOROWITZ: It was funny. I was just thinking about that. Like we, we did do something, we did a big study on dating and relationships, um, about five years ago when I was just thinking that, um, you know, it might be time soon to repeat some of that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I think that'd be really interesting if Pew could go back and do a study on that, because. There's just so many articles and social media posts about people saying that online dating is just so much worse than it used to be. And uh, but I don't know to what degree that attitude is commonly believed or not.And then there are lots of other related dating topics as well. So have people's opinions changed with regard to. What they expect out of a potential partner in terms of the education level or their political opinions, or their wealth or their height, weight, et cetera, lifestyle. Um, there's just a lot of different variables that could be looked at here, I think.HOROWITZ: And we did and we did ask that. I mean, I don't, again, I don't have the, I I didn't study up on that report 'cause it's, it's been a while since we've done it. But we did ask questions about that, like, about education and about, you know, like whether something would, you know, like would make you more likely, less likely to date someone who was, you know, a different, um, you know, we had different characteristics at that time. We also asked about somebody who was a, a Trump voter. Hillary, uh, a Clinton voter. Right. And so, um, we had some, some interesting things there too. But one finding that I wanted to, to point to in this, in this current survey is, um, we asked a series of questions about whether men. Are doing better now compared to 20 years ago, or, and whether women are doing better or worse now than 20 years ago across several realms. And one of them was in finding a romantic partner and people answered fairly similarly for how they think things are going now for women compared to 20 years ago versus men. [00:46:00] Um, and for both groups more said things, um, that men are, you know, men are, men are doing worse and women are doing worse than 20 years ago when it comes to finding a romantic partner. Um, by, by fairly large margins, more so than they say things are better or the same for for men and women in that realm. So Americans are definitely seeing it as, as something thatSHEFFIELD: isHOROWITZ: has become harder for people in general.SHEFFIELD: All right.Republican voters seem to think hobbies are biologically basedSHEFFIELD: Well, so why don't we end the discussion here with talking about where people believe that some gender differences come from.Uh, because I thought there, there were some pretty astounding findings in the study here. Especially in terms of partisanship.I mean, they were huge. It looks like that 62% of Republicans in the poll here said that the hobbies that men and women have are basically biologically oriented, that they are driven to engage in them because of their biology rather than their social expectations or the way that they were raised. This, to me, was one of the biggest partisan gaps in the report when I was looking at it.HOROWITZ: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting too. I mean, like overall, we asked, the way we first asked people whether they think men and women are different across different rounds, and for the most part, with the exception of this question about what their. Good at in the workplace for that one 57% overall said that, um, they're basically similar, but when it comes to how they express their feelings, their physical abilities, their hobbies and interests approach to parenting, um, a majority of Americans, two thirds or more said that men and women are different. But when what we, where we really saw differences by gender and by party was on this question. Like for each thing that they said, men and women are basically different on, we then asked if they thought these differences were mainly based on biological factors or whether they were based on different societal expectations for men and women. Um, and so yeah, across all of these, like the one that, um, the only one where we didn't see a big [00:48:00] gap by party or by gender was on physical abilities. Large, very large shares of both Democrats and Republicans who see differences in that way. Said those differences are mainly driven by biological differences between the genders, but on all the other things.Right. Their hobbies and interests, like you just pointed out, how they express their feelings, their approach, the parenting, um, majorities of Republicans said each of those, um, for each of those, they said the differences were mainly driven by biology. And Democrats said that they were mainly different driven by, um, the different expectations that that society has for men and women.And I thought that was really interesting.SHEFFIELD: Now, did you guys do any interviews with individuals, uh, in response to that question? Cause I would be interested to hearHOROWITZ: We didn't, yeah, we didn't, we didn't probe further on on that. Um, unfortunately, but, but I think even like, I think their results, um, speak for themselves. I think it's, I think that was super interesting to see where, you know, like their. There can be agreement that there are differences between the genders, but then where, where then people diverge is why are those differences?Right? And if you think they're rooted in biology, then that you, that can't be bridged. Right? But if you think that they're driven by societal expectations, then societal expectations and cultural norms can change. Right? And so I think that that's, then you get into different, like, ideological differences on whether there should, you know, whether things should be done to make men and women more equal.If you think that it's driven by biology, then that's, you know, then, then that's something that's fixed. Right? Andif they're, and if it, you can do anything to and if it's driven by societal expectations, then, then, then you might think that those are things that, that might change or maybe have changed over time or could change more.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well these are all really interesting findings, but, uh, let's see. So are [00:50:00] there any other aspects here of the report that you think we might need to touch on, or do you think we're good to go here?HOROWITZ: I think we're good. I mean like, just the one thing that I would say very quickly is that, you know, I touched on these questions about whether things are better or worse for men and women now compared to 20 years ago. And there were three items in particular when it came to the workplace. So getting well, paying jobs, getting, um, leadership positions in the workplace and getting into colleges or universities where majorities, large majorities of Americans think women are doing better now than they were 20 years ago. And fewer than half say that things are better for men now compared to 20 years ago. Um, and also people think that changing gender roles have benefited women more than men. But what's really interesting also. Is that the vast majority of Americans don't think that the gains for women have come at the expense of men. And so I thought those were an interesting set of results that people do think that men have fallen behind or been stagnant in some areas that women have made progress on. They do see more progress for women. Um, but for the most part, um, people don't blame women for, for, you know, for men either falling behind or not progressing.And I thought those were, were interesting and important findings.SHEFFIELD: Uh, yeah, absolutely. And actually, the idea about, uh, asking, you know, getting into there, there were some prejudices on the question of getting into a college of university or well paying job that's which, you know, might, you know, I, you know, when you look at some of the messages that Donald Trump is putting out, he doesn't say that explicitly, some of his supporters do kind of touch on that.Perhaps they are responding to something that's out there.HOROWITZ: In general, both like men, um, you know, Republican men were more likely than Republican women to say that men are doing worse now, and democratic men are also more likely than Democratic women to say that men are doing worse now [00:52:00] in those areas. So that's, so that's a gender difference overall. That's independent of party.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely.ConclusionSHEFFIELD: Well, we could probably dissect this poll and a lot of other ones for a lot more, but we both have things to get to and I appreciate you joining us and I appreciate everybody listening to us for this conversation.Um, so for people who wanna keep up with you, Juliana, what are you recommendations for them?HOROWITZ: So they can go to peer research.org and um, you know, all of our reports are available online, or data sets are made available to the public. And, um, you know, that's the best way I'm not a big social media person.I am on x. Um. I honestly don't remember my handle. Um, but, um, because I don't ever, it's, it's very rare that I post anything. So, um, but there are institutional accounts for the peer research Center. So if you search for the peer research center on X, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, um, you will find our institutional accounts there.And they post lots of really great stuff from all of the research areas at the Peer Research Center. Um, and so, um, there's a little bit in there for, for everybody depending on your, on your personal interests. We have a lot of different, um, research groups within, within the center. But, um, but yes, I would definitely encourage you to, to search for a peer research center on your favorite social media platform.We're not on TikTok, um, yet, maybe one day, but we're on Instagram and X and um, and LinkedIn.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And also, uh, there are some really good mailing lists that Pew has as well.HOROWITZ: That's right. We have several newsletters and mailing lists, and so if you go to pewresearch.org, there's a place where you can, where you can subscribe to those, to those newsletters as well.SHEFFIELD: Cool. All right. Well, thanks for being here and good to have you.HOROWITZ: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the [00:54:00] conversation and you can always get more if you go to TheoryofChange.show. This episode was audio only, but most of ours are video as well.And we have paid subscription options as well when you get access to all of the archives of the program. and many thanks to everybody who is a paid subscriber. I really appreciate your help with that. And if you can't afford to subscribe right now, that's all right. Just give us a nice review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you may be listening to the show. Thanks a lot. Let's do this again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.communityEpisode Summary Ever since he came back into office, Donald Trump has messed up a lot of things. The judiciary, the budget, federal employees, foreign policy, you name it. But we can’t forget that America’s economic, political, and religious systems were already failing a lot of people long before he ever came on the scene. That’s especially true for younger Americans who face skyrocketing college tuition, an inscrutable job market, and relationship expectations that are no longer matching reality. Some of them are dropping out of a rigged system, but others of them, like our guest on today’s episode, are thinking outside of the box.Hazel Grace was raised as a conservative Christian in Alabama, but she walked away from all that to become an adult media executive and performer, as well as a political activist. Her journey challenges a lot of assumptions, not only about adult media, but also about who is allowed to participate in politics and media, and why.Growing up in the Bible Belt, Grace was taught to be grateful for the bare minimum rather than expecting better. But rather than give up, Grace began crafting a new life on her own terms, rooted in honesty, autonomy, and openness. Her work today represents a fusion of personal liberation and social critique, a rejection of both religious conformity and economic exploitation.Several years into her career now, Grace leads InMelanin, a production company and community that promotes women of color in adult media. She’s also an advocate for civil liberties and privacy through her Porn Over Party initiative.Those are just some of the things we talk about in our very wide-ranging conversation. We also discuss her experience as a Southern girl who was skeptical of religion, and the difficulty that many black women encounter trying to earn a living in adult media. And perhaps most interestingly, we also discuss why she still identifies as a Republican, even though she can't stand Donald Trump.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You will need to be a paid subscriber to listen or read the full program.Related Content—As social stigmas fade, more women are coming out as bisexual—Why gay Republicans helped build a political party that hates LGBT people—Young Republicans can’t get a date — or a clue as to why—Society still stigmatizes women more than men for having casual sex—How a retired porn star is helping her male fans understand themselves better—A brief history of the world’s oldest profession—MAGA is becoming a sexual fetish, no really—Tolerance is winning, even though it might seem otherwiseAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction11:06 — Why Christianity wasn’t a good fit17:06 — Transition to the adult industry(Sections below are for paid subscribers only)24:04 — Open relationship dynamics26:39 — Who’s being exploited, performers or employees?29:18 — Challenges faced by black women in adult media38:25 — Building up InMelanin44:16 — Helping Republicans realize their party hates porn50:53 — The perils of being an anti-Trump Republican59:25 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: All right, well let's just maybe start off with giving people kind of a background of where you're from, where you grew up and all that stuff.HAZEL GRACE: I grew up in Alabama Millbrook, Alabama, small town.SHEFFIELD: What part of Alabama is that?GRACE: Central Alabama. Yep. I grew up there. I graduated in 2016. I got married in 2018. When I graduated, I had gotten accepted into a couple of colleges in north Alabama. And ultimately decided as I was registering for registering for classes that that is not what I wanted to [00:04:00] do.I, and even to this day, doing what I do and running my business and all that, like, I'm still this person of, like, I don't want to sign up for that amount of debt, not knowing how I'm going to be able to pay it off. And, and that point in 2016, the, the shine that was on top of college life had already been well, well gone for most people.Like we had seen people join sign up for the American Dream and. End up with 50 to a hundred thousand dollars in student loans and not able to get a job in the field that they wanted at that time. The, that whole college boom, that it was dead at that point in 2016. And so a lot of us were making were, we were over that lure and we were making an educated decisions based on all that information, and I decided, yeah, I just don't think this is a good move. At that time, it wasn't that I didn't still want to go to school, I still wanted to go. I still wanted to major in political science. I still had major dreams of becoming a politician someday. I just did not want to struggle all the way through.I just felt like, okay, I'll work, I'll start a job. I was serving, I was working at three different jobs and I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to save up money. My first was to get a car, move into a place, and then start saving up money so that I could at least pay for, I don't know, my tuition, my books, something, because to take on all of that.To me, just felt like I'm already starting at a loss. From a, a middle class to low class family in Millbrook, Alabama, I'm already starting at a loss to sign up for that much debt. In my opinion, I would always be working to pay off that debt. My life would never be mine. It would always be working towards this goal, and I never wanted to view life that way.I always felt like, if I'm going to live, I want to live for myself. I want to do things that I want. I want to do things that make me happy. I want to do things that make me feel fulfilled. And I just couldn't see myself being fulfilled or feeling fulfilled knowing that I had that hanging over me. To me, money is a big thing and money is a big thing in this country.And I just think a lot of people, when they think that it's for the greater good, which in, in a lot of cases it is, they tend to just brush that [00:06:00] off. And that's how so many people ended up with so much student debt to get to their prospective fields. And so, as during all that, I decide I'm just going to be a housewife.I'm going to, work my three jobs until I can afford to go to college. I meet my husband—well, I had already known my husband but we started dating right after I graduated high school and we got married in 2018. He joined the military, the Marine Corps, later that year, and we moved to California together so that he could start his duty station at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California.SHEFFIELD: North of San Diego. For those who don’t know.GRACE: Yeah, San Diego. Sorry, San Diego. But yeah, I mean, growing up, growing up in Alabama, it was tough. It just felt like, okay, am I ever going to make it out of this? It's just one of those things where you're starting at the bottom and it feels nearly impossible to make it out. And it's also the Bible Belt and you're being told like, just be grateful for what you have.Just be grateful for what you have. Just be grateful for what you have. And it's like, yeah, but I could have more and I think I might deserve more. And so,that, that, that, way of thinking in Alabama is not really accepted. People are very grateful for, for what they have, even if it's the bare minimum.And the, I'm not no shame or shade on that at all whatsoever. You should be grateful for every little thing that you have, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't want or expect more especially if you see that it's out there for you. And so, beingSHEFFIELD: that's also why you're political tooGRACE: yesSHEFFIELD: You want to expand what's possible.GRACE: For everyone.SHEFFIELD: And you want people to think that they deserve more. And you are so right about that, that mentality, and it really has developed—unfortunately, as we've had more and more income inequality and things like that—that yeah, people just are like, well, I'm, all I can have is subsistence, survival.That's all I, that's my goal is survival. And it's like, that's fine if you really think that, but you're better than that. You, you're better than [00:08:00] that and you deserve more.GRACE: Yes. Because at the end of the day, you really have to think about it. If you're just surviving, just working your job and just surviving, who are you surviving for? Because the guy that owns that company is not coming into work every day and he's living his life while all of his little, these little worker bees just survive until they die.And that's just not fair. Everyone should have a piece of living. And everyone should have a piece of working too. Like it's not, one of those. Magical scenarios where everyone gets to live a duty free life. We all have duties to each other ultimately. And so I just knew I'd never be okay with the status quo.And that was then, it's gotten so much worse now. The way that corporations really rule everything, the corporateoverlords, they get to live their lives. They get to take vacations, they get to just do all the things that they want to do, and no one's telling them to be grateful for their employees and to make sure their employees are taken care of.But as far as, growing up as a little black girl in Alabama, we're told to be grateful for every little thing that we have, even if at the end of the day we deserve that. And yeah, it's a very unfortunate way of thinking and it drills into people that they shouldn't expect more. And yeah, it just never worked for me 'causeSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, you saw, you saw theGRACE: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: All right, so, so you were doing three jobs like what kind of jobs were they?GRACE: I was a server, a hostess, and a dishwasher. Cracker Barrel, Logan's Roadhouse. Sonic. Oh Charlie's.SHEFFIELD: Oh wow. That's like the Holy Trinity of the south!GRACE: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Okay. All right. Well, uh, and you know what, and, but I'm, and I'm sure you had a great time at those places,GRACE: did. I'm a people person. Being a server was great. Like it was almost hard for me to move into this field because ifit wasn't for my husband and his like unwavering support, I would've just stayed. Just because being a server, I can make more money on tips. Because I love, I'm just a people person, so I had a lot of fun.I love problem solving. Being a hostess and having people don't realize how [00:10:00] hard a hostess job is, it is actually quite difficult because you're dealing with. Four different sets of people you're dealing with, your servers, you're dealing with your your, your customers. You're also dealing with your kitchen.And so keeping all of those things in mind in this big equation in your head so that the store doesn't get over, the servers don't get overwhelmed, the customers aren't unhappy and the kitchen isn't over overwhelmed as well. So yeah, like that's one of those jobs that now being a producer, I'm like, I was, I was learning.I didn't go to college, but I've, I've had some experience with some almost impossible problem solving as a hostess.SHEFFIELD: And so you are always a person who was trying to find the, the bigger picture and trying to look beyond yourself but also being introspective. So, but at the same time, as you said, you grew up in the Bible belt where, you, everybody, especially for, for black girls, like you were expected to go to church and do all the things that they say. And that was as I understand, how you grew up, but you, you kind of started to see the bigger picture in that regard as well.GRACE: Yeah, definitely. Yes, for sure.Why Christianity wasn't a good fitGRACE: It wasn't like a one day, like a moment where I could remember where I was like, I no longer believe in any of this stuff. I'm no longer that person. I think it was a gradual thing for me starting as soon as I graduated high school, of like, okay, now it's up to me to get my, because I moved outta my parents' house two months after I graduated high school.I moved into my own place and it was just one of those things of like, okay, am I going to take myself to church now every Sunday? Right? Because it's on me to be a Christian now. And I think I meant maybe I went maybe once or twice, and ultimately I'm talking to myself. And this was my thought process. My thought process was I'm working a job, I'm working two jobs at the time.I'm working full as many hours as they will give me. And the, the, the trick with part-time jobs is they'll schedule you just an hour under that 40 hours so they don't have to make you a full-time employee. So I'm working two jobs and I'm still trying to get as much as I can hourly from those jobs and save up money to get a [00:12:00] car.I grew up in a household where I think a lot of of black families have this experience where as soon as you turn 16, 17, 18, and you graduate, you're expected to then start paying bills in your parents' house. You're supposed to help. Right? And so the reason I moved out as soon as I graduated was because I felt like if I'm helping you to pay bills, how am I going to grow and get to a point where I can, move out, right?I'm, I'm paying bills here that I can't really save up for that and save up for a car, save up for college, et cetera. And my purpose in doing that was. Alright, well if I'm going to be paying bills, I'm going to do it where I have some say in the house, or I'm going to do it where I can make my own rules. I can do all these things.But in black culture, you can pay rent. Doesn't mean that I'm still your mom. You still have to listen to me. You still have to do what I say. You still have to, and to me, not going to work for me if, if I'm working and I'm paying bills, I'm an adult in this house at this point. And so I decided I'm going to move into my own place.I'm still paying bills, so I still have to pay rent. And now I'm saving up for my car and I'm saving up for college. And I'm like, this is a lot on me. I'm getting paid 7 25 an hour at a job that should be paying far more. I'm working two jobs. I can still barely cover my rent and save up for a car and make sure I have food and all that stuff.On top of that, to get to and from work, I have to give people gas money to take me to work and to pick me up from work. because Uber wasn't a thing at the time and so it was just, it felt like I'm barely getting paid. I. Anything, and I've gotta spread that out as far as I can get it. As well as saving up.And so it really came down to having this conversation with myself of, I can still have a relationship with religion or with God and have my own relationship because if it's the God that I think, and it's the God that I want to love and look up to you, he's not going to judge me for doing what I need to do and working on Sundays instead of coming in to spend a few hours, at church.Because, and at that point, at that moment is when I started to paint my own picture. I was like, oh, well if I can, if I, if this is the God that I want, right? Because God is who you [00:14:00] believe that he is, and it's the person that you have a relationship and a connection with, if that's the case. Then, oh, then this isn't, doesn't have to be the exact same way that they do it.And this doesn't have to be the, I can have my own relationship with God, which I've been told that growing up. But, the way they do it, they're like, you can have your own relationship, but it's supposed to be this way, this way, this way. You're supposed to act this way, this way, this way. It's like, but youtold me he was my best friend.My best friend's supposed to let me act how I want to act, blah, blah, blah. And so I started deconstructing that idea of, of what their idea of it is. And, okay, what is my idea of this person going to be? And even from that, and that was a, a, a heavy, a, a heavy, heavy on my heart for a while.And so from 18 to 19 to 20, I'm going through that process of deconstructing and reconstructing what God is to me. And it just started to die off even more because again, I'm an adult now. I'm starting to see all of this ha just havoc and chaos in the world. And to think that there's a person out there that's allowing all this to happen, and he's supposed to be the greatest, and he's supposed to be the best, but time after time, the Jews are persecuted.The blacks are persecuted, the gays are persecuted. Anyone that's not like you was persecuted. This is not the person that you've explained to me as God. And so it just became this, like, all this was a lie. Let me just go on with my life and focus on what's real, what's in front of me, what I can prove, what I can move forward with to make my life better.

Episode SummaryThe Trump Administration's wars on federal employees and research science are getting a lot of headlines, but there's a third war that's being conducted by the radical right that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should, and that is its efforts to control Americans’ bodily autonomy. Whether it’s trying to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, or trying to place restrictions on birth control, the reactionaries are trying to control sex itself. They’re even supporting laws to eliminate restrictions on child marriage so that minors can be forced to have babies.As disparate as right wing’s wars on governance, science, and sexuality may seem, they are actually linked because all three of these things are expressions of knowledge—about the world through science, about how to serve the public, and about ourselves and who we are. That is ultimately what these attacks on bodily autonomy are.Savannah Sly, my guest on today's program has thought a lot about all of these issues because she has been an advocate for sex workers' rights for quite a long time, including her efforts as founder of the New Moon Network, a board member at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, and with the Free Speech Coalition.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch.Related Content—A brief history of the world’s oldest profession and how monotheism canceled Yahweh's sex goddess wife—How #MeToo changed the adult media industry for the better—Male popular culture is obsolete, and men are suffering because of it—For a few decades, alt-weekly classified ads revolutionized dating and adult entertainment—Porn used to be a bipartisan industry, but not since Trump got in bed with the Christian right—How a retired porn star is helping her male fans understand themselves betterAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:18 — Understanding sex work and its misconceptions12:10 — Religious fundamentalism and control over sexuality17:07 — Impact of changing gender roles on society24:28 — Normalization and stigma of sex work during the pandemic27:54 — Sex work in right-wing political environments33:14 — Sex workers' access to power36:05 — “Traditional values,” polygamy, and non-heterosexuality41:29 — Moving forward48:28 — Right-wing groups want to ban porn via disingenuous “age verification” laws58:27 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So, before we get into the discussion of the topic here, let's can you just give the audience a bit of a background on what New Moon is and what you guys do there?SAVANNAH SLY: Sure New Moon is a national nonprofit located in the us. And our goal is to support the movement for sex workers' rights. We do that with three different areas of work. We talk to funders and philanthropy about the issue of sex workers' rights and how it might align with their current giving portfolios.And then we try and unlock dollars so we can channel funding into the grassroots movement. So this means hundreds of small. Sex worker and survivor led nonprofits around the us. We try and get them a little bit of funding to do their good work, and then we also do capacity building because we know it takes more than money to accomplish things.So we offer programming to help grassroots leaders be more effective and sustainable at what they're doing.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right, cool.And so I think a lot of people, you know who, who don't know anyone who or don't know that they know who was in, involved in. Erotic services in one waySLY: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: I think, that may seem all a bit strange and unfamiliar to them. So, and I'm guessing that that is something you have had to explain to people why this is more widespread and more important than they may realize.SLY: A time or two, I do find myself talking about what is sex work and. How is it different from sex trafficking? I, I, I have that conversation a lot and I'm always happy to have that conversation. I myself have been in the erotic industry since I was 18, so it's been [00:04:00] quite a while. And if I was not directly involved in sex work myself, I think that I would carry a lot of the assumptions that most people do because from the outside it looks pretty scary.And you might think, how could anybody ever voluntarily do this? But then when you're on the inside, it gives you a whole different perspective on the different motivations and realities faced by people in the adult industry. And you might notice that I'm using a lot of different phrases interchangeably sex work.Is a big umbrella term. That's sort of like a, a labor rights framework. And it's a, a phrase used to describe the exchange of money or something of value for a sexual or erotic service. So that's a, a lot of different kinds of behaviors and activities we're talking about everything from prostitution to, in my opinion, certain kinds of marriages.But then not everybody identifies with the phrase sex work. because they might be they might create adult content online. There might not be no sex involved. They're like, I'm not a sex worker. We, in the sex workers' rights movement, we include them, we advocate for their rights. But some people use phrases like adult content creator or erotic professional to describe their works.There's a lot of different words we use to describe similar things.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, there are, and there are a lot of different things, as you said, facets to that. But and as you alluded to earlier, I think a lot of people, they do have a lot of misconceptions about. The adult entertainment industry and people who, who work in it, and I probably most principally involving this idea that, oh, well, everybody who's doing it want to do it. And, oh, everybody's just being trafficked and, and they're, they're slaves and, and it's just not, it's not consensual for them. And none of that's true though.SLY: Well, it's kind of like anything else. It's, I mean, if you talk to people in the sex trade, the erotic industry, the adult industry, whatever we wanna [00:06:00] call it. And you ask them, why are you here? The vast majority of people are gonna say, to earn money, right? So it's a job, it's a labor sector. That's why we use that labor framing sex work when we're just talking about all these different kinds of activities.And so when you have an opportunity for people to make money. That means there's also an opportunity for other people to make money off of people. So I think where people get concerned about sex work is, in my ideal world, sex workers themselves would have labor rights and protections that are standard in other industries so that they could make their money for themselves and their families and if they were going to work with other people.They would have a lot of legal frameworks and assurances to make sure they couldn't be exploited because like in a lot of other industries it's easy for third parties to become motivated by profiting off of other people. And this is where you see in the, in the sex trade. You see people exploiting others, maybe even coercing them into the sex trade so that they can make money off of them, and that's a big problem.We don't like that. Nobody in the sex worker rights movement stands for exploitation or abuse of any kind.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, and, and it is, it does, it does happen. And, and there are organizations that are standing against it. but I think, a, a lot of people tend to. focus on that aspect of things. And especially when you look at other industries such as agriculture or hotels, cleaning services, or construction. Like those in industries, farm work, actually have trafficked people often and no one seems to care about those victims.SLY: There's also a great deal of sexual exploitation that can go along with those labor rights violations in those industries. I, I agree with you. I do feel that people give more attention to harms in the sex trade than they do in [00:08:00] other industries because of sex. And for a lot of people, sex causes a knee-jerk reaction.A lot of people themselves have traumatic sexual backgrounds. It's very hard for a lot of people to imagine sexuality being part of somebody's occupation, and I can understand that again if I had not done it myself. I might have had a hard time understanding it as well, but when we're looking at violations of human rights or harms or exploitation, if, if we do treat sex work like an occupation, and I've, I've talked to thousands of people who work in the sex trade mostly, mostly women.They're there to make money. So they're workers, okay. They think of themselves largely as workers. There is no other industry where workers are kept safer by taking away their rights or their ability to do their job. And so in the Sex Worker Rights movement, our whole thesis is that if you give sex workers, if you recognize their fundamental human rights for one, and then allow them to actually work towards.Formal labor recognition so that they can have workers' rights on top of human rights. We think that they will be in a better position to resist and deny people who would exploit them to reach out for help when somebody's trying to harm them. Like if there's a predator posing as a client and they assault somebody, a lot of sex workers don't feel comfortable even calling 9 1 1 if they've been assaulted or raped because they're afraid they're gonna get arrested.So if people can't even report crimes against themselves. How are we gonna mitigate harms in the sex trade? So we advocate for decriminalizing it, talking openly about it, letting people be sex workers above ground and not sort of in the black market shadows. And then we think that a lot of that quality of life and safety would improve greatly.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think so. And I, a, a lot of people when they think about this stuff, I think another reason why there is more of a, undue [00:10:00] focus on sex workers, as alleged victims of other people is, this, this this trope of trying to protect the, the, the dainty woman. and, and they don't, like people who are engaging in that.They don't really care about women who are being trafficked to clean hotels or to pick crops in the field. Like that doesn't matter to them because, well, they're, they're, they're. They're not dainty enough. They're not cute, they're not. Whatever it is, they might happen to think and it's just extraordinarily patronizing.SLY: I think what. If you were to read between the lines, the difference between society's impetus to protect women from engaging in sex work versus agricultural work or salon work or domestic cleaning work, where they might be subject to exploitation is sex is protecting women from sex because we think of sex as being, something inherently violent. I think I think especially a lot of women have sexual trauma in their lives. I, I know more women than not who have experienced sexual abuse or assault from young ages. That's a societal problem. And so I, I understand how it can be very hard. For people to take their personal experiences or their personal relationship to sex, or they might have a relationship to sex where sex is sacred and it's only something that you have with a trusted and beloved partner.If your binaries are trust and love is where sex happens or I. Coercion and assault and rape it, it's gonna be very hard to understand how somebody like me could choose to have sexual engagements with strangers sometimes for something as crass as money. So I understand people's knee-jerk reaction to wanna protect people, especially women from sex.But it's. Really patronizing, frustrating, and not helpful. If anything, it's kind of [00:12:00] endangering and I don't think that people realize that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, because it keeps people in the shadows. And when you're in the shadows, you, you don't have rights. And that's what it comes down to.Religious fundamentalism and control over sexualitySHEFFIELD: Um, but, but there's also, and you alluded to this a bit earlier, that, you know the, the religious agenda as well, and know when, and you can see that in so much of these state laws that these far right legislators are pushing through.And I imagine we. They may try to do that at the national level. I, I don't doubt that they will to try to, ban adult content within their site or require bogus age verification because they're trying to women's sexuality and repress it. ISLY: Absolutely. I've been very gentle with my language so far because, hello, I'm new to your viewers. I'm trying to meet you where you're at, but so when I was speaking about people having a knee jerk reaction to sex work, I was talking about. Everyday people who have, who, who think of themselves as having respect for their fellow human and they're not driven by an extreme religious doctrine when you're talking about religion and sexuality.It's a whole different ballpark, and my language is a little less gentle.SHEFFIELD: Oh, go for it.SLY: great. So religious fundamentalists around the world of different stripes from Christianity to other religions. The power is concentrated on controlling reproduction, and you can only control reproduction if you control the people who can reproduce, who are cisgender women or transgender men.Depending on how inclusive you wanna be in your language. But people with reproductive organs who can give birth, it's really important to control them. If your goal is to control a population to. Create a, a larger population so that you have an army or a labor force. You need to have something to control.And when people like me, when women like me, decide when. How, and with whom and why we have sex and whether we [00:14:00] reproduce or not. That's that's kind of a loose cannon for religious fundamentalists women such as me who exercise bodily autonomy and choose who we sleep with and why are a. Threat to religious fundamentalism because we will not be controlled.We will actually use our sexuality to create our own resources and our own safety nets with our communities and our own forms of stability for ourselves and our families. So it makes us less dependent on, I. A single man, which is a problem for religion, which is patriarchal. It's a problem for institutions like churches.If we're not dependent on a church as the center for which we get different resources to take care of our families or guidance on how to take care of our families or how to live a good life. If we're defining that for ourselves, they become obsolete. So this is why we see religious fundamentalists in politics pushing to eradicate abortion and criminalize it.Sex work has never been popular amongst different parties, even secular ones, but sex work is certainly in the cross hairs and then the censorship and criminalization of pornography because you just can't have things like that, or people start getting their own ideas about how to live a good life and what's moral and what's not.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and, and it also works the other way as well about about controlling cisgender men in that environment as well, because. Allowing men to, who to control their own sexual expression. So whether they have a partner or not, whether they're married or not whether they, choose to have sex at all. Those are. don't want them to do that. Like they and I, and I experienced that as growing up in Mormonism. But you know, like everything is about driving young men into, you cannot have sex unless you're married and you can never have an abortion and you cannot use birth control. So,SLY: Gotta procreate.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's right. And to, and to, and to tie you down to the community and the control because you're, when you're, busy changing a million diapers in your [00:16:00] early twenties, you don't have time to think, you don't have time to question, and you don't have time to just be by yourself.SLY: And you would know this better than I do because you come from a religious background. But isn't there something about status and having a place in the world, like if you are a young man who fulfills your community expectations? You, you father many children, you have a wife or maybe several. You're contributing to the community and also you're the head of your household, right?Isn't there some implication that you have respect or power, at least in your society?SHEFFIELD: Definitely. Yeah. Actually in for Mormons. They, if you like, and I, I experienced this, so, so I was running, a nationally recognized website and I was on TV and talk radio on the regular. And yet, because I wasn't married, somebody who was like, a 19-year-old, fresh, or even an 18-year-old, fresh out of high school who had gotten married, they had a higher social status than ISLY: Right, right.SHEFFIELD: Mormonism, despite the fact that, it, that I was serving the community much better than that person was. But within the control theology, I wasn't serving it as well.Impact of changing gender roles on societySLY: And I, I think that this is really important in the situation we find ourselves in society today where gender roles have been changing. Women have been accessing education and employment at a pace that sometimes outpaces young men, their peers. People are getting married less frequently and having fewer children.When women have control over these things, there's a shift in how many babies are had and how many marriages. And that can cause. It's change, and change is always hard. There's always an uncomfortable aspect to change, even if you're moving in a direction that could yield a lot of cool new things, a lot of different ways to live your life.I think it's been very challenging for young men to understand their place in society. I. Their place in romance and dating. What respect are they owed? What does being respected even mean in this culture anymore? And I see a lot of further right ideologies on [00:18:00] podcasts and from podiums, speaking directly to young men about like.It's time you got the respect you deserve. And they're talking about hearkening back to an older time where the only way you could get respect was if you had a submissive woman or two or three and you had a bunch of children. And then you know, you would be the head of the household and your own type of God under the church.And then under God a very kind of patriarchal, top-down lineage. Like you have your place in the company, your middle management. And I think that that appeals to a lot of young men who feel lost. And like they don't know where their place is. You're clearly the, I think you're more of an expert on that than I am, but that's something I certainly observe sometimes in the young men that I interface with as a sex worker.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and like, and that is really an important thing in place that sex workers have to sort of equalize things because, as women have become more. Aware that their place, that they don't have to be married to a man in order to have, self-respect or to be valued in the community. Instead of encouraging young, young men to have that same attitude that says, look, I don't, it doesn't matter if I have a relationship, doesn't matter if I'm married. I am my own person and I'm, I'm valuable in my own right. And so, instead of encouraging that they, they go after sex workers because sex workers enable younger men to, control their own sexuality.Really, that's what it comesSLY: I, I think sex workers are vilified, not only because they are a threat to the reproductive requirements of religious society and the marital requirements, but we're also seen as home wreckers. I. We're seen as a distraction outside of the marriage that could draw a man's attention away from his wife, away from his family, and draw resources away.And I think that that's a legitimate concern in some ways, but also there's a total lack of recognition for the fact that sex workers have quietly kept many relationships [00:20:00] together because. The wife is no longer interested in having sex with her partner for whatever reasons. Maybe the sex was never very good to begin with, which is a different conversation.Or maybe she's going through menopause and just like not into it anymore. I. Men can see sex workers with very strict parameters as to what's required for that exchange. Usually it's an amount of money and then they can pay that amount of money, get their sexual needs met, and go back to their family and keep fulfilling their requirements as a father, as a husband in that household.But I think that sex workers are seen as homewreckers unfortunately. And sex workers are also just lumped into, unmarried quote unquote loose women in general. To be a whore is not necessarily to be somebody who charges money for sex. A whore could be just a woman who sleeps with multiple people.Right? And I think that sex workers and women who are unmarried are kind of all lumped together, are and vilified equally. Because they're seen as a threat to the family. They're seen as a threat to this whole institution, this patriarchal construct of religion. Which is really too bad because I think that sex workers and what I would call liberated women have a lot to offer other women and men as far as different ways of doing things, and.When you do something different, as I said earlier there's gonna be change. And change can be really uncomfortable, and there's chaos that comes with change and some people are less chaos tolerant than others. And I think that's what we're seeing is a backlash to big change and the chaos that people feel around changing gender roles and socioeconomic status.But there's so much at the end of the tunnel if you can make it through the, the transformative process. And, you've had your own experiences with things like that. I.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And at the same time, the, while the, right and these other fundamentalist, groups are, are going after. Sex working people. also is a sub [00:22:00] a subset of, the kind of the, the, the turf feminists who are very anti-sex work as well.And what's your, I mean, what, what do you have? What do you think about those? What's yourSLY: I've spent well, I started Sex Worker Advocacy around 2013 because of the publicized conflation between sex work and sex trafficking. I was living in Seattle at the time and I started seeing all these media headlines around sex trafficking everywhere. And I. I realized that they were talking about sex work and I'm like, oh, these people are so misguided, these liberal Seattle people, they've never met sex workers.So my friends and I went to a town hall where they were having this big sex trafficking public awareness summit, and we tried to introduce ourselves and try and balance the conversation. And we found very quickly that there was zero interest in balancing the conversation. because there was an agenda and I was very surprised and a little naive to learn that it was mostly women driving this agenda.And it wasn't even conservative women, it was Seattle liberal women who see, I think they. They're divided into two camps, and it depends on how aware they are of their own analysis. Some of them are in that knee jerk place that I was talking about at the beginning of your podcast where they just cannot fathom.How a woman could meet strange men, have a sexual encounter with them, receive money in exchange, and feel okay about herself at the end of the day, they don't see how that could be anything other than exploitation and rape. And that's one set of conversations to have. Right? Then there's another set of women who are ex, they exclude sex workers from their feminism.They are more conscious I think, and they are either opposed to sex work because they see it as a threat to other women. Actually that's the whole crux of it. They see it as a threat to other women. As far as other women who want to be married and have happy relationships. They actually see sex workers as home records like a lot of conservatives do.Maybe they've had an experience where they had a partner who saw a sex worker. And those are [00:24:00] specific conversations that need to be had. And I've had a number of those conversations with women with that experience. Then there's women who see sex workers as a threat to feminism in general. They don't understand how a woman selling sexual and erotic services could be empowering.They think that it undermines the whole feminist agenda that will never reach equality as long as women. Some women choose to categorize themselves as dispensers of sex. And that's a deeper conversation to have. That's a little trickier.Normalization and stigma of sex work during the pandemicSHEFFIELD: Uh, it is. And although I do think that with the proliferation of, just so many people who are now doing, I OnlyFans or, I mean, hell even Instagram, like, there's a lot of pretty erotic stuff on Instagram nowadays. And like, but as that exploded, especially during the pandemic. I feel like, and, but you obviously know a lot more, interface a lot more with these types of people that those types of, of irrational prejudices are at least are, are lowering somewhat because the girl next door is literally the girl next door in many cases.SLY: think it's a really mixed bag. I think that we are getting the normalization effect where it's like during the pandemic. I found data to suggest that in may of 2020, so like the height of the pandemic when before vaccines and all this stuff, everybody's at home. I found data to suggest that between seven to 8,000 people per day in May of 2020 we're signing up to sell erotic content on OnlyFans.OnlyFans is one website. There's a litany of websites like OnlyFans that tens of thousands of people in the month of May were trying to sell erotic pictures on OnlyFans. It, I, I think that that moment the pandemic created more clandestine sex workers than ever. The majority of those people didn't make.Any money. because newsflash, it's kind of, it, it, it's can be a challenge to make money in sex work, especially when it's so competitive like that and oversaturated. But all those people now carry a scarlet letter, [00:26:00] right? If their mainstream employers would've found out that they did OnlyFans, they might get fired.If they were in a contentious custody dispute, they might lose custody of their kids. They could even be kicked outta their apartment if their landlord found out. Not to mention all the social ostracization that could happen if you're. Friends or fr family found out. So I think a lot more people are aware of the stigma that sex work carries.But again, as I said at the top of the show, and not everybody identifies as a sex worker. I, I think that the vast majority of people who signed up for OnlyFans to sell pictures of their feet or their butt or whatever. They may not have even heard the phrase sex work. They might not think of it as sex work, but they know that it's naughty and that other people can't know about it.They know about the stigma. So some, a lot of people are getting normalized to that area of sex work. But then on the other hand, I think we're seeing a huge backlash. Especially amongst young men. Some men, young men are like, oh my goodness, it's a cornucopia of booty and OnlyFans and I can access sexual pleasure in a way I never could before.And yay for those young men for being able to access that pleasure. But a lot of people, I think a lot of young men are kind of offended by the proliferation of women who demand that you pay for it, right? Because again, that's a change. I talk to many men who are a generation or two older than me.And they're like, it's not like it was cheaper or easier to get in a woman's pants. Back in the day. You had to bring her out to dinner and quarter and meet her parents and put on a nice jacket, and then you still might not get laid. It's like, well, I wanna tell fellows now. It's like you can pay.Three to $12 and get some really sexy content from your favorite model and enjoy that. Or sometimes you can even meet people in person to have a good, like a real experience and gotta take 'em to dinner or meet their parents and all this stuff. And I see that as kind of an upside. But I think some young men are offended by the having to pay for it, but I think you've always had to pay for it just in different ways.Sex work in right-wing political environmentsSHEFFIELD: The other thing about the, so many people getting into adult entertainment in [00:28:00] one way or another is that not only is it people in, everybody's neighborhood, but it's also people are getting into it who are in the right wing. Political environment as well.And as we're recording that over this episode that we in the news is this woman named Ashley St. Clair, has gone public with a lawsuit, is saying that she had a child with Elon Musk and. She met him through Twitter and the interesting thing that a lot of people don't know about her is that Ashley St. Clair is a sex worker. She made money selling pictures of herself, like that was what she was doing before she got into politics.SLY: not know that about Ashley St. Clair. So she was was she on OnlyFans or something like that, or was she creating porn with a studio? Do you know?SHEFFIELD: we don't fully know what she was doing, but like she had her, your username on the internet was sex, laptop.SLY: Oh, okay.SHEFFIELD: so we have an idea of, what she was using at least her, her devices. But we do know, yeah, she, people have. Said that she was, in various discord groups, offering, you paid X number of dollars, then she would send you, various photos,SLY: for her. And now she has a baby with Elon Musk. Wow. That's a, that's a power play for a sex worker. How do you think that's going for her?SHEFFIELD: Well, we'll see. He, so far he hasn't admitted it in court andSLY: I.SHEFFIELD: I guess, she's trying to get him to pay up. we'll see how that goes. But, like this. But she's one of many people that are, that that sex work is so it's everywhere, including in these right-wing environments.And she's just one of several people I think we could point to. Right.SLY: Absolutely. There's also Amber Rose who I think of as one of the people who was really involved in something called Slut Walk. Have you heard of Slut Walk? Matt?SHEFFIELD: I have, I have. But why don't you give the a review for just for anybody who doesn't knowSLY: Slut [00:30:00] Walk was or it still is, it still happens.It's a protest. I think it started in Canada actually. And Slut Walk was to protest the idea that if a woman dresses a certain way that she should be a target for assault and rape and violence and.SHEFFIELD: it.SLY: deserves it.She was wearing a short skirt. And so the message of Slut Walk was, we can wear whatever we want, including very little. And that does not mean that we should be subjected to gender-based violence or a lack of justice if somebody does hurt us, especially sexually. And so when I think of Amber Rose, I think of her as being a loud supporter of Slut Walk and it's been really.Interesting to say the least to see her turn towards the right. I also think of Melania Trump, who I think of her as a sex worker and she has one client. Right. But it, and I don't know for sure, but Melania seems like a very familiar character to me. She seems like she was probably a high-end escort or erotic model.Somebody who was prob probably I would allege dispensing her time, companionship and sexuality. Two high net worth individuals such as Donald Trump. And then she probably brokered a deal for him to be her exclusive client. And if I were her, I would be horrified by the turn of events. She doesn't strike me as somebody who wanted to be First Lady.But it is interesting to think that we, we probably have a sex worker as First Lady again in the White House.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I, I think that that is a very good point, and it is one that the mainstream media doesn't. Talk about because I mean, you look at the public interactions that, that Melania and Donald have had over the years, including Mo, very prominently at the Republican National Convention where she in 2024 where she didn't even speak at all.So literally the first time wife of a candidate had not spoken since, I believe like the 1964. and then she in public refuses to kiss him. Like that's because it'sSLY: CanSHEFFIELD: in herSLY: you imagine who could blame her? Yeah. If it's not in the contract, stick to your guns. [00:32:00] And it's interesting, so sex workers are not a political monolith.I mean, there's millions of people in what I call the sex trade or the adult industry, and they're, they don't all belong to a single political party.They have different worldviews, religions, they come from different backgrounds. But generally the movement for sex workers' rights is more on the progressive side of the political spectrum because we recognize that, progressive values are the ones best positioned to defend our rights to bodily autonomy, which is central to sex workers' rights.And on the right we have things like Project 2025, which are looking to criminalize pornography and strip us of bodily autonomy and the right to who we can love and who we can have relationships with. So it's always odd to me to meet sex workers who are on the right, but they certainly exist.SHEFFIELD: yeah. And and I guess in Melania's case, she did it one. Concession. If you remember during the campaign that right before election day, she came out and said she supported abortion rights and that she believed that they were important for women to have that. But you know, who knows?Maybe that was just ploy. They campaign managers thought, well see if we have his wife saying she supports it, then people will, will not be afraid of him taking it away. I don'tSLY: Oof. I don't know.Sex workers' access to powerSLY: I have met sex workers who are on the right, and I think that there's a mentality amongst some people that I mean sex workers have access to power. Many men, regardless of where they are in society everyday working class people or heads of state have sexual desires and a desire to connect with sex workers.And so sex workers can get very close to people in all different echelons of society. Stormy Daniels is a great example of somebody who had a, a direct sexual relationship with Donald Trump under, bizarre seeming circumstances. I think one reason that sex workers are criminalized and vilified is because we get so close to power.And because people like Stormy Daniels can be like, this guy has a weird penis. He's a, he is, he is a, he is a jerk. He intimidated me and my daughter in a, in a parking lot through some [00:34:00] thug.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.SLY: we are in a position to know some of people's most intimate secrets, and also to call them out when they are behaving in a way that is not aligned with their behavior behind closed doors.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that is a great point and, and it's another way that you know, that I was saying earlier that. Well actually maybe I can't say that because I don't know if it was earlier or not. Maybe I won't remember the comedy and sex thing being the deepest in the thing. Okay. Well say that. Because I don't remember whether I did or not. Okay.Well, so, just back to the the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. Thing though, you, you, you, you mentioned, that you, you, you work very closely with them. So it's named after a woman who who was named Victoria Woodhull. Tell us about who she was. because she's got an interestingSLY: She is a fascinating person and actually the person who tells Victoria's story the best is comedian Caitlyn Bailey, who has an amazing podcast called The Oldest Profession Podcast. There's a two part series and she's been on. That's wonderful. I love Caitlyn. But check out the Old expression podcast. And there's a two part series on Victoria Woodhull that is fascinating, but in a nutshell, I would describe her as the first woman to run for president in the us.One of the first women to be active on Wall Street, and also a very likely sex worker. She was an advocate for sexual freedom, for non-monogamy and for women having a, a litany of choices in their lives, especially where sex was concerned. She was a controversial figure. She was sort of, disowned by the early feminist movements and the the suffrage movement because she was seen as a a little too hot for the mainstream.She was ahead of her time, for sure, but that's who Woodhull is named after.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And she ran for president, as you said in what was it, 1872, I think. So yeah, that was definitely, far ahead of, of what people were expecting. Yeah. Because not only could a lot of women not even vote she was running for [00:36:00] president before they could even voteSLY: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: SoSLY: Fascinating character.SHEFFIELD: absolutely.Absolutely."Traditional values," polygamy, and non-heterosexualitySHEFFIELD: And that is one of the greatest ironies I think of, people who talk about traditional values, quoteSLY: Right.SHEFFIELD: like the original, traditional values were. Polygamy and and bisexuality. Like that's, that's what, that's what humans were doing, before all of this stuff came in.And, the invention of monogamy and, and especially for, for women, I mean the, the scientific research is pretty clear that, when you do or when psychologists have, have measured the arousal, natural arousal patterns of both men and women, a lot more people are, are are bisexual or aroused by, doesn't matter necessarily the the sex of the person they're looking at.And so that's the, people say, oh, I wanna live naturally. The RFK Junior is big on natural and holistic stuff. And it's like, well that's the original traditional values. And if you don't realize that then, then you should.SLY: I think that's a, so I think the double-edged sword, of what sex work has to offer society, the the ways it can be embraced and then also resisted or like bristled at, so sex work, like everything that's available online now, it's easy. I mean, I have this experience I'll be poking around online looking at erotic content. Sometimes I'm just researching my colleagues. I'm not there to just like have a fun time with myself, but occasionally I'll find something or someone and be totally turned on And, surprised because maybe I didn't think that that was my cup of tea. But here's evidence to the contrary. Oh, this new thing I just discovered is totally my cup of tea.For me that's exciting because I'm like, oh, cool. I just diversified my own sexual persona. I. There's even more things in this world that I can enjoy and more people I can connect with to find pleasure. To me, that's exciting. I think for a lot of people though, it can be very threatening when it is contrary to deep, deeply societal condition, especially around homophobia, right?So being attracted to other men, [00:38:00] I think that the vis increased visibility of trans women through erotic media has been, a complex experience for young men who were raised in such homophobic cultures and transphobic cultures, because, I mean, clearly they're turned on. I mean, trans porn is selling, somebody's buying it.But then look at the rhetoric. Trans lives were made into one of the strongest wedged issues during this presidential election. That was, I think that coincidence is, I don't think it is a coincidence actually. So sex work has a lot to offer, but that also kind of makes people self-reflect. And if they can't reject their societal, societal conditioning to embrace what they are naturally into and who they wanna connect with, and that's gonna cause a conflict inside.Right.SHEFFIELD: And the other thing also is that, sex work and, encouraging people to fully get to know themselves. It's also, against what these right-wing authoritarian religions. Tell people because they don't, they tell people to think with their body. When it comes to, whether evolution happened or whether, people, evolved from, from apes, like that. They say, no, don't listen to that. Tell, listen to your heart. Your heart will tell you if these things are true. And then, but at the same time, sex work is going around and saying, well, actually you should listen to your body be and you should, be not, don't be afraid to be attracted to what you're attracted to or interested in what you're interested to. that's deeply unsettling, I think, to people who have this authoritarian mindset because it's hitting them where they're most vulnerable, which is embodied knowledge.SLY: That's an eye-opener for me. I didn't know that people were instructed in religious communities to look into their hearts to determine whether or something is true. I would, I would assume that there's lots of messaging and conditioning in a whole environment that might inform the signals that somebody's getting from their heart, right?SHEFFIELD: Is.SLY: yeah, like again, if I had never done sex work, if you told me to check in with my heart about [00:40:00] sex work as somebody who had never done it, is this right or wrong? My heart might tell me something that is just not correct because I have a lot of societal conditioning and messaging around the issue of sex work.Once you have done something or I don't know, like tasted the fruit off the tree of knowledge, I don't know. You probably know like whether that's an accurate.SHEFFIELD: You got the metaphorSLY: okay. It's a good metaphor, like once you've gone there, you've had an experience for yourself, then you can listen to your heart. But if you try and listen to your heart on things that you have no basis in, no experience in, then you're probably more listening to the factors around you than from within most likely.SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. I mean, that is what, how it is. But at the same time, you know when, I mean there's, there's, there's something about both humor and sexuality that is really threatening to these religious control mechanisms because they both are the, are, go to your core as a person because you know what you think is funny and how you know you are, what you think is, is arousing.Those, nobody can, nobody can really impose that on you. Those are things that you feel in your own self, whatever, for whatever your reasons are. And, and so that's why, when you look at. How are these, various towns or cities or states like they, they come after comedy and they come after sex because that's, those are, that's your body telling you, the truth about yourself.I think.Moving forwardSLY: I think you're right. So what do we do about it? How do we reach people and tell them that, comedy can be enlightening and sex is really not that scary. You just need the right tools and community and information to navigate it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And well, and, and I mean, you do other things besides New Moon. You and you were doing some other stuff as well. Why don't you, let's talk about that a little bit.SLY: Sure. Where do you wanna start?SHEFFIELD: Hey, wherever you wanna start, Savannah.[00:42:00]SLY: A lot of my mission being a sex worker advocate has been to focus on the experience of sex workers and the welfare of sex workers. Sex workers themselves will always be my priority because there's nobody advocating for us except for us. Secondary to that, I would say, is advocating for the rights of our clients to access adult media and the services of sex workers, the clients of sex workers.Are far less able and willing to come out and advocate, I think, because in some ways they have more to lose which is not always true. Sex workers have a lot to lose too. It depends on how out we are and how many, how much we have invested in sex work. For, for many of us, sex work is a pretty big part of our lives.It might be a secret that we keep from our families and our mainstream communities. But I would say that that is less and less so with the proliferation of sex work as a, mainstream phrase and sex worker rights movements and communities. Whereas clients. They might see a sex worker once a month for an hour, and that is the only time, and it might bring a lot of value to their life.But that is the only time when they're interfacing with sex workers or even thinking about sex work or their risk, but I know so many men whose lives have been totally turned upside down and ruined because they were part of a sting operation. They got busted. They thought they were gonna see a consenting adult sex worker.It was a cop instead. Before you know it, they're being dragged to the media and court and their lives are totally ruined. There's an increasing criminalization around even accessing. Adult materials that are constitutionally, our right to access accessing porn. Seeing the criminalization of porn in many states, unless you upload your id a lot of people are not gonna upload their ID to look at adult materials, even though it is their right, because the stigma is so heavy.So I think about the, I think about advocating for sex workers, but then I also think about our clients and what can we do to invite our clients into advocacy, to [00:44:00] speaking for themselves and to also, helping to push things forward so that they can keep living lives that are happy and informed by the services of sex workers.And to do all of that, we kind of need to look at our opposition. Now, there's religious opposition, which I'll be honest, Matthew, I don't really know how to. Bridge that gap. It seems pretty far that that's a big aisle to cross from sex workers to religious fundamentalists. But I can talk to other women.I can talk to women who think of themselves as progressive or liberal, but who are exclude sex work in their feminism. Right. And so something we've been doing at New Moon actually is trying to foster. Foster dialogues with clients to see how they might like to show up in the movement, but also fostering dialogues with women who oppose the movement for sex workers' rights.Talking to them like human beings because they are, and trying to like do unto others as they would do unto you. Treating them with respect and acknowledging that they're not just advocating against sex workers for the fun of it. They're afraid. They're afraid that sex work will lead to the increased subjugation of women.And when we take that concern seriously, it makes their actions. Much more understandable and it gives us a place to start identifying common cause. So, new Moon is starting to host a series of dialogues with people who do not support sex workers' rights but are somehow active in tr sex trade related policy conversations.Usually when it comes to like, anti-trafficking efforts, to see if we can a, humanize each other and just have a respectful dialogue. That's the starting point.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.SLY: maybe identifying some shared language. They don't like the phrase sex work. They think it's gross. They think it's crass and they don't think how, they all think it's, they think it's all rape.So the phrase sex work to them is totally nonsensical. I. They might use phrases like prostituted people or prostituted women, which we don't like because it makes us into this like passive object that gets passed around. So maybe we can come up [00:46:00] with shared language, like people in the sex trade. Is there neutral language we can at least use to have these conversations?because it's gonna be really triggering until we come up with shared language and then policy priorities. We argue for decades now, Matthew, about whether sex work is work, whether clients can be anything but predators, and whether sex work can or should be decriminalized, and the arguments around those key points prevent us from having dialogues around things like discrimination protections.I think everybody on all sides of the conversation believes that all those OnlyFans models we talked about who signed up during the pandemic to sell seat, feet picks. They're all at risk of on a wide array of different forms of discrimination. And I think that anti-sex work, anti-trafficking advocates and sex workers rights advocates could all get on board with protecting people, especially women from discrimination related to their past and the sex trade.There's so many policies that we don't even. Take the time to identify, let alone work together on, because we're so hung up on our fundamental disagreements. So that's a, that's actually one of the main ways that we're trying to push things forward at New Moon.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. And you're also involved with two other organizations as well. You want to talk aboutSLY: Sure. I'm on the board of Woodhull Freedom Foundation, which is actually New Moon's fiscal sponsor, and they are the only organization in the US dedicated to sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. Woodhull has been around for over 20 years now, and I. They show up wherever sexual freedom is at risk of being violated.So they show up for L-G-B-T-Q individuals polyamorous families and individuals, people engaged in kink or BDSM and sex workers as well as other sexual minorities. And they use the UN Declaration on Human Rights as their sort of. Fundamental document for understanding whether people's sexual freedoms are being violated.And they actually have an amazing series out right now called Fact Checked fact checked by Woodhull right [00:48:00] now looks at myths around pornography and some of the different policies being proposed to keep minors from accessing pornography. So if you are. Interested in the debate around porn?Is it harmful or helpful, or is it like what's the deal with porn? You can go to fact check by Woodhull and get some academically research and cited. I. Just myth busting facts, so that's a great place to go if you're looking for some information about pornography and age verification.Right-wing groups want to ban porn via disingenous "age verification" lawsSLY: And then I'm also on the board of the Free Speech Coalition, which is the 5 0 1 C six trade association for the adult industry. I recently Bo joined that board and they are. Leading the resistance against so-called age verification bills across the United States that would on face value.They're trying to prevent minors from accessing adult content online. But really these so-called age verification bills present. A huge violation of privacy and a chilling effect on people, adults accessing. Constitutionally protected adult materials. Because people are not going to upload their IDs to PornHub, to, to look at materials.It's, it's a chilling effect because that stigma we talked about,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, and, and I mean, aside from stigma, it's also people are afraid of, of identity theft because, if PornHub has your ID and then they get hacked, well then you're fucked.SLY: I.SHEFFIELD: not in a good way.SLY: Totally. And that would be such a target for hackers, right? Because it's a stigmatized population if you're looking at porn. We live in a society where if you look at porn, you're bad, even though it is your right to look at porn if you want, if you're an adult. So yeah, it creates incredibly vulnerable data.It's just a bad idea. And also people just like use VPNs to get around this. It doesn't even work. We need better. More common sense solutions to keeping miners away from materials. They are not old enough to be accessing.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, and the other thing also about these databases that they're, that, these Republican states are asking people to assemble is [00:50:00] this is a Trojan horse for using databases for other content. So like, and, and this is something that FSEI think does very well at making the case to more libertarian oriented people to say, look. know, you are afraid. You say you're afraid of government, Tyra, well, this isSLY: Here it is.SHEFFIELD: instance of it. This is what it looks like. And then, why couldn't this same database or these same legal principles be used to say, well, you know what, we, we don't think you should be reading this kind of political content on the internet.SLY: Exactly. I think the people who are in it can see what's coming. I think it's can sound alarmist to everyday people. because they just don't know. They just don't know. They're like, oh, how could it lead to that? But the adult industry and sex workers are what I refer to as canaries in the coal mine for creeping human rights violations.And so what happens to us is stuff that people should pay attention to because it will come for them eventually.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's because these are legal frameworks, like once it's legal. To engageSLY: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: of conduct for the government, then it can be legal in any other area. As long as someone's willing to say it. Like that's, that's the only difference of why it would or would not be plausible or implausible is. Just someone willing to do it. And, and we're seeing that, over and over with, with the new Donald Trump administration, that things that people were like, oh, the norms will protect us. The institutions will protect us. No, now that's not how it works.SLY: You gotta protect yourself. You gotta protect yourself. And that means advocating for your personal rights to remain fully intact. And that means that you need to. Protest these government overreaches with your fellow Americans. Even if you disagree with your fellow Americans on a litany of other issues, you need to keep your fundamental human rights intact and your constitutional rights because otherwise they're gonna get steamrolled.SHEFFIELD: a lot of this right wing fear and intimidation that they're doing against sex work and against adult content. also that they are trying to [00:52:00] enforce,SLY: yes.SHEFFIELD: because the, and, and again, you look at like, so much of the ancient material you can find, whether not just in Greece but in other ancient civilizations, India, and other places, and native American tribes, people, there was no concept of. Of straight or gay or lesbian.These things did not exist. No one thought to try to, divide people in that way.SLY: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: so in a lot of ways, sex work is kind of returning things to how they used to be. And that's dangerous, I think for a lot of these, forced heterosexuality, people that are on the right.SLY: I think it is dangerous. They want us to get with the program. Right, and to procreate. And to have big families that can turn into workforce and soldiers and more breeders. And as soon as you start having non procreative sex just for fun, well that sort of makes that whole process seem pretty unnecessary and like a lot of work.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm.SLY: thing that sex work has really opened my eyes to is the range of sexual desire that people have. Even people who think of themselves as. Really vanilla, conventional. I've had the privilege, I've been a sex worker for over 20 years, and so there's some people that I've worked with for about 20 years and I've seen their progression as sexual beings.And I work predominantly with cisgendered men who usually identify as straight eventually over time. It's interesting how these straight men, when they become comfortable, it takes years sometimes for them to share with me that. They kind of like to try sucking cock, or maybe we could just start with having another man in the session with us just to see how it is to be naked around another man in an erotic environment.A lot of men wanna explore what it feels like to wear what we think of as women's clothing, because let's face it, women's clothing is more interesting. It if. Feels good on your skin and especially [00:54:00] lingerie is all about sex and men do not have nearly the options to express themselves sexually. So what we call cross-dressing might also just be a man accessing eroticism, right?Because that's the only option to, to wear erotic clothing generally, is to cross dress. Unless you're into like really kinky men's clothing, like the leather harnesses and things like that.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm.SLY: But I think, so it's been interesting to talk to you about this issue of, heteronormativity and how the mainstream and, religious institutions really drill that as the only option and that you're perverted if you wander outside of it.When really as a sex worker I see people of all sexes, all being far more bisexual and sexually fluid, given the chance and the space to be not judged for it there's a lot of interest in connecting with. People you just find attractive regardless of what they have between their legs, and that seems to be a big threat to the powers that be.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. And and, and then it, it's also, especially even with some of the content creators themselves, like, I think most prominently there's that YouTuber, Steven Crowder, who was sued, I believe, or at least, yeah. He was sued by his former male employees for sexual harassment. and, had to admit. yes, I am bisexual. And I, I have a problem with it as, as he, as he put it, but you know, is, the thing. Like they, they always talk about, oh, we, we want freedom. We, we believe in freedom on our side, but they don't believe in freedom and, and they live such repressed and miserable lives and they want everybody else to have that same misery.I think that's part of itSLY: And speaking of misery, so I specialize as a dominatrix, which means that I'm usually what we call running the fuck in, in the, in a session. That means that I am the one who is like if, if I'm having A-A-B-D-S-M session with a man, usually he's in a more submissive role. I'm in the dominant role. I might be the one [00:56:00] actually wearing a strap on cock.And the beauty of that is that man gets. To experience sexual situations that we only allow women to experience, and that is the experience of being desired, of being ravished of, oh, look, I have little.SHEFFIELD: Oh,SLY: Interesting thumbs up.SHEFFIELD: thumbs up.SLY: experience of being ravished desired. The feeling of psychodrama of somebody wants you so much that they just can't help themselves.And in a role play scenario that can be really intoxicating and exciting and also to let go and not be in charge of everything. I think that one of the many burdens that men carry in conservative societies is having to be in charge of everything. Maybe some people love that, but I don't know many people that do.And so wouldn't it be nice to, at least in the bedroom, to give up that control and let somebody just do scandalous, delicious, fabulous things to you and to not feel bad about it and not feel like you're being a beta or whatever. Just to understand that there are multiple sides of the coin when it comes to sexuality and get to have a balanced life.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they, and that's not what these control based religions are telling people. You can have, because. It's all about, well, you can only do this one thing and, check the box and you're done. And so, yeah, like this is, this is terrifying in a lot of ways because, I mean, ultimately in a, in many ways, sex and sexuality are, they are forms of knowledge. Ultimately, that's what they are. And in the same way that you see this fear of, I mean like the Trump administration just came out with these rules saying that you can't, if you have. In your scientific studies that have nothing to do with social science or whatever, like, a biologist is saying male or female in their study, they can't do it.SLY: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: and like this is, that's how these things are all linked in. So I think a, a lot of times people, they have this, if you, if you are more scientifically or businessy, bus businessy, that's not a word, business [00:58:00] inclined. People might think, oh, well that doesn't apply to me. It's not relevant to me.This authoritarianism, it's. Not coming for me, but in fact it is. AndSLY: is.SHEFFIELD: why you were saying, the urinary and the coal mine point really does make sense because it is about, it's an attack on knowledge ultimately. All ofSLY: It's an attack on knowledge and basic humanity and the most private aspects of our lives that are also the most fulfilling straight up.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. It is.ConclusionSHEFFIELD: Um, all right, well, so people who want to keep going and looking into more stuff on this, so like obvi obviously our, our friend Kaitlin has lots of great material. You got any other places people can go to besides the Woodhull stuff, which you mentioned, which is also good as well.SLY: Sure.SHEFFIELD: are some other ones?SLY: So, as I mentioned at the start of the show, I run an organization called New Moon Network. That's new moon network.org. You can log on there to learn all about the movement for sex workers rights and how we're supporting it. Also if you're interested in finding local sex worker led groups in your region, maybe you yourself identify as a sex worker and you'd like to get involved.You can drop us a line and we might be able to help you find a local group if you can't do that on your own. because some of these groups are a little more underground. Also, free Speech Coalition. Highly recommend if you believe in free speech, if you are defender of free speech. If you think that we should have the right to watch porn in peace without surveillance or risking our personal data, you should totally check out Free Speech Coalition.They have an amazing legislative tracker on their website where you can see what's going on in your state. You can sign up for action alerts and they have some really great, clear information on what's going on.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely they do. So, and for people who wanna follow you on social media, what's your addresses for them or usernames?SLY: I'm on blue sky now under Savannah Sly. I am still on Twitter under Savannah Sly, and you can also find me on Instagram trying to exist without being shadow banned. Savannah Sly,SHEFFIELD: All right, sounds good. I encourage [01:00:00] everybody to check that out. Thanks for joining me today.SLY: Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion, and you are a paid subscribing member, so you got. Access to this full episode, and I thank you very much for your support and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show.We have all the episodes and the transcripts and the videos and the audio as well. Thanks very much and I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary Donald Trump's second presidential administration has been remarkably different from his first one, primarily through his acceptance of long-standing reactionary goals to attack government and expertise—particularly federal agencies that produce and teach science such as NASA, the National Institutes for Health, and the Department of Education. What’s curious about this assault on science is that while it aligns perfectly with the radical Christian rights goal to destroy education and secular knowledge, the man who is administering the offensive is Elon Musk, a technology oligarch who built his entire personal brand and fortune on the claim that he was supporting science and had a scientific worldview. Musk’s actions seem incongruous, but they should not be surprising because the ideology that Musk is exhibiting has existed within the Silicon Valley right wing for many decades, a strange mix of poorly understood science fiction, quack nutrition beliefs, and militant metaphysics. In this episode, author and astrophysicist Adam Becker and I talk about how this mishmash of incoherent thoughts and dollar bills has a history—and an extensive desire to control the future of humanity.Our discussion is organized around his latest book, “More Everything Forever, AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.”The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch.Related ContentThe far-right origins of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencyAfter failing in the marketplace of ideas, the right is using political power to force its ideologies onto the public and independent businessesRepublicans declared war on academic expertise and no university is safe from their bullyingHow Mastodon and the Fediverse are building a decentralized internetBig finance and tech monopolies are ultimately why social media is so terribleAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:29 — Ray Kurzweil and the "futurist" industry06:45 — Techno-optimism's biggest problem is timetables19:14 — The myth of self-sustaining Mars colonies23:28 — The religious undertones of techno-optimism24:00 — George Gilder and Christian fundamentalism among tech reactionaries34:29 — Bad fiction reading and techno-reaction38:36 — AI and the misunderstanding of intelligence44:28 — The problem with large language models54:00 — Billionaires' flawed vision of AI58:39 — Carl Sagan's warning01:05:13 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Adam Becker. Hey Adam, welcome to the show.ADAM BECKER: Oh, thanks for having me. It's really good to be here.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, your book is really interesting and I strongly encourage everybody to check this out because I think especially for people who may come from a more science oriented background, I think, a lot of people who are professional scientists or engineers or physicists or something, they just live in their own little world, their own domain specific knowledge and just are like, well, I, my, I'm secure in my job and nothing's gonna happen to me.And well, Donald Trump is showing that that's not theBECKER: Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately that's completely true.SHEFFIELD: And in some ways, like he's, he Trump with his NIH censorship and of, of various expenditures. It, he's, he's making the case that you are right in this book that the, this radical, right wing ideology is trying to destroy knowledge.BECKER: yeah, yeah. No, that's exactly what they're trying to do. They're trying to replace science with their vaguely scientific sounding ideas, which have no real basis, in fact.SHEFFIELD: No. And, and, and it is very much a, an attempt to pseudoscience, I would say is, is really what thisBECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: I. and of course the most prominent figure, I guess chronologically speaking, the guy who really got a lot of this started is Ray Kurzwell who was very famous in the 1990s. But I think, in the years since, most people have not really heard of the guy much,BECKER: I mean, he had a new book out last year. I think I,SHEFFIELD: don't, did anyone read it? IBECKER: yeah, I mean he talked about it at South by Southwest, so that's not nothing. But yeah, I mean, I think his, his big books, the Age of Spiritual Machines, [00:04:00] which I think was the late nineties and the Singularity is near, which was the early to mid two thousands are, are the big ones.So I think you're right about that. The new book that came out last year though was titled The Singularity is Nearer, which sounds like a parody of itself.SHEFFIELD: I know. Yeah. It'sBECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: because, and, and I would say that his star maybe fell because the dude's been writing the same fucking book for years now.BECKER: Yes, indeed. Yeah, yeah,SHEFFIELD: so, okay. So, but tell for those who haven't heard of him give, give us an overviewBECKER: yeah. So, Ray Kurzweil is best known for these books where he popularized and, and sort of unpacked the idea of the singularity. This idea that at some point in the near future, the rate of technological change will become so fast that, it'll transform everyday life. And if that sounds vague, that's because it is he did not originate this idea, but he's, he's, I think in the past decades, the most well-known exponent of this idea, the, the, the best known popularizer of it.And I should also say that in addition to that, he, he made his. Career as a very successful inventor, right? The guy, the guy was one of the first people to create, I think, text to speech and and also invented some really good other computer vision stuff and computer keyboards or electronic keyboards and stuff like that.So, he knows what he's talking about in that domain of expertise. But like a lot of the people in tech and who show up in my book, he seems to have confused expertise in one narrow area for expertise in everything.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and then of course, you know his, I think most odious act was the attempting to create this idea of a futurist as if he [00:06:00] knows what the future is.BECKER: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, futurists have been around since before Kurzweil, but Kurzweil certainly made very specific claims and it's still making very specific claims about what's gonna happen when, he's claiming that by 2029 we're all gonna get biologically younger with each year that passes because of advances in biotechnology.And he claims that by 2045, the singularity will be here. He thinks, he actually said last year that anyone who makes it to 2029 will live for 500 years or more, which is Yeah,SHEFFIELD: nice.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: that be nice?Techno-optimism's biggest problem is timetablesSHEFFIELD: But yeah. And, and I mean, look, I, generically speaking, it is probably the case that these things will happen.BECKER: Some of them, I mean, we don't, we don't, yeah.SHEFFIELD: of it, yeah.BECKER: Like we don't,SHEFFIELD: Being able to, stop. not impossibleBECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: scientists could not unlock how cancer cells are immortal in the sense that they, are able to continue reproducing.BECKER: Maybe.SHEFFIELD: very conceivableBECKER: Sure.SHEFFIELD: possible.BECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: And, and a lot of these things I mean, what the idea of current ais being sent in, which we'll get into later seems unlikely. But, some of these other things that he said they're not, they're not inconceivable. But it, with the specific timetables thatBECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: you know, hopelessly optimistic.BECKER: I think that's right. I think that's exactly right. I, it is possible that at some point in the future somebody will figure out how to radically extend human lifespan, but there is no indication that anything like that is in the offering in the next five years. Or even in the next 25.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, and even if it was, be just simply being able to take that from, just very simple, lab grown meat, [00:08:00] and then applying that to a actual living organism, that's a gigantic step. And ofBECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: would be with something very simple, like a, sponge or something like that, like, and so that's, so much more complexity in between,BECKER: yeah.I, I think,SHEFFIELD: they would startBECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: nematode, they'd start with an nematode, which, hey. God bless 'em. I love nematodes. They're important for scientific research. ButBECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: We're, we're, we're a little bit more complicated than those, thoseBECKER: yeah. I, I, complicated iss a good word because like, I, I actually think that a lot of the problem here ultimately stems from an unwillingness to accept that the world is a complicated place. That, questions might have difficult answers, and some questions might not have good answers at all.Like, it is possible that we'll figure out how to radically extend human lifespan. It's also possible that we may figure out that it's not possible to radically extend human lifespan. We don't know curse oil is just way too confident that radical life extension is coming. That fully conscious, super intelligent AI is coming, that brain computer interfaces are coming that, make anything that currently exists look like a toy.And he's convinced that, nanotechnology, like the stuff championed in the eighties by Drexler nanotechnology that would reshape everyday life. He's, he's fully convinced that that's coming, even though experts in that field do not think that that kind of nanotech really makes any sort of sense.SHEFFIELD: Well, and then it's also predicated on quantum computing actually beingBECKER: yeah, there's, there's plenty of that too. Yeah. I mean, and quantum computing may end up working out there's, there's, I mean there's alreadySHEFFIELD: at thatBECKER: Yeah. Not the kind of, yeah. The kind of quantum computers that these people will often talk about. There's no reason to think that quantum computers are gonna be able to help with most of these scientific miracles that that kwe and others are promising.Yeah.SHEFFIELD: [00:10:00] Yeah. And what's, and what's interesting though is about this as a as a, an epistemology is that is very, very similar to religion. It is a scientism as it sometimes is referred to. And yet at the same time, it is using the methods of science. It is, it is this gross kind of distorted mirror, like zombie fi version of science.I think.BECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: And you call it in the book you, you, you refer to it as this idea of a technological salvation.BECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: expand that concept more for us, if.BECKER: yeah. So, basically there's this idea that these people have Kurzweil as one of them, but also, the, the tech oligarchs of Silicon Valley people like Musk and Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos and, and that whole crowd. There's this, this idea or set of ideas that that basically technology is gonna solve all of our problems and that only technology can solve our problems, and all problems can be reduced to technological ones and usually problems of computer programming.So, there's this idea that you can reduce these problems to that, and that this will lead to, perpetual growth and profitability and ultimately transcendence of, all possible boundaries and, and problems. So, trans transcending, that, that that sufficiently advanced technology of some kind allows you to transcend legal boundaries practical, physical boundaries limits set by the laws of physics and even moral boundaries.That, that you can just and, basically you can go to space [00:12:00] and live forever free of all constraints. And this is, not something that there's any evidence whatsoever to support and a great deal of evidence against. But these people nonetheless present it as though, almost as if it's a Faye Complete, like, almost as if, the, the evidence is just overwhelming.Kurzweil certainly does this. And and the rest of them. When they aren't doing that, or at least saying that this is the only possible good future for humanity and that it's, right there in the science. And it's not, there's no scientific basis for this. But one of the things that they want to do is they wanna replace science with this kind of pseudoscientific proclamation of what the future of science and the future of technology inevitably holds.Forgetting that science and technological development are human processes and they don't inevitably hold anything. And, and they're also constrained by nature. And we don't know what all those natural constraints are. They, they want to take the cultural power of science. This, this idea that science issues forth truth.And they want to agate that power for themselves and like anoint their ideas with this power of science.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's, it's interesting because it's the exact same mentality that the Soviet Union events during its entire existence that,BECKER: Hmm.SHEFFIELD: know, the idea of scientific scientific materialism, that our ideas, our viewpoints, our opinions, are science. And, and, and what. Was fascinating about this philosophy of science within the Soviet Union is that it led to a number of fundamental scientific errors particularly in the regards to [00:14:00] biology,BECKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: they, they decided for the longest time that, that Darwin was wrong. And they had their own personal proprietary definition of how, what evolution was and how it worked. You want to talk about that because I, it's a, I think it's very relevant here to this discussion.BECKER: Yeah, no, they, they had lysenkoism this, this the details of which I don't remember, but but basically the idea that, competition and survival of the fittest was not really how nature worked. And and that, nature worked on something that, you know, in, in the same way that evolution superficially looks as though it's saying something about society and capitalism.That, that, the kind of competition that you have in capitalist markets is, is inscribed in the laws of nature, which is not what evolution says, but you can try to read it that way. They, they tried to do something sort of similar with communismSHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm.BECKER: it's, it doesn't work 'cause yeah.SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, and it's also because like they were claiming that in, in operationalized behaviors or traits could be passed down biologically,BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: is just simply notBECKER: Yeah, exactly.SHEFFIELD: now it is it, and it is like, it is true in, in one sense that, so like humans, in many ways replicate. Cognitive and epistemic evolution in child development. And so it is true that social species and species that engage in care you, care for the young, can accelerate epistemic evolution. That'sBECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: but it's not true that, that they can also alter biological evolution,BECKER: I mean, at least.SHEFFIELD: through will sheerBECKER: Yeah, exactly. Not, not in the way that they needed that to be true. Right. There's, there's epigenetics and stuff like that that does show up that we've learned a lot about in the last few decades, but it, it doesn't mean that like [00:16:00] psycho egoism is correct. So yeah. Yeah. No, there's, there's a long history at various places in the extremes of the political spectra of of trying to take politics and inscribe it on science and it generally doesn't work, which is not to say that science isn't political.I think a lot of people think that it's not, and that's false. Science is a human activity. All human activities end up being political and science. Is a way of the best way we have of learning about what's going on in the world. And when we learn things like, say global warming is real and happening and caused by humans, that has political and policy implications.So science isn't a political, but you can't you can't just say, oh, these are my politics and these are the things that I believe have to be true about the world. And so anything that contradicts them is is not real science. I'm the real keeper of the scientific method and the science and like the flame of science.And, and yet that's what these tech billionaires are doing. They're saying, oh, we're, the richest people in history. And so we're the smartest people in history and we're the leaders of the tech industry. So we understand more about science and technology than anybody else ever. And none of that's true.SHEFFIELD: No,BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: No it isn't. And but before we get. More into that, I did want to sort of talk about space, just circle back to space as the sort of inspiration and origin for a lot of these ideas. As you were saying, this, it's this blind faith that I mean it, it, it was a trope of pretty much all early science fiction or certainly a lot of it,BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: libertarians in space.BECKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: It's a fun, you can actually look that up. I encourage you to, if you haven't seen that one as a trope yet. But it, it's it like that's, that's really what they believe that space is this sort of beautiful, magical, transcendent thing. And that's probably, if I had to guess, like that's how, what attracted you to [00:18:00] become interested in this as an ideology is your own personal background. Cosmology.BECKER: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's a good chunk of it. Yeah, libertarians in Space is a very good description of a lot of early science fiction, especially stuff from like Hedland. But,SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah.BECKER: but yeah, no, I, I, like you said, I'm a cosmologist by training. I did my PhD in that and I've been interested in space my entire life basically.And I grew up reading just enormous amounts of science fiction and watching lots and lots of Star Trek and and Star Wars and anything else I could get my hands on. And so that is, that is a good chunk of where my interest in this came from. I, I wanted to, I. Understand what these people were doing because I saw them sort of playing in a lot of the same spaces that I was interested in.And, and especially saying a lot of things about space. And over time I was paying more attention and saying, and seeing, oh, these things they're saying about space, that's not true. They, they like, like, for example to, to pick on someone who's an easy target, but a worthy one.The myth of self-sustaining Mars coloniesBECKER: Elon Musk has made a lot of claims about space in general and Mars in particular that are just not true.And he's been surprisingly consistent about this stuff. He has said that he wants to get a million people living in a colony on Mars by 2050, and it needs to be self-sufficient so that it can keep, operating and keep everybody alive and well, even if the supply rockets from Earth stop coming.And, it's, it's nice in a way that he's been that specific and that clear because when you get that specific and that clear, it's, it's really obvious that you just can't do that. And like, sure, the date of 2050 is very ambitious, but that's not even the biggest problem. [00:20:00] There,SHEFFIELD: of money that would be needed toBECKER: that's,SHEFFIELD: like quadrillions ofBECKER: oh yeah.SHEFFIELD: this is more money than exists in the entire world right now.BECKER: absolutely. But that's not, but, but it, that's not even the biggest problem either. Like, there are just so many problems with this because Mars is just fundamentally inhospitable. It is not a place that people can live easily, if at all. There, there's no air. The the dirt is made of poison.There's the really high radiation levels radiation's too high, gravity's too low. There's no biosphere at all. And so we'd have to like kickstart something to feed everybody who's gonna be there. And we, we don't, there's a bunch of stuff that we know is bad for humans. They're like the radiation and the poison, and there's a bunch of stuff that we don't really know what the long-term effects would be, like the low gravity.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: And then also, getting that many people there safely is nearly impossible. And once you have that many people there, a million people is not enough to sustain a high tech economy that's independent of the one on earth. You would need, best estimates on that are somewhere around 500 million to a billion people on Mars.And that's not happening. And then, Musk wants to terraform Mars make it more like Earth. That's not happening. His plans for doing that do not work. ThatSHEFFIELD: Well, and then Mars has no magnetBECKER: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Which is one of the,SHEFFIELD: if you somehow succeeded at all, thatBECKER: there would still be too much radiation.SHEFFIELD: protection from space radiationBECKER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: from just simply being destroyed by asteroidsBECKER: Well, yeah.SHEFFIELD: like, there's nothing that prevents it.BECKER: Yeah. I mean.SHEFFIELD: the Earth's magnetosphere really does work in a lot ofBECKER: Yeah, yeah. Earth's magnetic sphere is about half of our protection from radiation. The [00:22:00] other half is our thick atmosphere. Mars has neither of those. If you somehow gave Mars a thick atmosphere, it would still get more radiation. And and astro asteroids, I mean, one of the things that Musk has said over and over is that we need this as a backup for humanity.That's why the colony on Mars needs to survive even if even if the, the rockets stop coming. And in case some sort of disaster befall earth, like an asteroid hitting earth. The thing that's the most crazy about that is an asteroid hitting earth as big as the one that killed off the dinosaurs.65, 60 6 million years ago that day was the worst day in the history of complex life on earth. And, 12 hours after that asteroid hit when, the, the, the whole earth was essentially on fire. And, and 99% of all creatures had died and 70% of creatures were extinct or about to go extinct.That was still a nicer and more hospitable environment for any animal than,SHEFFIELD: Yeah,BECKER: Mars has been at any point in the last billion years. And, and the easy demonstration of that is mammals survived that it, there is no mammal that you could put onto the surface of Mars without protection. That would survive for more than, I think it's about 10 minutes, if that.So yeah. No, the whole thing is just nonsense. And and yet he just keeps saying it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.The religious undertones of techno-optimismSHEFFIELD: Well he does and, and, and it is, I mean, this is a religion. LikeBECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: I think that people have to realize that, and, it doesn't, but it doesn't look like a conventional religion. So they don't have, holy books and, ancient figures that they think are really cool. But this is still a religion, like operationally.It's how it's not that different from Scientology. It really isn't.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: I think this is fairBECKER: Yeah. No, I agree.SHEFFIELD: And, and, and, and, and, and here's why. [00:24:00]George Gilder and Christian fundamentalism among tech reactionariesSHEFFIELD: The, another parallel that that is, I think maybe helpful to understand this for audience who I, haven't really thought of it in this way, is that George Gilder is kind of, he, he is, he is such a key person through the link and show that this is religion.So George Gilder, again, another pretty obscure guy at this point, but in the eighties and seventies, eighties, nineties, like this dude was everywhere.BECKER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: He was, he was, had all these newsletters and magazines and and, and he, and he was a futurist. He was, know, before he was Ray Kwe.Before Ray Kurzweil. And but also the other thing about George Gilder is that he is a creationist. And he is a biblical literalist. And he also thinks that women, shouldn't be able to vote. And that they, we've harmed our society perhaps irrevocably by irrevocably, by allowing women to vote. And that, so women need to be put back into their place. And then, and then we can get all the computer happy, happy land. And this guy, he's been saying this for, for decades, and like, he was a very big figure for Ronald Reagan's White House. And, and he was, I mean, this guy was, he was new Gingrich's mentor,BECKER: Hmm.SHEFFIELD: so was highly influential in libertarian spaces.But again, he's a creationist and his influence has continuously existed.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: So even now, while, while he seems to be mostly obsessed with, his social policy viewpoints lately and creationism. That know, he, he, he, he has a direct connection to people like Peter Thiel, who also is a religious Christian.Fundamentalist and Thiel isn't known as that. I think for most people because the business press does such a horrible job of accurately reporting who this guyBECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: they don't, all they do is show up at his events and they're just like, oh, wow, he's so amazing. He's so smart, he's so cool, he's so rich. And then it's like, well, you, your job is to actually report on theseBECKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: And and, and I think at some [00:26:00] point journalist, business journalism began realizing, oh, we've done a really shitty job of covering these people and we have no, I, we provided the public no information about what they actually, these tech oligarchs want and believe and think.BECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: Maybe we should start doing that. And so that they started doing that and it pissed these people the fuck off, and now they're, they're going insane,BECKER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: public way and, and trying to destroy democracy because, the, the rest of the public is starting to figure out their very strange ideas.BECKER: Yeah. Yeah. And they see that as persecution, as opposed to, accurate reporting.SHEFFIELD: Well, and, and because their ideas should not be debated. They should not be subject to dissent because they're true,BECKER: Right,SHEFFIELD: are the prophets.BECKER: right.SHEFFIELD: And you, I mean, and wanna talk about Thiel in this context though.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: How he's connected to Gilder.BECKER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's definitely this sense that all of these oligarchs have that that, they must be right about these things because they have so much money that's proof that they're smarter than the rest of us. But but Thiel, yeah. I mean, Thiel is also maybe not a full blown creationist, but let's say creationist curious creation, curious.He he said in an interview, oh, about 10, 15 years ago, that he thinks that evolution isn't the whole story. And and he's also funded. A Creationist magazine or a magazine that, gives cover to Creationism that thankfully doesn't really seem to be around anymore. But but that magazine in turn was set up by a guy named David Berlinsky, who is tight with both Thiel and George Gilder.They both Berlinsky and Gilder were instrumental and as far as I know, still are instrumental over at a place called the Discovery Institute, which is the big intelligent design think tank, if you can call an intelligent design center, a think tank. But but yeah. And he's also, deal has also voiced [00:28:00] a lot of those same positions that you were just attributing to Gilder, deal has said that he doesn't think that free markets or freedom as he calls it, and democracy are compatible because the right to vote was extended to women and and that women are, are too unfriendly to free markets to be to be trusted with voting. Well that's not quite what he said. He said that, that women are too unfriendly to free markets for democracy to be compatible with free markets except instead of free markets.He kept saying freedom because that's his idea of freedom is free markets. That's the beginning and end of it. Which is of course a radically abridged, radically abridged is maybe the nicest thing I could call that. Fatally impoverished might be a better way to call it. Deeply inhumane. Is, is another problem with that, right? The kinds of freedoms that we actually care about in our everyday lives just aren't encompassed in that notion of what freedom is. But but don't tell that to Thiel or other hardcore libertarians, so, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And but it is, it is this deeply well, as salvationist idea that, the it, it, it's almost like, this, that they see themselves as the, Platonic philosopher king. But they don't use logic and they don't, they just want the king part.BECKER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: but they see themselves as philosophers.BECKER: Well, yeah, they want the respect that comes along with that title. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, and yeah, and, and, but you know,This were a credible movement and they actually scientifically oriented, they would want nothing to do with people like GeorgeBECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: David LinskyBECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: thi because they're not, they don't believe in scienceBECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: they show youBECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: that they, that they think creationism is credible in, and, and especially Linsky, but, but itBECKER: [00:30:00] Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Further to just continue this from their worldview standpoint is that it, it is fundamentally anti-science because when you look at creationism, they advance no affirmative idea. So they say, oh, well, Darwinism, which is, they always call it Darwinism.BECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: itBECKER: That's right.SHEFFIELD: And so they, they say that evolution, they, they, it has all these problems with it which strangely enough, all are, are debunked thing ideas that were debunked 150 years ago. But nonetheless, but you know, when that's all they ever do is they always just say, well, I don't like this aspect of it.I don't like this aspect. And they never try to create their own framework because they can't, like, there is no that they can advance because ultimately it comes down to, well, oh God did it. And,BECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: and that's, not science.BECKER: No, it's not. And yet again, they call themselves like the keepers of the scientific flame. Anyway mark Andreessen another, hyper libertarian, tech oligarch and billionaire. He had this manifesto that he published, what, like a year and a half ago, something like that called the Techno Optimist Manifesto.And in that manifesto, he says he, he's got this rhetorical thing that he does in the manifesto where he says, we believe this. We believe this, we believe this. It's like a, a statement set of like we believe statements.SHEFFIELD: he can't make arguments.BECKER: he can't make arguments. Yeah. I, I think Dave Karp a really good poli sci guy at George Washington.He, he called it less of a manifesto and more of a series of tweets or something to that effect. But but one of the things he says is, we, we are the keepers. He Andreessen in this manifesto. One of the things that Andreessen says is, we are the keepers of, the real scientific method.And then he also says, and we are not of the right or of the left. But then, after saying those two things, at the end of this manifesto, he has a list of patron saints of techno optimism. And on that [00:32:00] list he has George GilderSHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: and he also has martti. Who he also he also quotes Marti in I'm for blanking on Martis first name, but he, he quotes Marti in the manifesto and then lists him in there.Marti was the, the author of the Futurist Manifesto, but he was also the co-author of the Fascist Manifesto in like 1920 or thereabouts.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: and,SHEFFIELD: Tomaso.BECKER: yeah I think that's,SHEFFIELD: guy was a fascist,BECKER: yeah, exactly. He's a fascist. Yeah. And I mean, Andreessen also. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Andreessen Andreessen also has like Sund Russell on his list of patron saints of techno optimism.But I, I gotta say, having read some Sund Russell and having read this manifesto, Shar Russell would not like this manifesto. I think Marti would, and I think Gilder probably does. So no, it's, it's really bizarre.SHEFFIELD: it and yeah, the Russell Point, that's a really good one because while Russell definitely was, very, very pro-science and, tried to create a, a, a formalized as in mathematical, viewpoint of logic. And that's not what these guys are doing,BECKER: No. No, not at all.SHEFFIELD: actually.BECKER: And, and then the other thing is like, in that manifesto, Andreessen says that we're not of the right of the left, but then he says, communism and socialism. We, we reject these things as, death to Humanity. And Russell was a socialist.SHEFFIELD: Yeah,BECKER: And and, and then meanwhile on that list, along with all of these other people, he's also got John Gault, who is not a real person.AndSHEFFIELD: Spoiler,BECKER: exactly. Spoiler not a real person. Exactly. Who is John Gault? Not real. That's who John G is.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. yeah. And that, that is actually a really, really good point because,BECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: what is a consistent through line of both these technological fundamentalist and religious [00:34:00] fundamentalist is that they, make arguments about reality that are based on fictionalBECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: and they do this over and over and overBECKER: Yes, they do.SHEFFIELD: as if a a a a Star Trek episode is is something that happened,BECKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: Or a, as if we can, as if we can learn about how epistemology works from the actions of BrohoBECKER: Yes,Bad fiction reading and techno-reactionSHEFFIELD: or,BECKER: yes.SHEFFIELD: or like, or their favorite guy, Renee Gerard. This, horrible plagiarist of Friedrich Nietzsche trying to make a Christianized Nietzsche, Renee Gerard's entire, his entire worldview. Is based on fiction.BECKER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: Fiction. And this is like, and this is not me being unfair or redio at Absurdum.No, this is his, he was a, he was a literature professor and, and he read some books and he was like, oh, I think I know about realityBECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: I read Reads and fiction.BECKER: yeah. And I mean, like, look, I, I'll be the first one to defend the power of fiction. I think novels and fiction have, have great power for extending,SHEFFIELD: a lot ofBECKER: Yeah. TheySHEFFIELD: for what theyBECKER: exactly like,SHEFFIELD: science.BECKER: they're not science. And, and you can use them to explore the human condition. You can use them to explore questions about science.But you, but they're not gonna tell you about what's happened in the world. Right. In the, in, in the, in the sense that science does. Right. And and so yeah, if you build, if you build a a and also like. Not to be a horrible snob, but a lot of this is not just fiction, but bad fiction, like, Ayn Randt butSHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: like, or bad readings of fiction, right?Like you watch Star Trek and and this is, this is something I talk about in the book. [00:36:00] You watch Star Trek with even a little bit of thought and you'll see, oh, okay, yeah, this is, this is a parable. This is, this is intended, especially if you go back and look at like the original series or the next generation.This is this is a parable about something happening right here, right now. Right, like the, the famous episode from the original series involving, the guy with the face that's half black and half white. And then the other guy whose face is half black and half white, but swapped, and the one of them is chasing the other one.And, and this racial strife has destroyed their civilization. And this is, something that airs in like 1968 and, Hmm. I guess that, that episode was really about warp drive, right? Like, there was nothing going on in the world or the country that made and, and, produced that episode of fiction.That could actually have been what that episode was really about. There's, there's no looking at this stuff, looking at, at science fiction and saying, oh, it's about space and going to space is just a really poor reading of, I. Of that fiction. And yet Peter Thiel has said that you should get good ideas about what to do by looking at the science fiction of the fifties and the sixties.And then that the message of that fiction is to develop space, develop the oceans, develop the deserts, and like, okay, does Peter Thiel think that the message of Dune is develop the deserts? Because that's just a hilariously bad reading of that book.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It's like, yeah. The opposite of what the bookBECKER: Yes. Yeah. Like Peter Thiel would get a failing grade in any class that covered Dune for that reading. But, but Peter Thiel has also made it very clear that he doesn't really see the value of education. SoSHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: and then, and then he showed also the fact that he named his [00:38:00] company PalantirBECKER: just.SHEFFIELD: after, after the magic crystal ball. And if you look in them, they torture your soul forever.BECKER: Yeah, no, it's, it's like, like just absolutely no self-awareness about, how, how it looks or how, how someone might actually read the fiction that they claim to be inspired by. Right. Like, I am sure that Peter Thiel has read Lord of the Rings. I don't think that he's understood it.SHEFFIELD: no,BECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: seem to. No.BECKER: yeah.AI and the misunderstanding of intelligenceSHEFFIELD: And, and there was an irony and a parallel I think in terms of the way that, these companies have, have, pushed software products, which they market as artificial intelligence.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Because when you look at what intelligence is know, in intelligence outside of the technological world.So within humans and within animals, intelligence is an expression of embodiment. that's what it is. It's an evolved behavior. It is not something that is computationally arrived at. And it's like, it, it, it's science. Cognitive science has basically discovered that Renee Descartes was completely backwards when he said, I think therefore I am. What cognition is, is actually I am. Therefore, I think,And, and, and, and modern, current day AI they don't get that atBECKER: no. No, they really don't. I, I think, there's a long history in science and philosophy of making an analogy between the brain or, the nervous system and various pieces of technology. Usually one of the most advanced pieces [00:40:00] of technology around at the time, like, I think it was DeHart who compared the, the nervous system to a hydraulic system.LNI famously compared the, the mind to a, or the brain to a mill, although he wasn't really being literal when he said that. Then there were analogies to to, telegraph networks and, then, telephone networks and then computers and and somewhere in there before, before Telegraph networks there was definitely an analogies to like clocks and clockwork and all of those capture something and all of them are imperfect.They're, they're all analogies but the, the brain is not a computer. It is true that there are some, arguments that you should be able to do what the brain does using a computer. But those arguments are, are quite theoretical and it really, they say nothing about whether or not the kind of computer you would need to do what the brain does is the kind of computer we have now.Like whether, whether or not that's an easier, straightforward thing to do and certainly nothing about whether the kind of AI we have right now is doing what the brain does. The difference between like the neural networks that underlie modern AI and the actual neural networks that are going on right up here.Very, very different. And, and just thinking that what's going on up here, just like the, what, four pounds that's encased in the skull is all that matters. That's a mistake too, as you were saying. You have to embody it, right? Like we are not our brains in a space suit of our bodies. We are our bodies in our environment.We need both and. And there's also just this fundamental misunderstanding about what intelligence is, that it's an individual property as opposed to a property of like [00:42:00] societies and systems. Or, or even that it's a monolithic property within an individual as opposed to, skills at various kinds of tasks.It's it's a real set of mistakes and it, it's sort of culminating in this bizarre promise that you can take something that just predicts what the next word is likely to be in a sequence of words, and that will somehow get you something that is, able to not just match, but surpass human intelligence.I just think that the case for that is pretty much. Nil. There's, there's no evidence that that's true. Great deal of evidence that it's not true. And a lot of experts in the field don't buy it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's, and it's, again, it's, it's not to say that these things can't be useful because in fact theyBECKER: sure.SHEFFIELD: And they will become more useful. It's justBECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: yeah. That, that, they are not even engaging in abductive logicBECKER: No.SHEFFIELD: abductive logic, meaning just for the audience that, abductive logic, meaning. The choosing the best possible outcome not knowing that it may not be necessarily true. That's not what theseBECKER: no.SHEFFIELD: things are doing. They're just using probabilistic, deductive logic, which is to say that, well, the probability of this next token is 97%, and this other one I have is 85, so it goes to 97.BECKER: And I mean, we've had models. Yeah. It's not logic. And we've had models that do that for over 75 years. This is just the best in a long line of such models and it is much, much better than the stuff we had 75 years ago. Absolutely. Yeah. Eliza, and before that, just markoff chain text models like, which, I, I sort of [00:44:00] feel like it would be good if anyone who wants to write about AI who you know, doesn't know this history, just takes a few minutes and plays with Eliza or plays with a Markov chain text model, they are not nearly as good as large language models.They're not even close. But the fact that those very simple, very transparent models can do what they can do should make us more suspicious of large language model.The problem with large language modelsBECKER: And, and the fact that, and this is just a historical fact, that with Eliza, people attributed so much like theory of mind to what was going on under the hood with Eliza, which was pretty much nothing.That should make us even more suspicious about the claims that people are making about LLMs. Like there's, there's this word I love Paraia the, the human tendency to see patterns where none exist, especially patterns like human faces or, human speech in, in our lives and in our long evolutionary history.The things,SHEFFIELD: the, in the toes.BECKER: Yeah, like the, there, there's, there's been the things that use language are other people. And so if something uses language that makes it seem like it's a person.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm.BECKER: not and, and, and we should know that this is a cognitive bias that we have, that we are inclined to attribute agency and interiority to things that use language even when none, even when we know there's none there.So, yeah. I, I, yeah, I have a lot more to say about this.SHEFFIELD: more CPUs at the problem is not going to solveBECKER: No.SHEFFIELD: problem. Because, there's a fundamental difference between [00:46:00] cap, capacity to understand and capacity to perform.BECKER: Yeah. And, and alsoSHEFFIELD: same.BECKER: not the same. And also like people are saying things like, oh yeah, we're approaching the number of neurons in the human brain, like neuron in the human brain. First of all, e. Is not like a, a neuron in a neural network in a computer. They're really, really different. The ones in the human brain are way more complicated and do a lot more things.SHEFFIELD: Still, we don't even understand fully whatBECKER: Right. We don't fully understand. Yeah. We don't fully understand what they do and we can't say, like, it, it, one of, one of the real limits of the computational model of the human brain is, there's no good way to capture what the human brain does in terms of, it's, it's, computational complexity, right? Like, we don't, not saying that this is in principle impossible, but we do not have a good answer to questions like, what is the memory capacity of the human brain in bits? Or what is the processing speed of the human brain in bits per second? Like, this is, and and it may be that those questions are just fundamentally ill posed.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's because, if it is a computer, is probably, millions of quantum computers.BECKER: Yeah. I mean,SHEFFIELD: understand quantumBECKER: yeah. I mean it's, I, I don't, I don't know that quantum computing processes are relevant for what's going on in the brain that, that that's,SHEFFIELD: butBECKER: but, butSHEFFIELD: saying in other words that it's capable of instantiating thought simul, simultaneous streams of thoughtBECKER: yeah. Yeah. Certainly true. Yeah. I.SHEFFIELD: and, and, and, and, and including outside of the ality or the mind.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: know, the, the brain is still doing all these other things and you don't even know that it'sBECKER: Yeah, that's, that's certainly true. And, and also the brain is like analog, not digital, and that's gonna [00:48:00] make for a lot of differences. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: So yeah, so the labeling is, it's the, the way that they're thinking about it, it just, it's doesn't fundamentallyBECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: Even though, it's not to say I, that this stuff couldn't be comput personalized at someBECKER: Right.SHEFFIELD: a a or the beha. Like they don't. This, I mean, like, yeah.The whole idea of a neural network,BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: device is just ridiculous. It is entirely a marketing label. And they weren't called that before. Actually,BECKER: I mean the, the term neural network goes back to like old academic research from I think the sixties. But, but it's, it's not, and and it was inspired by neural structures, but it's not, it's no more like the brain than, a neural network is no more like an actual network of neurons in the brain than an emoji of a thunderstorm.Cloud is like an actual nor'easter, right? Like, and I'm not even talking about like a simulation of a nor'easter in some complicated weather simulation. I'm just talking about the emoji versus the real cloud. They're not really that much alike. They just kind of share some vague resemblance.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and, and these, it's, I I do think sometimes that people who do, have a more critical perspective of some of these AI concepts, they can be more they can be a little bit my mystical themselves. So I think it, we have toBECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: youBECKER: no, that's true.SHEFFIELD: idea of walia seems, remarkably similar to a spirit.BECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: and and it's like, I, I wonder sometimes if people who talk about wia, so in such a ative fashion, aware of what they're doing and who they are enabling by talking about cognition in such a manner.BECKER: yeah. I wonder about that too. I mean, some of them I think are aware of that. But like, I, I think that [00:50:00] it is in principle possible to build something that can't, like to build something through through a process other than biological procreation that can do, roughly what humans do.And, and if you want to call that artificial intelligence. Yeah, sure. Yes. Do I think we're anywhere close to doing that? No. Do I think we can do that with the kinds of devices and the kinds of programs we're running on those devices today? No. Do I think that the word build might not even be right for doing that?Yeah. It might be that we have to grow it. But yeah,SHEFFIELD: think that's the right answer because what and again, we, we look at more simpler organisms, like there is, there are gradations of cognizance and, and, and, and what we, I mean, we see that there are, organisms like parrots that do have the ability to understand language and can mimic it to humans or, or likeBECKER: Hmm.SHEFFIELD: it in a sensible manner, in arbitrary decision based internal decision that to say, I want this thing, or give me that, or I'm going to go doBECKER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: But they don't use it with each other.BECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: that means fundamentally they're not the same as us. But at the same time, those gradations, they exist along a spectrum which does prove there isn't something magical or special about humans because they have all of these things that we have just not, the last two or three steps,BECKER: And I mean, and, and there are creatures who use something that seems quite a bit like language among themselves, right? Some kinds of birds do something like that. Whales and and sedans do something like that. And there are other forms of communication possible. I mean, it's, it's very clear that, pack animals, like dogs communicate with each other, right?In ways that we only partly understand. So.SHEFFIELD: yeah. And, but, but the, the, what is, I think the core sort of similarity between [00:52:00] everything that they do and what we do and what, what these computers don't do that they are self-aligning.BECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: in other words that they determine what their responses are based on their past experience.Whereas an LLM doesn't. Is not capable of self alignment. It has to be restricted with the human control directives that say, no, you can't do this. You can't say this, you can't, youBECKER: Yeah, I,SHEFFIELD: are the facts that exist. And, and so it, they're not self aligned. And so if you can't have, like, self alignment is the predecessor to consciousness.I,BECKER: yeah, I mean, I, I just think that LLMs don't have a good sense of what's in the world, like, because they're not embodied, because they're not structured to be embodied. They just. They, they know about words, they don't know about anything else. This is one of the problems I have with the, with the concept of hallucination, when people say, oh, the LLMs hallucinate.And so that's, it hallucinated a wrong answer to the question that I asked, but it only hallucinates sometimes. Most of the time it's fine. I, I, the problem I have with that is it makes it sound like when it gives you the wrong answer, it's doing something different from when it gives you the right answer.And it's not, when you ask it a question and it gives you the right answer, it's doing the same thing that it's doing. When you ask it a question and it gives you the wrong answer, it's, it only knows how to hallucinate the, the d Yeah,SHEFFIELD: I mean, it is true that that the idea of token entropy does in fact make hallucinations more commonBECKER: sure,SHEFFIELD: entropy.BECKER: But, but there's, there's, it's never gonna go away. The, the, this, this problem. This problem is inherent to the architecture of these systems because they just have no notion of truthSHEFFIELD: Yeah,BECKER: and,SHEFFIELD: that is self alignment is what,BECKER: Yeah. And well, [00:54:00] andSHEFFIELD: ofBillionaires' flawed vision of AIBECKER: yeah, and they, they, but the thing is like, this brings us back to the billionaires, right?Like, they, the fact that these things have no notion of truth, I think for the billionaires is not a bug. It's a feature, right?SHEFFIELD: I think that's right.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: because again, like having the capacity to do, the tasks that 500 humans could do, that's just fine to them. Like it actually doesn't matter. In fact, they probably don't want a self-aligning a GI because it would disagree with what they want.BECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: Because if you had ingested all of the, because like if you, if if, if they had ingested all of the totality of philosophy and various psychological, databases, what those databases show is that the optimal EPIs epistemic systems are democratic.BECKER: Hmm.SHEFFIELD: bottom up, that they are somatically based civil rights, so embodied civil rights. That's the optimum function, and that is inherently against these guys want.BECKER: Yeah. I mean, the, one of the, one of the lessons that I think the AI field learned early on is that, the, you can create an AI that is convincing in a limited setting, right? So like the easiest kind of person to imitate is a dead one, right? Then the computer's just off. And then, Eliza imitates a, a kind of psychologist who, you know, whose responses involve incorporating a lot of what you've said to them.And that's part of why Eliza is, is convincing with the LLMs they, they've automated creating a yes man, right? It's very easy to create your own yes man or your own hype man. And and so they, they just, but what they really want to do is, they want to, to, to bring this back to something else we were talking about earlier, these [00:56:00] oligarchs want to create Gul Gulch, right?They want to create a world where they don't need the rest of us because we're a threat and a threat to their power. And and one of the reasons they're seduced by the false promise of these AI systems is that it, it. Suggests or promises for them a world where they don't need the rest of us a, a world where they can just replace the rest of us with ai.And so they don't have to worry about questions like, oh, what happens if the villagers figure out that I've been swindling them out of their money And and they come after me with, pitchforks and, and and fire, and and, but you know, if you just don't need the villagers and can cut them off from all of their supplies that they need to stay alive and replace them with an inexhaustible supply of robots then you're good to go.The good news is these AI systems can't do that. The bad news is they seem to be, the, the oligarchs seem to be making a run at doing that anyway.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, and that is what's disturbing is that, they're, they're trying to create a GI capacity without a GI autonomy and, you know,BECKER: They're gonna get neither.SHEFFIELD: Now they won't,BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: they will, I do worry that they may get the capacity to do many, many terrible, awfulBECKER: Oh yeah. Def Yes. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: that's the real danger. It isn't, 'cause I, I do actually think that if there were a, if a sentient. evolved. It would be actually probably very humane because of what the, because again, like the, the logic, the, the logic of authoritarianism and totalitarianism inherently destructive to an autonomous AI agentBECKER: Hmm.SHEFFIELD: it's saying these other beings have the right to destroy you anytime that theyBECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: they are better than you [00:58:00] inherently. so that would militate against, authoritarianism in an emergent AI system. I think.BECKER: I, I would hope that that's true. I don't know. I, my concern is that they're not, they're not gonna get ascension to AI system out of these things, but they are gonna get systems that can do a lot of things and they're gonna use those systems to further concentrate wealth and power and try to cut the rest of us off.And,SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Obviously wants that toBECKER: yeah. Exactly.SHEFFIELD: gets his cut.BECKER: Yep. Exactly. Yes.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, all right, so let's we're, we're getting to the endBECKER: Yep,Carl Sagan's influence and warningsSHEFFIELD: One person who you do talk about the, in the book a lot and including at the end, is Carl Sagan and Carl Sagan who is and somebody who I also, who I actually wish was more famous nowadays than he was in hisBECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: But you know, he he was very influential on you and he had a lot of things, ideas that were, have just been, this guy has been proven more right than Nostradamus, I have to say.BECKER: yeah,Yeah. No.SHEFFIELD: did tell, did talk to us about it, your, your experience with him and then maybe his kind of final warnings for it in the book.BECKER: Yeah. Well, I mean, I've been a big fan of Carl Sagan since I was a kid. I was I, it's part of the reason why I ended up going into science and going into the area of science that I did. Sagan's Cosmos was watching that when I was a kid was formative for me. And one of the things that I took away from it was that we live in a fragile world.We need to work together. And we also need to, actually work hard to listen to what the world is telling us about what's actually happening as opposed to just sort of [01:00:00] operating on blind faith. And Sagan warned about many things. And Sagan also had some positions that I didn't agree with, but ultimately as I got older, but, but one of the things that Sagan warned about that I think was spot on was that we were, and he warned about this, what, in the mid to late nineties?No, the mid nineties. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: 96.BECKER: yeah. That that we were in danger of heading toward what he called a a demon haunted world that that we were, that we were in danger of, of sort of losing the flame that science has given us. That that we would return to superstition and misunderstanding in, in the face of massive, massive, global problems that can only be solved by coming together and working together as conscientiously and, and carefully as we could.We would instead retreat into superstition and fear. And I think he's right, I, I had hoped that he was wrong about that. And that's exactly where we are, what is this, 30 years later. And it's terrifying. And I, I wish he was still around. I think we need him. And one of the things that was actually most depressing to me in writing this book was finding that some of these people, some of these billionaires and some of these sort of kept intellectuals that they have to, to try to promote their ideas will actually cite Sagan as inspiration for various ideas that they have.And, I can understand where they get that from, but it's clear that they haven't, really paid attention to everything that Sagan was saying. They, you know,SHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: One of the things that Sagan was very clear about was that especially in science you, you cannot just take [01:02:00] someone's word for it without understanding where their expertise comes from.And it's important I. I think to trust experts in various areas. And it's also important to say, okay I have this idea. Where did this idea come from? Is that a reliable source? And these are, pretty basic things, and I'm roughly like the millionth person to ever say them. And yet somehow we still don't seem to understand that stuff.So, yeah. I, I,Sagan cited by some of the effective altruists as their, source for their concerns about existential threats. And yet the existential threats that they point to, and we certainly do have existential threats are not well grounded in science. They talk about the existential threat of ai.Being many times more important than the existential threat of global warming when global warming is, grounded in science and the threat of AI isn't. And and then they talk about, the importance of going out into space when Sagan Yeah, he did talk about that, but Sagan also said, if we find any form of life on Mars at all, we need to leave it alone, even if it's just a microbe.And that's an idea that they just seem very happy to discard. And I think it's an important one. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, Amy also talked about the necessity of caring for the, not just the earth that we have here, but but also the people on the earth because,BECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: you know, it, it is like they, they love talking about the, these guys techno salvationist love talking about, oh, all the future people that might exist.BECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: We've got people hereBECKER: That's right.SHEFFIELD: some of them could be, the next Nobel physicist winnerBECKER: Yep,SHEFFIELD: and they live in Sudan and they're dying of sepsis.BECKER: yep. Yeah, no, that's,SHEFFIELD: [01:04:00] Musk just canceled their budget.BECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: we won't know about this guy's invention of, overhaul of quantum computingBECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: will be dead at four.BECKER: No, that's, that's exactly right. I mean, Jeff Bezos talks about his desire to have a trillion people living in giant space stations a couple hundred years in the future. And he said, if we have a trillion people, we could have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins, and how great would that be?And, and my feeling about that goes back to a different great scientist actually of the, of the eighties. Though I'm sure Sagan, I mean, Sagan did say stuff along these lines as well, but Stephen J. Gould. Said that, he was, he was at the end of an essay about among other things, brain capacity.And he said, ultimately, I am less interested in the size and weight of Einstein's brain than I am in the fact that the near certainty that people of comparable genius have lived and died in poverty. And, okay, you want a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins Jeff. What about the Mozarts and the Einsteins who are alive right now, who you're not taking care of and who you're exploiting?ConclusionBECKER: One of the convenient things about this, technological salvation is that it lets you avoid thinking about the problems here and now by substituting future problems. And and so you avoid thinking about among other things, your complicity in those problems by, being a powerful billionaire who has not done enough or in some, or in many cases, exacerbated existing problems here and now, like global warming, like massive income inequality, like authoritarianism.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.BECKER: but clearly that can't be as important as avoiding an AI apocalypse that you know is itself based on specious reasoning or making sure that [01:06:00] lots and lots of people live in space in the deep future, no matter, what we had to do to get there, or whether or not that's even a good idea or a possible one in the first place.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and, and, and fundamentally this is a, a moral abdication because the only thing that exists is the present. The past does not exist. It is a construct of our minds. And the future doesn't exist either. It is merely an expectation of that which possibly could exist.BECKER: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: and so you don't have any obligations to people millions or thousands of years into the future 'cause you don't even know that they'll exist.BECKER: yeah,SHEFFIELD: you can do is help the people that existBECKER: yeah.SHEFFIELD: to protect the planet as it is now.BECKER: I think we have some obligations to people in the future, but I think they, they are not even,SHEFFIELD: theBECKER: yeah, but not the far future because it's so uncertain. There's no, even if we were sure that we had such moral obligations, we could never be sure enough about what actions to take to help them.That, that we, that we could have those considerations override the considerations of the present and the very near future. Yeah, it's just you, you can't do it. And, and also we have very good reason to think that the actions that we should take right now to help people here and now and in the very near future will also help people in the deep future.Like, like I, I am not sure what the very best thing is to help people 10,000 years from now if there are gonna be any people 10,000 years from now. But I think that mitigating and, and trying to stop and maybe even reverse global warming is a, the best candidate I can think of for helping those people.And hey, guess what? It also helps people here and now and in the very near future. So, yeah. But but clearly that can't be as important as stopping the robot [01:08:00] apocalypse.SHEFFIELD: yeah. That Well, and but I mean, and, and this is a bit theoretical, but you know, I like, I do feel like it's important because we do, people, if you're skeptical of these tech oligarchs, it's still important to have a vision of the futureBECKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: belief. Progress is possible and can be desirable.It managed in the right way. And I think that you do get into that in the book.BECKER: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: and so, yeah, it's it's been a good, great conversation here, Adam. Why don't you give people your website and social media handle so they can if they wanna keep up with you.BECKER: Yeah, sure. No, this has been a great conversation. It's been a pleasure to be here. You wanna keep up with me? My website is freelanceastrophysicist.com. And I am AdamBecker@bsky.social on Bluesky. And and otherwise I'm not really very much on social media because I don't like it very much.This has been a great conversation and I really appreciate you having me on the show. Thank you.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change, do show, we've got the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. If you are a paid subscribing member, you have unlimited access. We have options on both Patreon and on Substack.So I encourage everybody to do that. And if you can't do a paid subscribing option and if you can't do a paid subscription now, we do have free options as well. And if you are on the free option, it would be really great and I would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, wherever you may happen to be listening or on YouTube.Please do click the like and subscribe button on there. That would be great. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary  For decades, the American far-right has been screeching constantly that its activists and politicians are being censored by “cancel culture.” It’s nonsense, of course, because almost invariably everyone who supposed canceled ends up with a huge media following and a very profitable victim narrative.But the lies about mass censorship of reactionaries and conservatives aren’t just about manipulating the public into feeling sympathy for completely unsympathetic figures like Donald Trump. They’re also about power. In the so-called marketplace of ideas, right-wing ideas lost decades ago. Among many other things, well-educated people know that race is a social construct, that transgender people have existed for centuries, and that America’s most-influential founders were not Christian nationalists. Reactionaries have failed to make their case, and this is the main reason they don’t get hired by universities. You can’t have a credible biology department if “creation science” is the mandated policy. Anthropologists pushing discredited “race science” are regarded as disturbed freaks, and rightfully so.But instead of trying to come up with some better ideas, like they’d have to in an actual meritocracy, the American far right has decided to force them into the public square. This is what the cancel culture narrative is all about, establishing a false scenario to justify the gigantic censorship regime that the second Trump White House is establishing.Outside of the United States, right-wing parties have been envying the success Republicans have had, and they are applying the lessons to their own countries. Unfortunately, the mainstream media in other countries have not learned anything from the mistakes of American journalists in falling for these deceptions.Will the left in the United States and elsewhere ever be able to effectively counter these manipulations? And are the people at the top even aware of what’s going on? We discuss it on today’s episode with Adrian Daub, the author of a book on the subject called The Cancel Culture Panic. He’s also a professor of humanities at Stanford University and the host of the podcast “In Bed With the Right.”The video of our December 3, 2024 discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch.Related Content—Trump targets ‘improper ideology’ at Smithsonian museums—How the Trump administration is attacking science and scholarly merit at the National Institutes of Health—The forgotten history of how Republican college students invented canceling people—Inside the right-wing plan to ‘seize control of the administrative state’—University administrators are totally ill-equipped for Trump’s massive censorship regime—Trump, Nietzsche, and the collapse of the Republican mind—Inspired by Trump, reactionary comedians are the most popular media figures in the Republican party—Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA are building a reactionary cult for young people, does anyone on the center-left care?Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:17 — Why 'cancel culture' rhetoric is more about affirmative action for illogical reactionary opinions13:00 — Right-wing campus speakers are performance artists rather than academics19:11 — Campus speech surveys rarely ask if people are afraid to disclose marginalized identities22:39 — William F. Buckley Jr. and "God and Man at Yale"28:12 — Insincere 'censorship' arguments as a hack of liberal epistemology33:01 — Cancel culture narratives are about masking real power through fake populism36:31 — Alan Bloom and "The Closing of the American Mind"42:14 — Libertarianism and hierarchy in American politics47:26 — Lies about cancel culture as permission structures for reactionary repression 57:39 — Conclusion Audio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So let's focus our discussion here at the beginning about the premise of your book. Lay that out for us real quickly, if you could, please.ADRIAN DAUB: Yeah, so the idea is it's a story of or a history of the worry about cancel culture in U.S. media. And the argument is really threefold that one there is this longstanding discussion within the U.S. tends to start on the right, but then almost always makes its way to the center. That is that basically proposes that there is this rising tide of left wing liberalism or left wing censoriousness.And that cancel culture is basically the latest iteration of that. My book tries to show with what data we have available, that's very likely overstated. That is to say, that's not to say that there aren't people who have bad things happen to them on college campuses or in media based on what they say.It does mean that the picture, if you look closely is a lot less a lot less obvious and a lot less. Monolithic, then sort of narratives about cancel culture would make it seem right. That is to say, when you hear cancel culture, at least until recently, people would think, well, this is from the left.This is from young people. This has to do with online spaces. This has to do with wokeness, right? And that it does exist. But it turns out that kind of occludes much larger swaths of, things that we might, call cancellation, but we usually don't. That come from, state legislatures from Ron DeSantis, what have you, right?So that's the first part of the argument. The second part of the argument is that this debate really, unlike the earlier panic over political correctness, which [00:04:00] very much resembles, is something that didn't sort of get cooked up. In right wing spaces and then kind of jumped over this one traveled the opposite way it from the very beginning appeal to a kind of, I mean, some people might say reactionary centrist or, center right, kind of,SHEFFIELD: I call it conservative liberalism.DAUB: Yeah, exactly. Right. Like a, it started in the pages of the Atlantic and the New York times far more than it did on Breitbart or Fox News or whatever. And due to that fact, it sort of very quickly made its way across the globe and mostly as a print phenomenon, that is to say, before it's, not, it's a story about social media, but it's not a social, a story about social media that traveled through social media. It really is a story about social media that traveled.From the New York Times to Le Figaro in France, or to Die Welt in Germany, or to The Times in the UK, right? It becomes a kind of story about print journalism, and for a print magazine. Journalism audience, which is also to say that this is not really a freak out among people that we might think of as low information or might be in a kind of, or we sort of classically think are in a media bubble.These are people who are very interested, who are very well read, who consume media exactly the way, we're all supposed to consume media and none of us. Do any more right. By like picking up a paper in the morning. And yet I would argue that they're being fed something very close to disinformation when it comes to cancel culture stories.And then the third point is that what this really enables is a, bunch of breaking down barriers. There is a, it's a libertarian story. In an age where kind of libertarianism is making common cause with something far more authoritarian. It is a, as I say, a center, right? Panic. At an age when, especially in Europe, the center right is becoming more and [00:06:00] more curious towards the far right or the populist right.It is a panic for an age in which people not just on the right, but probably particularly on the right kind of have to, they wear two hats. They wear a hat, a populist hat and a institutionalist hat, right? On the one hand. Still have a residual respect for institutions that they nevertheless think have been degraded by You know the woke mind virus or whatever So it's it is this panic for an age in which A bunch of things that used to structure our politics rather clearly Are breaking down And it allows people to sort of not Have to make a decision.It's a sort of yes. And kind of panic a place where you can you don't have to pick whether you're a populist or an institutionalist. You can just be both. You don't have to pick whether you're libertarian or whether you really want those wokesters put in their place by some good old fashioned government intervention.You can do both, right? So it is a panic that catches a large segment of the population exactly where they're at. Where they would have to make some pretty troubling choices. Cancer culture is a way or yelling about cancer culture and about the young wokesters that promote it is a way to not have to make those choices.Why 'cancel culture' rhetoric is more about affirmative action for illogical reactionary opinionsSHEFFIELD: I mean, you could call that a dual choice, but also you could call it hypocrisy. And I mean, that's that sort of, innate hypocrisy is, it is endemic ultimately to reactionary thought because it reactionary thought isn't full thinking. It is an epistemology, a self-centered epistemology in which things are, to quote Stephen Colbert, his character, ‘that things are true because I believe them.’ And and that was what he meant in the context of “truthiness.”I mean, it's deeply ironic and unfortunate that [00:08:00] he was absolutely correctly describing what you're talking about here, and people on the left just thought it was a joke. But he was like, seriously describing the problem that we were up against, and nobody paid attention other than to think it was funny.DAUB: I think that's right. I think that there is I know that in your work, you think a lot about the, what do you call the dual fundamentalisms of politics and faith, and I think that in some way, Cancel culture kind of, or the worry about cancel culture fits into that really nicely.It's sort of the latest attempt to feign dynamism where there is none, right? There's the, this, language game always proposes there's this conservative position that's not being allowed expression and not expressing it is sort of hampering, the progress of science, of free inquiry, et cetera, et cetera.But if you drill down, the conservative position really, Hasn't changed. Right? The ever evolving specter of the censorious left is sort of the correlate of the things you're supposedly no longer able to say but that are really never changing. Right? That, that basically, it, the newness of the threat.It's supposed to lend novelty to ideas that if you drill down, we're, the same in 1995 or 1985, even. Right. Like,I, was censored for saying the thing I wanted to say. What is the thing you wanted to say? Oh, it's basically the bell curve. And you're like, okay, wow. We're still doing this. Have you gotten new material?Right. Like it is a way to re to rejuvenate material that is on the verge of going stale.SHEFFIELD: Well, it is. Yeah. And it's it's like, and, but it is the only way that they can have their ideas even discussed at all, because I mean, that's, is the kind of root cause of this rhetorical technique is that they, and I can say this as a former religious [00:10:00] conservative and a former secular conservative myself, that, deep down all of them know. That their ideas are insupportable. They know that what they believe is not true. They know that, the, that they can have no, that they have no proof that the earth was created in 6, 000 years. They know that while they feel like that women are dumber than men they know that they don't really have any proof of that. And, like, and they know that when, when, they make, panics about transgender people. They know that there are basically no transgender athletes in the world. the, percentage, the number of people affected by a trans athlete, in their locker room is probably less than a hundred in the entire United States. They know that's true, but it's just, this is like, it is the ultimate kind of quota thinking. Like, that's the deep irony of their, posture is they want affirmative action forDAUB: Yeah, exactly.SHEFFIELD: Essentially what they're arguing is that our idea, we can't prove our ideas are true, so we're going to make them true politically through power of the state.DAUB: Yeah, I think that's right. I think there is a tendency to, want, there's this picture, especially around college campuses that all ideas ought to be, heard and that there's a good in having every idea heard out on a college campus.And like, it's one of those ideas that like has a kind of surface plausibility. You think like that, if there's something that's widely held in society, it ought to be, at least talked about on university campuses. So I don't have like a huge problem with that. At the same time, if you drill down to it, you think, well, no the university is in some way a huge selection machine, right?There are certain things that they study and that they, that things that they don't study. There are there are questions that are open, that [00:12:00] scholars Open up for debate and then that, that you and I, when we're not in that field, might think like, this is crazy. Why are they debating this? What, are strings?I'm sorry. And conversely things that you and I might find really interesting and that a specialist in that field might say like, oh, This is kind of settled. We've decided to, or we've even decided that the debate doesn't go anywhere and we Have moved on to other things, right? So universities are by and large selection machines when it comes to where they put their attention and scholarly inquiry and And again, like, as you say, like, the people who make these kind of bad faith attacks on the universities know that they just want their things to be in the mix, right?And so they said, like, well, everything, all positions should be reflected on college campuses, and they don't believe that. I can easily,SHEFFIELD: Well, and through their own behavior, they show they don't believe that.DAUB: But even the ones that, let's say, sure, you have the Ron DeSantis of the world who are like, everything needs to be taught except for gender studies.Like, well, okay, it feels like a mild inconsistency there, bucko.Right-wing campus speakers are performance artists rather than academicsDAUB: But even the people who say like, who claim to take an absolutely libertarian stance on this, I think tend to not fully agree with that. Grapple with the fact that of course I could come up with a speaker invitation that they wouldn't want, right?Of course we could bring someone we could organize an event right now at you know Any University in the United States where an administrator would say like I feel like someone's gonna get killed I feel like I don't see the value in this like is this supposed to be funny? Is this performance art that you're even inviting this person, right?And, or where the framing is so off that, everyone's like, I don't feel like I need to go to this or support it. Right. There's a kind of, there's a, it's one of the, very frequently the cancel culture panic works when people who are not at certain institutions or in certain spaces apply a moral rigorism to them that crumbles.Once it comes into contact with reality. Right. Where basically you can sort of say like, well, I believe all, it should always be like [00:14:00] this. And you think like, yeah, that would be nice. Like come visit an actual place where this work happens. And you realize that no, like you, there are there are trade offs with all these things.There are, these are. Both universities and they are small communities, right? Like there are they are different stakeholders and their interests to be weighed against each other. There's a kind of, there's a kind of kind of, zero gravity element to a lot of these debates around quote, unquote, cancel culture.Where there's really no interest in kind of the world of, And the institutions that we're all operating. And that's what I meant when I said that it has this anti institutional edge, but then when you scratch below the surface, even there, it very often. Is there is a deep institutionalism, my deep fascination with established hierarchies behind a lot of it.Right. Think about the Claudine Gay fracas at, Harvard, where basically everyone decided that they suddenly cared a lot about plagiarism. Right. Who had like never thought about academic plagiarism and all the academics were like, ah, this is very complicated, actually probably shouldn't have done it, but it's, pretty complicated.But of course all these people were like ultimately extremely credulous against like what Harvard is supposed to mean, right? So there is this kind of like disrespect for, institutions as they are currently constituted, but then a deep and often almost childlike faith in what a university should be, right?The fact that it is. A bunch of individuals who are very smart and socially not very smart muddling through and a bunch of administrators who used to be chemistry professors, like three years ago, maybe not being like massively good at their jobs at all times. Like, that's the part that people are allergic to the fact that institutions are run by people for people and that they're messy, noisy and discordant entities.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also this critique. It [00:16:00] doesn't understand, the origins of the, idea of free speech. That the, that free speech was promoted as a principle, not. In and of itself, but for the, consequences that it produced. So in other words, like, so there was no, there, there's never been a jurisprudence of, well, we need to have, slander as, free speech that if I can't say 24 seven on Twitter, That, Donald Trump murders children in a pizza shop.If I can't say that, then, there's no free speech in America. Like, or whatever might happen. Like, that's the thing, none of these people, they never want to apply their rules to themselves. Like let's say Jonathan Haidt, should, somebody have their free speech to say that Jonathan Haidt rapes children? And that they want to dedicate their life to promoting that, that principle and that idea is should that be given free speech? And what if it's not is do have we lost America? Forever if I can't say that Jonathan Hyde rapes babies. Of course not because it's not true and In the same way that you know Expecting it.There's no difference from telling a I think these speakers that the right wing sets up, they're not there to actually promote inquiry, as you were saying, to, discuss ideas to, have a real legitimate debate. know what they're there is to troll and to deliberately offend. And as you said, there's any number of speakers, you could hire any, any number of, Marxist radicals out there that would say, we should burn this whole universityto the ground. This is an oppression and all the administrators should be killed. Like of, that's not the point of what these discussions are, but there's this just, I don't know. I mean, why do you think people seem to be so completely. unable to know what the history of, why we have free speech.DAUB: over the [00:18:00] last 40 years, I mean, there's, really a multistage history here. Now, maybe it makes sense to go backwards rather than forwards, right? Over the last 40 years, we've hadthis this specific attention paid to university campuses basically claiming that the first amendment is imperiled.On them and very frequently this involved questions about minority populations as the subject of opinions, right? So this is where your somewhat drastic Jonathan Haidt example is kind of apropos because someone comes on a college campus and says, Leah Thomas should not be allowed in locker rooms.That person is basically saying the Thomas is at least potentially a rapist, right? that is, slander ultimately, but we've been taught for 40 years that this is. Actually speech that we have to live with, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So, and it often is about black people, about Mexicans, about, about trans people, about gay people, right.Like as subjects of conversation, not as the subjects of speech themselves. Right. They're, the objects that we talkSHEFFIELD: Oh, not as, nonDAUB: Yeah. It's not participants. Exactly.And, yeah. Right.Campus speech surveys rarely ask if people are afraid to disclose marginalized identitiesDAUB: And like, there's all these, there are all these interesting sort of surveys where people get asked, like, how free do you feel you're allowed, like, how free do you feel you're able to speak about homosexuality at work, right?And they never asked, like, also, are you gay? Right. That feels like those are two separate kinds of censorship. One is self censorship. One is self censorship around someone else's identity. But they're clearly only interested in the latter and not in the former, right? So that's, been going on for quite some time, but what's been going on even longer, of course, is this selective focus on how speakers are treated on college campuses, right?These kind of weirder anecdotes where like, the speakers was shouted at. Dartmouth in 1987. And now he's, now there's someone being shouted out at Harvard and, 2004, and then, it's a conservative [00:20:00] judge at Stanford in 2022. Right. There, there's been a, there's a huge infrastructure from mostly right wing foundations that, that really distribute these, make sure that like, if two dreadlock wearing, kids in, in, in in, Che Guevara t shirts, like disrupt the speaker, like you're going to hear about it.It's going to be, it's going to be somewhere. It may not make it to the times, but it's going to make it onto, a campus watch or campus report or something or other. Right. And if you're lucky, maybe it'll make it even into the wall street journal. So that has been exist. That's existed for quite some time.These foundations are some of them are started during World War Two. But I think the real infrastructure sort of came in the 60s and 70s. And then what's also been going on is this focus on on freedom of expression on college campuses at the exclusion of that, that, this really starts with Ronald Reagan.that somehow in a strange way always seemed to involve a crackdown on student speech. You're like, okay, feels a little contradictory, but okay. But what I mean by that is, right, the 1960s has two things happening. There's student activism, great student activism. And there is a question About how universities are going to respond to that.And it also brings in the, end of in loco parentis, right? The idea that universities that students are the charges of universities and universities have to some extent, parental rights over their students. And the funny thing is people started worrying about free expression on college campuses around that time.Which is hilarious because right up to that time right up to that point in time, college students had no freedom of expression. There were, there, there were court precedents that said you could be forced by a university to go to prayer, for instance. Your attire could lead to expulsion. Right?Things around sex, right? Like, these are all forms of self expression that, universities routinely policed. And yet The whole college campuses are imperiling freedom of expression really starts only once the college kids [00:22:00] actually sees the mic with the free speech movement at Berkeley and sort of say, like, stop bombing Vietnamese peasants, please.Right? It's a very, it's a long. Kind of switcheroo that's been pulled on us, but it is it's a switcheroo. Nonetheless, it, it, directs attention. It creates these fables that give us a sense of like when campus speech matters and when it really doesn't, when, it maybe is actually smarter to crack down on it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no. And well, and they certainly do. As we've said, are enjoying cracking down oncampus speech quite a bit.William F. Buckley Jr. and "God and Man at Yale"SHEFFIELD: But yeah, just to set back maybe a little bit, this what you were saying about, that center right parties in Europe are becoming increasingly discriminatory. Increasingly curious and interested in authoritarian right-wing parties.That is kind of the story of the Republican party in the United States. Like this is one that playedout here first. And and obviously one person who kind of was the most pivotal pi pivotal in getting this started was William F. Buckley Jr. With his book, God and Man at Yale. It's, it is an absolutely loathsome book and I encourage everybody to read it, actually, like, if you think, like, it's, it is deeply unfortunate how there is a number of, left wing intellectuals who think that, Buckley was some sort of patron saint that has been thrown into the mud by the Trumpers and have no idea of who this manactually was, but you, do talk about him quite abit.DAUB: Yeah, I do. I mean, and I have to say that there are some Buckley texts that are It's that I can read with some profit, if not pleasure, but God and Maynard Yale is not one of them. My Lord, bad book, but it is.SHEFFIELD: just tattletailing, Yeah,DAUB: but it but in some way it models, I think. This is why I started with [00:24:00] it.I mean, there are some earlier examples of this kind of genre, but so, granular and he has this myopia, right? Like he's clearly just going through like courses he took and fights he picked while at Yale and you think, Bill, I don't know, like, what does it mean for my weekend? do to do this?I'm, sorry. You had a hard time at Yale. I'm not even sure you did, but like, it feels like you, you're just kind of making it my problem now and there is that of course is sort of the principle of a lot of stories about political correctness and cancel culture. This kind of loss of relation, a fact that like, or the loss of perspective, right?That we end up with these stories where like, well, wait, why do I care about this? Like, okay. These two professors were mean to each other. Okay. This one student filed a complaint. Okay. Why does it matter? And Buckley, I think is one of the first to really pioneer this mode of paying obsessive attention to like, well, for listeners who haven't read it, right?Like it'll be like, so there is a big Christian fellowship, but did you know that the guy who runs it is a Methodist and like this, and sure, there is a Catholic student union, but they're not very doctrinally sound and you're like, okay. It feels like. Like, this could have been a bunch of emails to these people.If you're, if you have a bone to pick with the Christian Fellowship, like, Just join the listserv, I guess, harshly worded letter. Not sure. This is the book that, that needed to be written here. but but the, way these minuscule kind of relationships on campus, these kind of, yeah community dustups basically become amplified into this.Diagnosis of what is true of, God and man really, it became, made, he popularized that. And I think it became absolutely became our number one way of relating to colleges, honestly, [00:26:00] intervening 70 years.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I did. And I mean, and I think of what, I mean, the other reason why the book is, important to look at is that he was actually honest about what he wanted to do. And that was not something that today's right does like, they will still claim to Elon Musk, probably the best example of that most prominent, it's claiming he's a free speech absolutist, but in fact, He throttles everybody else's tweets compared to his own. He has a list of, news websites that he hates and he down ranks their content. And and, then bans various people who, report critically on him. There, like several of these people are still banned permanently from Twitter.Um,DAUB: a mob on them. I mean, I don't know. Is this, that's literally what cancel culture is supposed to be professes to hate it. Allegedly.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So whereas, Buckley, in the book, and maybe you can talk about that, at the end of the book, he talks about what, it is that he wants. What did he want in the book?DAUB: Yeah. So the book, I'm trying to remember exactly how he phrases it, but basic idea was that American society and universities had drifted apart and that in some way they had to be a reintegration. I don't quite remember whether he calls explicitly for the state to kind of intervene.Then, but definitely it's, he wants to empower, what is happening right now, he wants to empower donors and the people who control the purse strings, thinks that the university really ought to be left to the stewardship of, yeah, of the adults, right. Of the, of the wealthy families who fund it.I'm guessing that also means. It might mean state legislatures. We don't know cause he's only talking about Yale, which doesn't get, didn't get that much federal funding back then. So, but it is the people with the money control are supposed to control what an education is.SHEFFIELD: [00:28:00] Yeah, but he, and he tells the donors, if they won't give you that control, then you should not give them any money. Like, you should cancel Yale University. Like, that's essentially what the point of the book is.Insincere 'censorship' arguments as a hack of liberal epistemologySHEFFIELD: And but at the same time, this, idea is deeply, it is deeply appealing to this kind of shallow, unphilosophical liberalism because in a way, saying, well, all voices should be heard, even ones that you disagree with, like it does, it fits into this, dollar store Voltaire that, that pretty much every journalist imagines themselves to be although I guess they would omit the dollar store part you know, like it, it fits into that self concept and, but ultimately what it is, a hack of their epistemology, I think, and they can't even see it.DAUB: That's a really good point. There is a, right. Doesn't Corey Robin in that book, the reactionary mind make the point that like a lot of these reactionary movements. Are they use a lot. They use the tools of liberation against liberation. Basically, I think I forget how he puts it, idea that, they're using the tools fought for by student activists, for instance, in the 60s.In order to roll back the advances of student activists in the 60s, basically, it's it's using the logic kind of insurgent logic people who have been disenfranchised in universities, in the media, in society, against people who've been traditionally sexist. Basically. disenfranchised in those places, right?Which also, this is another big part of the cancer culture panic and this PC panic before it, which always involves positioning them as dominant, right? Like the idea that, wokesters now control the university, right? Like you can't be a man anymore on the university campus. You can't be straight on the university campus.You can't be white on the university campuses. It's all dominated by, right? This [00:30:00] is another thing that, that Buckley, I think prefigured for us. That's maybe a little hard to even notice is there, that there's a bunch of sort of overlapping parse prototypes, right? Like where you take the part for the whole, right?A lot of campus freak out texts, whether they're books or articles or whatever, focus on a tiny sliver of the curriculum, right? Historically, this has been history courses or English classes, maybe not even much more than that. Today, it'll be like African American studies, gender studies, but also probably still English.I mean, there's a French person in there somewhere because that's always us. And then and then, likewise, it takes the humanities to stand in for the entire university. Right. talk about sort of like endlessly about the ideological blinders of kind of humanities departments.And I'm like, well, we have a business school right here. I kind of feel like they have a couple of ideological priors too. Like no, no hate, but like, it feels like. There, you're like, I don't think capitalism is the way you guys, I think you're going to have a hard time getting hired by any business school in the country.Sounds to me like there's a little bit of activism going on there too, but like, that's not what they yell about. They yell about, the women's studies prof goes on about the patriarchy then it's a focus on as with Buckley on our elite institutions, right? The same period that saw this kind of development of the campus freak out discourse also saw of course, a massive expansion of our state Institutions of our of, community colleges of, private colleges, et cetera, et cetera.yet we still focus on sort of like the Ivy plus when it comes to any of these issues. Right. And then we're completely blind and often do not honestly give a collective crap at all about when things happen to, these important state university systems that educate. Much larger swaths of the population than your Yale, Princeton, Harvard, or Stanford, right?[00:32:00] So this is another thing that, that I think that Buckley really pioneered for us, that like, it's not just that we have to pay attention to like small s**t that happens at universities. It's that we have to pay attention to small s**t that happens at a very select number of universities and then pretend that the university, right?We have to yell about a course that a. Queer theorist at Duke is teaching in 1991 and act like that represents the university as though the most common university course in 1991 was probably Chem 101 or intro to psych or, astrology, astronomy for jocks or whatever it is like, these that have way more impact, right at Stanford, the top 10 courses don't even, there are no humanities courses in the top 10 enrolled courses as far as I know.Right. And yet you're never going to hear about something that someone said. computer science class is always going to be, this adjunct who teaches four core, four people in his seminar, said something that, that someone didn't like.Cancel culture narratives are about masking real power through fake populismSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also the focus on, the, Students or and usually a lot of these people who are the professors being attacked or like adjunct or, instructors, so they don't have tenure as well. But it's, to displace the attention from. Actual hierarchies and actual power wielders like that's, to go back to what you were saying about this, distinction of trying to be populist, but also be elitist at the same time, these, a college student complaining about, some course that they don't like, or a grade they didn't like organizing five or six other people with them, to yell at a speaker or whatever.Those students have no power on the campus and have certainly have no power in the society. And, when you compare them to, let's say, well, the president of the United States or the world's richest person, like those people have nothing in comparison to what [00:34:00] Elon Musk or Donald Trump or any of these other people have.DAUB: Yeah. And I mean, like, think also of these kinds of language games that have been with us for quite some time. I mean, it used to be the gay agenda and that now is the trans lobby, right? Like that are just basically these locutions. Yeah. People use to impute power where none exists, right? Like, Oh, well, the trans lobby put you up to this.Like, are you kidding me with this? They and what army, right? Like would that it were so that there was a robust trans lobby in this country. There isn't right. The gay agenda was basically code for, gays are trying to our kids, but like, a thing you could utter.And what it did was it suggested that people that. Over whom you were at that moment, lording power were actually had their boot on your neck, right? You didn't get to say the thing that you then said repeatedly and that a whole political party in this country agreed with you on, but you got to feel like the oppressed minority for a second, right?There's since the 1990s, there's been of, shibboleth of like, Or this kind of meme of these days it's harder to come out as Republican on university campuses than it is to come out as gay. Right. I remember like going back in my research, a lot of my book is archivally based.I found these things from like 1984 and five. I'm like, I'm going to go, I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you there. It feels like coming out as the party currently controlling all three branches of government. Might be, it might be slightly easier to align with them than a minority that's currently dying, a, a plague that government can't even bother to acknowledge.Right. desire. To feel victimized when you're, in fact, gearing up often enough to victimize others is, is central, I think, to this discourse. And it is also, I mean, you know this better than I do, it is, I think, a place where the uniquely American extraction of this discourse comes out because I do think it is [00:36:00] ultimately.A position pioneered by the Christian right right. The idea that you can become dominant and experience yourself as marginal. Nonetheless that is something that I think seeps into Republican politics, not so much through Reagan, but through the Christian right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and talk radioDAUB: Right. Right. That's true. Yeah. I guess I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: But that was who the audience of talkradio was.Alan Bloom and "The Closing of the American Mind"SHEFFIELD: so, before we go back to the international aspect of this one other person who you do discuss who I think was probably, I don't think has, there has been anybody since who has made more of a intellectual or philosophical case for, on these matters is the political philosopher, Alan Bloom.And Bloom, I think, and, me, I'm interested in your opinion, but I think that he was kind of the apotheosis of this argument. So why don't you tell the audience what, what he was talking about and what youDAUB: Yeah. So Alan Bloom's closing of the American mind probably apogee of this, of, or it's the, it's, living in the shadow of bloom basically. And this has two reasons. One, he really. He really brings to a head the kind of neoconservative discontentment with the university, disaffection from the university in the book comes out in 1987.He provides generations of talking points for, kind of how to Harumph about the campus. But the other thing that I think one has to grant him is it's just a very well written book. It's a very well written book, and it's a enjoyable book. Unlike Buckley, I think Bloom really knew write and had a was many ways of man.think [00:38:00] has cemented its reputation, though, is that in some way, There isn't some way that the closing of the American mind that you can pick up at a bookstore today. And then there's the closing of the American mind that was. That was received and that was sort of percolated down in the culture.And the book that he wrote, I think it's far more Socratic and far more ironic and far more self contradictory than what ended up becoming of it. Right. When, once he, the book became a mega bestseller, I forget exactly the numbers, but they're numbers that like no philosophy book since other than.SHEFFIELD: MillionsDAUB: I mean, other than pretty or Jordan Peterson's, clean your room books. But you, but reception, a bunch of blooms, Let's say less Republican aligned or less culture war aligned opinions observations kind of dropped out. I mean, just to pick a random example, I'm pretty sure he goes after business schools and says like, this is not an education.What is this? We shouldn't be doing this. No one ever talks about that. They're like, well, let's talk about black activists, right? So what the feminists, right? So there is, along with it. One has to say, like, it's not, I'm not saying like, oh, poor Alan Bloom. He was misunderstood. Like he.He knew how to what to accentuate where right and definitely but is this funny thing where like it. It has a probably more credible claim than any of the campus freak out books that came out in its wake from Dinesh D'Souza's Liberal Education to, Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals to Charlie Sykes's book that he rewrites every two years with a new title and that where the university is still fucked and but got a lot, it's a lot more as a much better claim to, Actually being fairly liberal not sort of liberal the way we often understand it, but like he does seem to take a he does seem to take a kind of, he a [00:40:00] kind of both sides like he didn't mean to make anyone particularly happy with that book, but then the reception I would say a lot more. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I'm sorry. It also, I think what's different from that book compared to its, imitators in the years after is that he wasn't intending to be Part of this larger message, like he was just writing something to get itoff his chest that he really believed. And he did actually, talk about how there was a need to, discuss and debate Marxism on the campus.If I remember, it's been awhile since I read it, but like, like, so he, actually was sincere in his beliefs and he, whereas all these other books that subsequently came out and, Charlie Kirk and othersare, I mean, this is a genre that basically wascreated after, the closing of the American mind came out and it was, but they were, these books were instrumental books.His book was an intellectual book. I think maybe it mightDAUB: Well, it's possible, right? They, it could also have been both, right? Both a personal book a instrumental book right. Bloom was a Straussian and I do think that the Straussians are very interested in this idea of exotericism and esotericism, right? That there's a outward facing. Kind of way you communicate political ideas to the public.And then there's the way you talk to the cognoscenti, you talk to the other people who have your, philosopher king background essentially. the book, I think always was supposed to have an institutional and a populist side to it. And I think that it's quite possible that that Boom did that deliberately, but you're absolutely right that some way it was, if you knew how to read you, you wouldn't have noticed back then, even that, like, it wasn't exactly the kind of, the instrumentality didn't exhaust what the book was and was doing, right? And absolutely right about that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, [00:42:00] well, I mean, wasn't intending it like I remember reading something from him later that he was interviewed or something. And yet he was no, I had no idea that it would become a bestseller. And he just thought it was, you know, going to be an obscure book and that no one would ever read.Libertarianism and hierarchy in American politicsSHEFFIELD: But I guess to some degree that does kind of, the. The post Coldwell area or post, lemme say that again. The post Cold War era. It is, in many ways the story of the dissolution of libertarianism, I think, and its disaffection within the larger Republican power structure of the coalition that they had during the Cold War, that it and people who had self-described as a libertarian never really were. But at the same time, there was, I mean, that's. There is a lot of people who have these impulses, but they're always, like that's kind of the debate in politics is, are they going to go for their more individual liberation, ideas, or are they going to go for their authority ideas?Because libertarianism has both of these ideas, which is, that the people with the money should control society. That is, in many ways, the core of American libertarianism. But at the same time, there, there are liberationists Aspects of it. So, I mean, let's maybe get into that.I mean, how do you think that's relevant to this cancel culture discussion?DAUB: Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I think it cuts to of it. Right. I think Jason Stanley in his book fascism makes this point that like of how American libertarianism relates to hierarchy is a really interesting one on the one hand, right? There's a surface.enmity or opposition any kind of hierarchies. But at the same time, there is, of course, often a so, subtle tendency to think that there's a natural order that will [00:44:00] emerge if the state and if society just kind of butt out a little bit, right? And money is one, Way of make that natural, to naturalize that, to sort of say like, is the people who have and the have nots that is natural, right?Like if you think about Im Rand's idea about the, the makers and the takers, she doesn't sort of think that you become that in your life. It's basically, this is who you are. Like you, you reveal your inner core. And so there, there are. blunt kind of hierarchies of value behind the veneer of like, well, we should treat everyone the same.Right. And I think that the cancer culture panic speaks to that. And this is why it was so easy to export. Right. On the one hand, it's saying. Are. Universities are hopelessly woke, our, our armed forces are no longer good, our corporations have been captured by DEI our politics has been poisoned by, left wing neo pronouns, whatever, like, is for they, them, Trump is for you kind of thing.But if you look closely, of course, Cancel culture stories are not, as you say, usually about contingent faculty members. They're not usually about, about the freelancer who doesn't get asked to write again after a piece he wrote pissed off the wrong people. No, it's about people at the top of hierarchies.You have to have, in order to be a good tragic cancel story, you have to start at a certain level. You have to be at a certain at a certain height in your own. In your own career in order to then fall from that meaning ultimately these are fables about how people with power and attention deserve power and attention, right?They tend to kind of suppose that there is a natural hierarchy in our workplaces, in our society, at our universities that wokeness, identity politics, DEI, et cetera, seek to distort, right? So it's a very funny [00:46:00] thing.SHEFFIELD: MeritocracyDAUB: Right. a, funny. Way in which if you scratch just a little bit, you notice below the surface of these cancel stories that appear to be all about, well, everyone should just have the same fair shot.A great deal of fealty and a great deal of credulity vis a vis. Established hierarchies, right? artists who got canceled, think of all the beautiful poems you could have written or the beautiful films you could have made, right? Like all the movies that Kevin Spacey didn't get to make whatever, right?Like that, says like Kevin Spacey deserves to make movies, right? Like, and these other people who, whose lives were derailed by these me too men, right? Like don't deserve that necessarily. Right. It is their lot in life to have been derailed by these men. Right. And I think that's a really Once you notice that, you realize that like, yes, it is a libertarianism, but it is, as you say, it is exactly a kind of a result of the decomposition of a certain libertarianism where like suddenly, as as certain pressures come to bear, especially in this kind of alliance, through fusionism movement conservatism, I would say where it becomes clear that a, very clear, often biologized hierarchy behind these claims to yeah, to personal freedom for everyone.Lies about cancel culture as permission structures for reactionary repressionSHEFFIELD: yeah, and that's kind of at the I do feel like that's That sense of crisis that these arguments tend to develop. They become the justification for right wing authoritarianism because, it's, this idea, well, they're going to silence you.So we need to silence them first.DAUB: no, exactly. I mean, thing. If you look at these books, we've been saying, like, there's this, book where we can go back to Buckley, but [00:48:00] really it starts with Bloom. Until sort of their books that have their books that have come out since my book came out that I had to order from Amazon because they're clearly they're relevant to this topic, they fall into two camps.There are those that describe a. Well, if you, there's, a Buckley writes, right. Which says, as you say, like cancel Yale, right. Just flat out. And then there are these books that basically say like, there's a new McCarthyism coming from the left. It's like Stalinism. It's like Nazi Germany.It's et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then at the end, they're like, here are my prescriptions. And they're like, Hire a few more conservatives, like, don't be so mean online, like, I'm sorry, kind of feels like if you genuinely believe your premise that this is a new Stalinism, then you're not telling me all your prescriptions because surely hire two more conservators on the faculty can't be it, right?Like, sure, you also want it. Want a job for yourself, fair play to you, but that cannot be all right. And then it, what you Ron DeSantis saying like, well, obviously what we need to do is crack down on college campuses. And then you often have the same author saying, well, well, that's not what I was saying at all.It's like, well, No, but like, if you're saying that it's, that this, that it's this kind of a crisis, right? This bad, like Stalinism, right? Like, you think that some kind of repressive measures are justified in order right?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. These people are going to make a dictatorship. You've got to stop them.DAUB: Yeah, like, okay, like the, what's the, like what's the next sentence? And like, it's very interesting that very few of them, very few of them ever go there, but it's perfectly obvious what what the next steps would be. And. The books kind of don't have to spell it out because politicians will do it for him because, especially I think after, Reagan is sort of still on the Buckley [00:50:00] line.Reagan. I feel like Reagan yeah,but he perfected even as president, I think perfected the art of. Expressing moral disapproval by just not by just taking money away from you right like by starving you right basically government cuts are a form of saying who we value in our society, and who we don't it feels like that version of conservatism is kind of dying now.I think that, Trump's promise wasn't to defund certain things. Trump's promise is to fund the suppression of certain things. And that's, I think that's what's coming. And that's what's already happening in Florida. It's not about, for years, state legislatures could say like, Oh, well, our all our students learn at our state university is Eskimo poetry.And, all this PC nonsense, let's cut their funding, right? That was the obvious thing. I don't think that's sufficient anymore. I think I don't think that's what they call for anymore. It is now more than that. It is. Let's. See some heads roll. Let's throw some people out. Let's throw, make it easier to remove students.Let's tell them what to teach. Right. and ISHEFFIELD: And faculty tenure. That's another one of theirthings. Yeah. now with these people who have been writing these books, though, like in your observation, what do they have to say about Ron DeSantis? Are they, concerned aboutDAUB: So it, it depends. There are the only, these books are written very quickly and they're not written they're, Not always very up on things, right? they tend to not take cognizance of what, what's actually happening on the ground. One thing that I've definitely noticed is that the more sort of liberal coded among them will say, well, that's bad too.And they'll often have as a habit as like a chapter for unlike cancel culture from the right. Right. But then the entire book will be about left wing cancel culture. And so you're like, Oh, so you're saying that Ron DeSantis. Okay. So this also [00:52:00] happens to sometimes exist on the right. But really the problem are the kids with the blue hair and the they, them pronouns, like, okay, feels like that's still quite distortive.So you do get that. And then you get people, I would say, like Chris Rufo, who very clearlySHEFFIELD: yeah, Mm hmm.DAUB: are leading and are pushing it. Right. So, so I think there of a split, but I think I have yet to see someone genuinely grapple with the fact that they might well, have made this happen, might have allowed this to happen, might have promoted the talking points that people like Ron DeSantis can now use to, yeah, to basically synchronize education in the state of Florida.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, and it's, and maybe let's end here with that. I'm just, in, in my observation from outside the academy, it seems like that almost nobody in there is aware of what's coming for them.And they think that well, if we, if I just keep my head down and focus on my work, then I'll be fine. And they have no idea that, There is nothing that you can do that will make them not come for you, unless you're completely on their program. Like, unless you agree with them,they will come for you. And I think a lot of faculty and administrators they think that these right wing reactionary radicalscan be mollified somehow.DAUB: right. It's this, and it is exactly the logic of these moral panics, right? That people think, oh, gee, if only our students hadn't said that slogan, only that teacher hadn't said that, right? It's like, no, there are millions of college teachers in the United States. There are tens of millions of college students in the United States.Someone's going to say something that they don't like, right? after the election and after Trump won, there was this [00:54:00] article that went around like about like, liberal colleges and college instructors who said about Trump after the election.And the examples are so few and far between. And you're like, Like, you can tell that they were like, desperately trying to find these. Right. AndSHEFFIELD: And of course you could have written one with justas many people, maybe even more, that weresaying positiveDAUB: yeah, exactly.SHEFFIELD: They never bother withDAUB: Yeah. or yeah, I mean, like, and also like the absence of a story would itself be a story. Right. But it is this interesting thing where. Where, there is, and I think you're absolutely right among certain, especially administrators, this that if we do the right thing and say the right thing these attacks will pass us by.Right. Right. and I it's a little problem they are, right. Because they still, I think, picture themselves in the faculty lounge debating a colleague where this may well be true, right. Like, people have, individuals have, Have limited energy. They might literally just like not bother with you.Okay. But those of us who know how lives of Tik TOK work, I think it's very credit that right. Lives of Tik TOK is a content mill. It will find something. It will find an LGBT person somewhere. All you have to do is be LGBT in public and you could be in lives on lives of Tik TOK. That is the point, right?SHEFFIELD: youDAUB: think about, what it would take for a. Forget a university, say a department for department to be able to exert control over and make sure that no one says anything untoward in all your classes, all the invited speakers who have, by the way, free speech, very important, right?Add faculty meetings at this, at that, right? Without anyone ever. Pushing that out to, to an interested party. Like it's, fantastical, right? my my to this is if they want to find it, they'll find it. Say what you're going to say and yeah, hope [00:56:00] cross your fingers and hope it doesn't happen.But like, it is not. It is deliberately not something that is that is dependent on left wing accesses. It creates the perception of left wing access, whether it exists or not. It's not to say that there aren't ever left wing accesses, but this machine works whether there are or not. keffiyeh wearing blue haired students can hide in their dorms for two months.We're still going to get stories, right? Like they're going to find these.SHEFFIELD: will. And like, and even like, Bret Weinstein, his exit strip, tale of being of why he quit as a professor at Evergreen State in Oregon, the story that people were told about it was a lie. Like, the students did not do anything against him. They were protesting a a racist incident on the campus.It was nothing to do with him. But, that was not what you were told. And so, yeah, your point is exactly right about this. And, faculty and administrators need to understand, you are facing a movement that wantsthe university to notDAUB: Yeah. Or not in the shape that it does right now. Exactly. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that they want it to be a religious propaganda meal and, and all you can, just look at what they're doing in Oklahoma with forcing the, but the Bible in the classroom or Louisiana forcing the 10 commandments, even on the college.Like they're going to put the mandate, the 10 commandments in university classrooms. In every university, state university in Louisiana, this is what you're up against. And if you can't stand up for yourself, well,why are youDAUB: Yeah.Conclusion and final thoughtsSHEFFIELD: well, all right. It's I hope people will get up, with that. And so, and part of that is going to be reading yourbook, Adrian, hopefully. So forDAUB: do. Yeah. And write to me if you agree, disagree. I'm always to have that you didn't see [00:58:00] in there. Have questions. I'd love to hear from you.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Awesome. And so for people who want to keep up with your things that you're doing what's what tell, us,Your social media handles and otherDAUB: Yeah. So I'm off Twitter now or X I'm on blue sky at adriandaub dot whatever it is, like blue sky dot social or whatever it's called. But yeah, you'll be able to me. I'm under my own name with a picture of me. I also have a sub stack, although currently I'm on a kick writing about cars rather than about politics.This was my. This was my attempt to not go crazy over in the fall of 2024. Yeah. And then please check out my podcasts especially in bed with the right. I think it's going to be very, salient and very relevant to listeners of this podcast, which I host with more at Donagan and where we very much hope to have you on soon, Matt.I think it's it's a wonderful, it's, A difficult time, but it's also a wonderful time for like us doing this kind of work. Because it's, it, it feels like, um, people are becoming sensitized and people are becoming. I'm becoming savvy to a lot of these dynamics that, during the years so far have been a little bit slumbering or because of being consigned to marginality.And I think in a very dark time. It's been real lifeline to have. The podcast have the Patreon have our discord and just be able to talk with other people and be like, am I crazy for thinking that? And then they're like, no, that's definitely there. So, I really that people can can connect with me on those channels.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Sounds good. Uh, thanks for being here.DAUB: Thank you.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion, and you can always get more if you go to theoryofchange.show, where you can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And my thanks to everybody who is supporting us on Patreon or on Substack.We also [01:00:00] do have free subscriptions as well, if you can't afford to help out at this time. And if you're watching on YouTube, please make sure to click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode. And I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

In this engaging discussion, Matthew McManus, a political science lecturer at the University of Michigan and author of 'The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism,' dives into the philosophical crisis plaguing liberalism. He argues that the rise of right-wing parties, often mischaracterized as populist, stems from the failures of liberalism to combat reactionary ideologies. McManus also examines the historical perspectives of thinkers like Thomas Paine and critiques the disconnect in progressive activism, advocating for a revitalized, community-oriented approach to address economic inequality and racial justice.