Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

On Tuesday, Brad DeLong joined me for a live Theory of Change episode to discuss Donald Trump’s firing of Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and how it is part of a decades-long war on sound economics and expertise in general waged by reactionary Republicans. We also discussed Brad’s own efforts to get economics as a discipline to understand complexity, and then wrapped with a discussion about the economy and artificial intelligence, one of his current research interestsVideo Timecodes00:00 — The Erosion of Expertise and Trust01:54 — Introduction and background04:35 — Historical context of labor statistics07:12 — Republican response to BLS firing10:35 — The problem of Republican truth-telling14:26 — The importance of judgment and expertise18:05 — Trump's broader attack on expertise26:01 — The first wave of AI development30:20 — The crypto grift and AI investment36:24 — The need for independent statistics45:27 — The value of government investment54:24 — Understanding AI's current state01:04:11 — The role of liberal education01:13:08 — The future of AI applications01:19:58 — Musk, Trump and the tech elite01:26:23 — Right-wing epistemology and AITranscriptThe 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. So, for everybody who is, joining us, we're doing, this is a [00:02:00] live theory of change show and, we are here today with Brad Long of the, well, various places where you are at, but, primarily, your own Substack, we're going to be doing that. and, you are also you also have some affiliations. you're a professor at the University of California Berkeley.Brad DeLong: That’s the big one. Yes.SHEFFIELD: Yes. Okay.Brad DeLong: Important one.SHEFFIELD: Yes. and also, so, and I wanted to bring Brad on to do this with me today to talk about obviously, Donald Trump's firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, head, Erika McEntarfer, after he had the bad jobs support, a bad jobs number. But it's obviously, this is part of a much broader picture, I think, of the reactionary right’s hatred of expertise, and, continually exemplifying that, that old phrase from Stephen Colbert, that reality has a liberal bias.DELONG: A liberal bias.SHEFFIELD: It seems that's what they think.DELONG: Yes. In many ways, it is the end of a long and honorable American tradition. as another Erica, Groen, my class, my graduate school classmate, who was an earlier commissioner of labor statistics, as she said, I think on Bloomberg's surveillance this morning.It was in 1884 that Carol Wright, the first Commissioner of Labor Statistics, said that his contract with the American people was that they were going to produce the best possible numbers they could and get them out without worrying at all what implications they had for any kind of political movement.or social reform. Or social order, right. cause that it was not their job. [00:04:00] to do anything other than to get the most accurate numbers they could out and that they pledged, that's what they would do for the American people. Donald Trump is now trying to break that. He is going to face a lot of resistance from the bureaucracy, which is in this case an extraordinarily good thing because the bureaucracy does indeed do its job as best it can, and they are indeed addicted to the idea that it is their job to produce the numbers.Historical context of labor statisticsDELONG: That indeed, back in the 1870s, in the 1880s, people found themselves in furious political debates here in America. some of them saying that America was getting more prosperous, others pointing to falling prices of our farm goods and saying it was becoming less. Some of them saying that income distribution was becoming more equal.Others saying that from what they saw, it was becoming more unequal. And a whole bunch of people got together and said, we disagree on a huge amount, but we all agree we do not have reliable information about this, and we should spend some serious money creating governmental institutions that will in fact produce serious and accurate information.and that's what people interested in America, interested in, good governance, interested in a actual functioning, political sphere that does its job, got behind in the 1870s and 1880s. And that is the reason for the statistics movement. And first, the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, and then the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, were started as a result of that 140 year tradition.And now with I say the complete absence, the complete absence of any kind of pushback from. Any Republican whatsoever against this with no [00:06:00] resignations from Trump's staff with no hearings called by any senators with nobody in Trump's orbit willing to say, by and large, the economic news is likely to be good over the next four years.And by doing this, you have just made it certain that no one will believe it, right? That you've actually shot yourself in the foot fairly significantly. And the right thing for you to do is to say, you flew off the handle and actually, will you please come back and work for us? You're a great, person that after all you were confirmed, what was it, 93 to six with JD Vance voting, yes.are you saying that, does Trump saying that JD Vance made a big mistake in choosing a partisan democratic apparat to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in which case the wokeness is coming from inside the White House in a very severe fashion. You don't wanna say that. You wanna say you overreacted, you flew off the handle, and we should walk this back.Republican response to BLS firingDELONG: Nobody is saying that to Trump. In fact, Susan Collins and Bill Cassidy were writing to the Commissioner of Labor statistics even as she was being fired, saying, why are you producing lousy numbers? Right? and the answer is that you have to, that this particular set of numbers comes from the reports that corporations make as they pay Social security and other contributions into the government.And, those things arrive. They arrive with sometimes a lag. You know that not every piece of paper gets in all the time at the right moment, andSHEFFIELD: As a,DELONG: of paper are [00:08:00] missing, you guess what they are. But then you get the real pieces of paper later on. This causes problems for the statistics.There is an industry of economists, about how the Bureau of Labor statistics, is unlikely to hit turning points accurately because it will assume there is more inertia in the missing data in the system than there in fact is. And when the new data comes in, you say, oh, the economy actually started growing two months ago, or, oh, the economy actually started shrinking three months ago.And they frantically attempt to construct better models to do this without a great deal of success.SHEFFIELD: because it's flying blind in aDELONG: to demand that you produce numbers that are not revised. Is either a demand that you go out, you send your goons out and start firing or start fining people who don't get their social insurance contribution paperwork in on time, which is you make the government a lot more oppressive and nasty in terms of filling out forms.or you delay everything a month or two months, or you report on what the level of payroll employment in July was, not at the start of August, but at the start of October. And if that's what Susan Collins wants to see, she's an idiot. And if none of the members of her staff told her, wait a minute, if you complain about this.Then you are either calling for data to be delayed for two further months so it can be properly checked and assessed. or you are simply wanting to make some kind of headlines about how you can't trust government statistics for partisan advantage. And neither is a professional occupation for a senator. yet apparently Susan Collins staff has no one on it who will say, wait a minute. Susan Collins herself, who is after all my [00:10:00] 52nd favorite senator, was willing to go whole hog in on this, and she has not asked Donald Trump to reconsider the firing of the Commissioner of Labor statistics, which means essentially that the entire Republican party is gone, from the perspective of actually wanting.Ideas that are true rather than ideas that are convenient go out there in the world.The problem of Republican truth-tellingSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, it is notable that, the guy who was the previous Trump appointee. as the BLS head, has, in fact, he just came out with a statement criticizing, her or criticizing Trump for firing Erica the qar far. and, but yeah, it, only emphasizes your point though, that these are only the former Republicans, who are engaging in truth telling, in this regard.Like the actual people who are elected who could do something are, too intimidated and they're too intimidated by the Trumpian cancel culture against accountability. because like that's really, there, there's, this double game that has always been played since William F. Buckley came along and created, he, and others, created the, post-war reactionary movement that took over the Republican Party in which one party acts entirely in bad faith at all times.And everyone has to pretend that they don't. And so they attack all expertise and all data that, that counteract their beliefs and opinions. And then, everyone just has to pretend that it's serious. and this is why the Republican Party has, a higher approval rating than the Democratic Party does, because Democrats actually are willing to [00:12:00] criticize their own party, whereas Republicans don't.DELONG: yeah. No, I do remember being struck right in the last Trump administration, that, Economists, Robert Barrow and came out with a prediction that the then Trump McConnell Ryan tax cut would be a huge boost to American economic growth. Would in fact raise the level of investment in America by so much that by the time it had worked its way through, we would fully have two fifths additional as much machinery and buildings and infrastructure and, capital as we had now.And that enormous increase in capital investment would drive a huge boom to American labor, productivity and wages. And Larry Summers and Jason Ferman took them on the grounds that this was nonsense. what Barrow and Boskin were saying and said, we should at least be able to get together and not do this, and to get together and get behind.Say the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Brookings Urban Tax Policy Center, or the Tax Foundation to assess what the lab impact of a, like tax cut is likely to be. And Boskin wrote a very weird response, right? that it was very much that he was not going to sacrifice his analytical judgment to any other bunch of people, even the highly respected tax foundation or the highly respected joint tax center.and it was very important that the impact of this tax cut would be determined by how the regulations would be written. And it was very important for people like him to be in the room when the detailed regulations were written. and you read this and I read this [00:14:00] and I thought, gee.If I actually believe that this con, this policy, if I actually believe this policy would produce a huge investment boom in America and cause a doubling of productivity growth over the next decade, I would not be defensive. I would say I will not sacrifice my judgment. I would say, well, my judgment here is correct and your judgment is faulty.The importance of judgment and expertiseDELONG: And I will bet substantial amounts that my judgment is correct. And to the extent that the tax policy center and so forth are not in line with them, they need to reform their procedures because they're making bad estimates rather than the milk toast. we disagree. piece. So as I wound up thinking about it, I wound up concluding this is like the person blinking in the hostage video trying to blink in Morse code to say SOS, right?That is that Boskin thinks he is a force for good in the Republican party. And, telling public things I regard to be bald faced lies about the likely effects of tax cuts. things that Republicans have been telling since the Reagan tax cut of 1980, is his price of admission to the room where it happens.And do you know that it's better than he do this than the, true crazies run things. And so please don't be mean. and that seemed to me to be no way to be a professor. I must say. And. Do you know, the fact that there, none of them out there saying, this is really a bad idea.theSHEFFIELD: No, it's notable the, they'reBrad DeLong: you even like, makes me even less happy,SHEFFIELD: well, and it's the fact they're saying nothing, I thinkDELONG: yeah. The fact they're saying [00:16:00] nothing is interesting, at least they're not saying that, gee, this is a wonderful thing that will boost economic growth.SHEFFIELD: it shows that they don't believe that they do think it's wrong. because, again, if they thought this was just a neutral thing or it was a good thing, they would be saying thatDELONG: there would be saying that, right? That there are, a bunch of people who said back when, oh, who was it? Was it.Mitt Romney was running, it was then running for president and having a meeting. And the question was, what economic growth should we project? And Jeb Bush says, let's raise this by a percentage point. And a bunch of the, economists go along. Marty Feldstein, my teacher, who, the late teacher who I adored dearly, who is a dear, man, who is a brilliant man, was a brilliant man, all went along.As opposed to say, back in the Clinton administration, when Gene Sperling was asking Larry Katz to put an economic growth number forward. and Katz said, I think you should say X because there's an 80% chance we'll exceed that over the next four years. And, Spurling said, fine, you know that all the numbers sound reasonable.It's a reasonable one for budgeting and I would like to be in the position where you can validate me later on by saying I was pessimistic about what the effects of these policies were. that's not something you would have on the other side of the aisle. And that's, I think, a genuine loss for America.SHEFFIELD: It is. Yeah. and, of course this firing, is just of a piece with Trump's larger attack on expertise. And, probably the two biggest other areas that we're seeing this is with RFK Junior and [00:18:00] the, the Department of Health and Human Services. But, and in regards.Trump's broader attack on expertiseSHEFFIELD: To in particular funding of the National Science Foundation, that they're putting, freezing all these grants and prohibiting certain words from being used like, or, you get flagged if you use the word woman, literally.DELONG: Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: and I, wanna talk about, just so you know, this is a larger trend, but there does seem to be, I think there, there's like a, so there, I think, oh, wait for that. it, it seems like there are some, oh, hold on, weDELONG: Sorry,SHEFFIELD: okay.DELONG: I did not. Okay.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, hey, this is live recording here. So things like that happened, my dog just walked in the door behind me. I don't know if anybody could see that. but yeah, so I think though that there are so within, the broader, say, Le Center to left.Sometimes there are people who they don't know this history of bad faith and deliberate ignorance on the part of reactionaries, and they seem to think, and I think, Thomas Chatterton Williams as an example, he just came out with a book claiming that, if only liberals had been not so x like then the reactionaries would not be so, so deliberately ignorant and malicious.and it's like you don't actually know any reactionary political elites do you? Or you haven't really paid attention to what they say, because you wouldn't say that if you hadDELONG: there's also a view that the people I like have no agency. Right.SHEFFIELD: Or expand that if you wouldDELONG: that, the people you like, the people whose behavior you're excusing, are just reacting [00:20:00] normally, instinctively, reflexively. And it's your fault because you do not understand them and you are the only person who can change things because they're simply reacting in this particular way.as opposed to demanding that they have the ovaries not to be, malevolent idiots who care only about ideas that are convenient for them. As opposed to ideas that are true about the world. You know that one of the great things that happened with the coming of the Enlightenment, in was that for the first time you actually had a group of intellectuals where the principle test of an idea is not as it convincing and helpful to the guys at the top running the Society of Domination.That takes a third of everyone's crop for itself. Who are the people who pay me? but is this idea actually true about the world? that for some reason the Catholic Church thought it was very important to preserve a medieval cosmology by which humanity has been put by God at the center of the universe.And to say, gee, wouldn't the TMA model of astronomy be much, much, better if you understood that it wasn't the case, that there was just the earth and all these things revolving around it, but rather that the sun was at the center, the moon revolved around the Earth. The earth revolved around the sun, and Mercury and Venus are closer to the sun than the Earth while Mars and so on are further from the sun than the Earth.If you start with that, all of a sudden a huge number of things about the pathic meic model of the universe, [00:22:00] which is a good one for forecasting, where the planets are going to be a whole bunch of things about that model makes sense and you understand why Mercury and Venus in retrograde are so different.From Mars and the outer planets, and you understand why the moon moves so differently than the other planets and why the sun moves so differently from everyone. That all of those things are very accessible if you are a Copernican. While they are bunches of strange, mysterious things, if you are a T and Galileo was indeed shown the instruments and said, if you do, not recant, torture is the next step until you do.the view that is not the kind of way to run a society is a creation of the enlightenment and is, was a major, advance. And it is one that from the right perspective of the right, we have now lost.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And and, we see this also just going back to the, the labor hiring statistics that, the Trump tariffs and his constant. In uncertainty that he's creating about them, promising deals and saying, we're gonna have a deadline of this and then ignoring it, then we're gonna, no, we're gonna move it up.DELONG: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: it is creating all kinds of uncertainty for business owners and employers. And so of course the job numbers and other GDP numbers are going just going to be extremely erratic and he's the source of it, but they can't accept that.DELONG: it was very, yeah, as I say, the absence of pressure, to say,let's say if Governor Waller and if. Reserve Bank President Bowman, and [00:24:00] if hopeful, future Fed chair Kevin Walsh, say that the Fed really should lower interest rates. Yeah. They also need to say the Fed should lower interest rates because I am confident that policy uncertainty will be removed and that the Donald Trump administration will give us policies with pre economic predictability and sustainability to support growth.So that lowering interest rates will be a prudent thing to do. Right? If you're wanting to be a professional central banker, you make an ask to the rest of the government, which is that if you want a low interest rate policy, you undertake policies that make it prudent for me to do, which was very much what, Alan Greenspan did with Bill Clinton at the start of the 1990s.yes, I will lower interest rates. If you do policies that make it prudent for me to do so. Right. And Greenspan followed through. He lowered interest rates big time. And we got the 1990s, you had the best boom that America has seen except for the sixties, since God, since the 1920s in terms of its strength.and yet Bowman and Waller and Walsh will not even make that ask.SHEFFIELD: And, because they won't get hired, Trump won't pick them. ifDELONG: you know that Bowman, has a job is not really a serious candidate for Fed chair. Waller would probably be the best, I think of the likely candidates Trump might pick. And so maybe you can give him a buy. On those grounds.SHEFFIELD: Well, give us the background on them if you, for people who [00:26:00] don't know them,The first wave of AI developmentDELONG: No, I,SHEFFIELD: who these guys are,DELONG: no, that Bowman is a reserves or right wing reserve bank president and she stands out in my mind for someone who said that the reason that housing prices was too high was because immigrants, that the reason there was housing inflation was immigrants, which is law of false.SHEFFIELD: yeah.DELONG: Waller is a technocrat who's played a bunch of footsie with the Trump administration, but I think would be an extremely smart guy if he's willing to stand up to the White House, in a clever and appropriate way. The problem is that should have started now. Warsh is a guy who is for always for lower interest rates.So the economy can grow faster when a Republican is president and higher interest rates. So inflation is under control when a Democrat is president and switches with alarming frequency, remarkably rapidly, in my view, is a dangerous person to put there and is, I think his models of the economy even taking off the political part are not that sophisticated, are not that accurate.So,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and the other thing is that I think Trump is, that there was talk early on in the administration that he was trying to push a new model of economics that, the Mar-a-Lago accords. and that was all the rage and in the last But I haven't heard a lot of people talking about it now.Like, what's, what, do you think is the deal with that? What'sDELONG: it was Steve.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.DELONG: Hoping that he could actually get his policies through by working for Trump and by saying whatever Trump said he actually wants my preferred policy.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.DELONG: And, you can have arguments about how his preferred policy [00:28:00] is actually not so smart, that what his preferred policy winds up doing is it winds up sacrificing the global, role of the dollar in exchange for a, in order to get a dollar worth less so we can have more manufacturing, ho here in the United States with the idea that manufacturing is a locus of the creation and maintenance of the communities of engineering practice that are uniquely value in pushing forward technology and in raising incomes and wages in the long run.The problem is it's not just manufacturing that's important. More important than manufacturing is investment. And the global role of the dollar allows us to invest in America at a much, much greater pace than we would be able to otherwise. So, you wind up sacrificing, you wind up sacrificing the dollar's global role.You make America poor, you make the dollar worth less, you wind up losing more in technology, forcing communities of engineering practice in investment, good sectors than you gain in manufacturing sectors and it's no longer So clear manufacturing is really gonna be so key over the next generation, even though it has been key for the past five.So, Trump wanders around expressing grievances essentially at random. Policymakers are then responsible for red, conning them into some particular view of the world. Trump will then endorse or deny your red conning depending on whether he likes you or not, and whether he thinks it sounds good and approved or not.SHEFFIELD: And what side of the bed he woke upDELONG: yes, this is a very dangerous game to play, but there are an awful lot of people who are eager to play it. [00:30:00] some I think because they genuinely think this is their only chance to possibly influence policy for the good. some, because there's going to be an awful lot of grifting done and money made from the Trump Kleptocracy complex and they wanna be in on it.The crypto grift and AI investmentDELONG: Right.SHEFFIELD: They do. Yeah. And the, thing also, that this, and I, and I don't think this is just miran, this does seem to be the reactionary fundamental economic assumption, which is they believe in negative, negative fiscal multiplier. That's what it seems like. They believe that aDELONG: Except they believe, in a positive fiscal multiplier, right? That the,SHEFFIELD: say that again.DELONG: that they change from month to month.SHEFFIELD: but it does seem like that, yeah,DELONG: the, so belief Yeah. The, that there are two beliefs, right? The, one belief is that taxes on capital are always too high. a second belief is that workers always have too much bargaining power.and it is a good thing if those without papers, are scared, lest their employer drop a dime on them. And so they want to be extremely valuable employees and that their employers are turn, are scared that a customer will report them to the I to, to the ICE. And so as a result, they're willing to offer real Americans good services at low prices.they love the idea of H one B visa holders. the idea that someone whose visa status is tied to their job with the added wrinkle that these days, if you fire an H [00:32:00] one B visa holder, you can then call up Christie Nome and say, deport this person tomorrow. And so H one B visa holders are now the equivalent of ERFs.And Elon Musk would love to have every single graduate from an Institute of Indian Technology Institute, Indian Institute of Technology in the United States as this kind of H one B erf, and it's spreading that We have discovered that if you're a green card holder and if Christi Nome asks Marco Rubio revoke your green card on the grounds of national security, and the Supreme Court will not help you, right?You then have to try to fight this revocation or a three year process from another country if you want to get back in. And, God knows what's going to happen to people with citizenship who in when they claim that there is some irregular irregularity, some lie on their citizenship papers. but I don't think Elon Musk or Melania Navs have to worry about the fact that they overstayed their visas in the past, while claimed on their citizenship papers that they had not. But quite possibly. Lots of other people will, and quite possibly the Supreme Court will not help them because four members of the Supreme Court believe that Trump is a righteous God, and two members believe we do not dare pick a foot fight with Trump because we might well lose it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Well, and so, but, so, but going back to their economic consumption though, like they, they say at least currently as they, they do oscillate, especially when Democrats are in power, that they currently are saying that the reason why we want all these cuts to services like Medicaid or Medicare, and is that.Government spending takes money out of the economy, and is debt driven and therefore, [00:34:00] has a negative stimulus on the economy. That's what they claim. And then of course, they obviously don't believe this by virtue of the fact that they have increased the debt, by over a trillion dollars. So they don't believe what they're saying.But I do think it's important, to, for if you would like to push back on this idea that they, literally say that, the fiscal multiplier doesn't exist. And if it did, it's negative.DELONG: well, the more that government spending doesn't do, anything, and thenSHEFFIELD: say it's harmful actually.DELONG: well, but you know that it's harmful because it adds to the debt,SHEFFIELD: Yeah.DELONG: except when the debt is not a problem.SHEFFIELD: Well, granted, like I said, they don't believeDELONG: you say, it's not, that there are individual Republicans who have economists, who have views, who go in and out of favor, depending on what is the desired legislative policy, convenient proposal of the moment, and confidence that people will fall into line or at least stay quiet, when policy goes against them.that very much that it's not that. We need to work to find the economists who have ideas about how to make the economy grow faster and then implement their policies. It's that we know how to make the economy grow faster. it's to cut back on government spending wherever possible, cut back on regulations except those that we like and eliminate taxes on capital of all kinds.we know that and we don't need to know anything else. Yeah. and so economists are there to be hood ornaments for the car that we're driving, and if they're not willing [00:36:00] to pose properly there, we can find another one.SHEFFIELD: Which is yeah, the approach he's, he is doing. With BLS, clearly. I mean, and I think,DELONG: it's counterproductive. It is massively counterproductive from Trump's own perspective because he has just made it very clear that none of these numbers are to be trusted.The need for independent statisticsSHEFFIELD: Yeah.DELONG: that he has taken steps we see and almost surely steps we do not see to attempt to corrupt the statistical process.And, I will be surely cross crossing, reports that come out of the BLS and of the BEA and of the census going forward with other potential large sources of data. and indeed it is time for the financial times for Bloomberg, for the economists to themselves stand up a shadow statistics department of their own, to say, here's what the government reports, but here's what a big data.Assessment of the general information flow says,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, I think there, I think you're right that's almost inevitable at this point now that, Trump has tried to corrupt the process. but there is a, there's an interesting parallel, I think perhaps in what Trump had been trying to do to the, the National Weather Service, which provided very critical, forecast weather forecasting data and, recording information to specific small local communities.And, then Trump went and gutted it. and, the intent very clearly with regard to the NWS is to eliminate it. Like that seems to be the goal because they think that there's no point in government providing whether, whether [00:38:00] forecasting services seems like, and so I wouldn't be surprised if at some point you'll see soon Republicans saying, oh, well, who needs.BLS at all. Why do we need, why? Because like, I mean, if you remember, I guess it was about two months ago, they, fired a bunch of the advisory board that was contributing to labor statistics, if you remember that right.DELONG: Yeah. Yeah. but you know, the, poll point, or at least, in these are not things that have a material impact on the debt. and they are things that do have a material impact on say, the ability, if you're a farmer in Iowa, to figure out what a hailstorm is likely, or your ability if you are a commuter in, suburban Dallas, to figure out when you need to wait for 20 minutes, before heading out onto the road, that, that a world, that.We have an immensely complicated world that has enabled us to be quite prosperous, in which we have extremely large scale, you'll call them information and coordination services called the market economy, called Apple Computer called the Federal Government Bureaucracy of X. and all of these things need to be healthy and need to be working well, or we wind up with a much poorer society very quickly.Trump is probably not going to be able tobreak all that much for all that long, but do you know the point is that there are an awful lot of things that are, he will break, that [00:40:00] will be quite, damaging.SHEFFIELD: yeah.DELONG: and one way to think of it is that we have, or we had before Trump, we had productivity growth of maybe 2% per year, in America, coming from, investment in America of about 20% of our income a year in total.And so that's a net return on our investment spending of about 10%. and of that 10%, right, about 5% comes from about a 5% return on private invest sector, Amer investment in America flowing directly, flowing directly to the people, the corporations, the people who make those investments.You also have about 2% return flowing to other corporations and businesses that can see what one business is doing and taking advantage of it. Or flowing to workers who have advantageous market positions and get to share economic rents. but still the 17% of investment in America that comes from business multiplies 17%, 17 by, 0.7, 0.07.and you get, 0.12 right? Or 0.012, which means that. Two fifths of our economic growth, eight tenths of a percent per year of our economic growth comes from the public investments in infrastructure, in health, in education, in co, in technology,SHEFFIELD: Science.DELONG: and development in science.And so if [00:42:00] this part is getting indeed 0.08%, that's not a 5% return or a 7% return, that's a 20% return. And so hitting public investment is a uniquely damaging thing to do to American economic growth, and it's something the Trumpists appear to be very eager to do to the maximum extent possible.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it, also like that percentage, that's just the direct measure though. So in other words, like the, NHSI think is pro is such an incredibly successful investment vehicle. Nasa, you've got the, these two agencies that have, been at the cornerstone of so much worldwide innovation.DELONG: Oh yeah.SHEFFIELD: and, they more than paid for themselves over the decades. every single year they do.DELONG: And what I've done is purely an exchange value calculation looking at things that flow through the markets. But you know, there's also the use value calculation, that you need to do, right. that antibiotics, right? Antibiotics are productive things and they're an important part of our national income and product accounts.And when you produce, say, an antibiotic that allows. Oh, someone like me who got an infected abscess in his butt in his thirties and went down to the University Health service and, they glanced it, they poured antibiotic powder in it. They slapped a bandage on it. They said, come back in two days if it's still red.And then they yelled at me for getting, letting it get this bad. Nathan Mayor Rothschild richest private citizen in the world up to that point, up to the first half of the 19th century, got the same [00:44:00] thing in his fifties. He died, he died after being tortured by months for German doctors who were trying to figure out how to deal with this infection and could not.He died in his fifties before he got to see his grandchildren grow up. And, what fraction of his wealth would he have given for a single dose of antibiotic powder that could have killed this thing stone dead in five minutes when you don't even get to see a nurse. You just get to see a nurse's assistant.that we have, the value of, our, the value of our technology in terms of health, in terms of longevity, in terms of not just kid good health, but the ability to actually do things and be mobile and active in the world. Plus the value of our technology, not just in allowing us to consume goods, but to exchange ideas and laugh at ourselves.those themselves are massively greater than what the national income and product accounts tells us. And because those things do not flow through the marketplace, are not bought and sold, right? Those use values and those entertainment and those knowledge values are disproportionately created by government, as well.The value of government investmentSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And this, this general ignorance, that the reactionary right has about these, non, non-direct, or, in indirect account, stimuli and obligations and red and resonant effects. it's, it is just bizarre that this belief continues it, given that Adam Smith, their supposed hero, that explicitly.And it wrote an entire book about how [00:46:00] the, what, was the, just sort of conventional economics, if you will, that human societies are so much more than that. And they completely ignored him. and sure they did not read any of his books for that matter.DELONG: Right.SHEFFIELD: and, and the, and, just for, people who are interested that the book is the Theory of Moral Sentiments, it's definitely worth checking out to understand that. that it, is just not simply about, checks going in from one account to the other. Like, this is about soci. That's what the point of economics is supposed to be, is about. because it comes from the Greek word, omi, which is the management of the household. and it's not, so, it didn't mean just the budget.DELONG: Yes. Okay.SHEFFIELD: and that's something you have, been trying to, you've been trying to reorient economics, toward that more. I, we, I think. And how do you feel like that's gone outside of the Republican, party?DELONG: I think it's gone great. Right. I think economics as a discipline is in a much more healthy state Yeah. Than it was when I started in this profession 50 years ago. in large part because we are much more aware, of, the limits of the perfectly competitive model and also much better in figuring out how to deal with the fact that model has limits so that we are not just, in the business of saying, make this like a perfectly competitive market.But rather saying that since this cannot be made like a perfectly competitive market, here are all the second best things we can do to make it significantly better. [00:48:00] not just in terms of the market structuring part, but you know also in terms of the internal, within the organization management cybernetics.organize the organiza, create an organization that is properly responsive to what it needs to do and what it can know. and also with respect to human beings ability to successfully manage their desires so that they can live wisely and well, as in terms of understanding how great the market system is as a way of successfully coordinating a productive division of labor among now eight and a half billion East African plains apes.With respect to that, Adam Smith had most of it. but when you cannot get a perfectly competitive market in an industry or a sector, and when you cannot get well-informed consumers and when you have problems of designing a. Organizations that stand between the indi, larger, smaller in size than society, but larger in size than the individual that need to do necessary parts of the coordination because the price signal by itself does not have enough bandwidth.we've made so much progress on that in the last 50 years that I actually can be proud to be an economist in the way that one really couldn't, back when I started in this business.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's, it is the, yeah, the understanding that markets, they're not just the creations of the government, that, but they have to be managed, in, they have to be overseen that the bounds without any sort of bounds or regulatory structure or, anti-monopoly structure, that they will collapse into monopoly.Like that's the natural tendency, especially with technological progress.[00:50:00]DELONG: Yep. That after all the whole idea was mean. The very idea that you would have a market economy was itself a radical expansion in the size of government, right? The idea was then that property rights and terms of trade, would not be, what local notables, what the local big man said should be property rights and terms of trade, and was not what either roving or stationary bandits, would say Should be yours.You are yours only as long as I can milk you. If God had man not meant you, to be sheared, he would not have made you sheep as the villain says in the magnificent seven. and I think most important at all, that the. Organization of property and contract, not be at the whim of the government's own functionaries, right?all these things that allow people to invest, accumulate, understand where their sphere of action is, and to figure out how their resources can be best used and what resources others have that they should trade for, that's an absolutely, truly remarkable thing, right? That's crowdsourcing the problem of economic organization in a remark, fruitful and productive manner.That earlier societies that said, you are a surf, you are a slave. Here's what you have to do. Here's what the big man says is yours. Here's what the big man says, isn't yours. Here's what it's such a huge advance and also very much a product of enlightenment, ideas about individual autonomy, agency action, and truth.You. Wonderful thing. Wealth of Nations. Absolutely wonderful book. Not [00:52:00] all of it, right? Not all of it.SHEFFIELD: it's not the full story.DELONG: by a long shot. And we, economists now have management cybernetics and behavioral economics and more sophisticated market structure ideas that we did not really have 50 years ago that allow us to properly situate the market in its place. Right? That after World War ii, there really was a belief. You only had to do three things. you only had to have fiscal and monetary policy to maintain full employment. You only had to impose the proper pollution and other taxes on things that were noxious. And you only had to have a progressive tax system and some kind of safety net in order to make the distribution of income and wealth not too unequal.Those were the only three functions of the government that plus national defense and so forth, that were truly legitimate. Now we understand that the proper way of structuring the economy in the society is much more complicated and requires much more subtle. And, and we're doing, with the exception of the past six months when you've been making rapid, backward progress, we're not doing that poorly.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, the proof is in the pudding in terms of that there has not been, since the rate depression, there hasn't been a rate depression,DELONG: Right.SHEFFIELD: the United States any large, major world economy, since then. So, but there, now there is, as, we come up on the hour here, there's, let's maybe turn the, focus to ai, because that's, I think is a source of a lot of uncertainty, with regard to people's careers, with regard to investment, with regard to the economy.there's, and I think that on the political [00:54:00] left, and, I'm curious what your thoughts are that there, there seems to be a lot of. Of, strong skepticism and on, on, with regard to a ai. Ai, they think it's a scam, that it's just a big nothing burger. and you don't seem to be of that opinion.I'm not of that opinion, but it me, but there's a lot more nuance here.Understanding AI's current stateDELONG: I mean, to the first order, AI is having tech platform oligopoly build data centers at an absolutely astonishing scale in order to provide natural language interfaces to their existing businesses. So that nobody else who constructs a better natural language interface to their business that responds more accurately and quickly to questions say for Amazon about where to shop for Facebook as to how to interact with my social network for Google as to how to search for Microsoft as to how to actually do my group team work, job, that no one with a better natural language interface to that can make a run and grab my markets and my monopoly profits away from me.And it is worth spending a large chunk of my current profits on building out these data centers and using these models in order to provide this particular kind of insurance against ai, natural language interfaces turning out to be really, big and really, important, and I cannot afford to be behind at all.Or else some upstart whipper snapper or one of the other platform monopolists, near monopolists might take my profits away from me, relatively quickly. That, that's what they're all doing with only Apple of the great platform near monopolists, hanging back. So that's the first order thing.whether these will actually [00:56:00] be used for their intended purposes or not, nobody really knows yet. But at any event, we will have an awful lot of data centers at the end and we can do an awful lot of data processing, as a result that if we can find something useful to do, it'll be neat to have all these GPUs hanging around.but it's probably not going to make a great deal of money for the tech incumbents. It's just a way to spend money to best way of buying insurance against disruption to preserve their current profit flows. The second most important. In terms of financial flows, use of AI is as a successor to the crypto grift as a way for not too ethical and extremely persuasive venture capitalists to separate gullible, venture capital organizers to separate investors and venture capitalists from a surprisingly large amount of their money.Right? That, crypto was a great grift and it took a lot of money away from a lot of people. and a lot of people now have crypto assets, which they think are worth something. And at the moment for each individual, they are worth something because you can sell it to another gullible investor.But long-term value of crypto does not look that bright for practically everything except possibly Bitcoin if it manages to make the jump to digital gold, which it will be interesting to watch if it does, but you know, everything else is gonna be toast.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And actually, sorry if I can interject on that point. I think you made, a, your rate made me think of something else. Is that the only way that crypto will increase in value over the long term is government like, it, so, it was, it, markets itself as this, anti-government, libertarian, utopian technology, but ultimately only government can make it have value by, [00:58:00] by, by giving it sanction.And yet they, and so they're all rushing to lobby and endorse candidates and give money, but they won't admit the fun, fundamental contradiction of their entire worldview that they're engaging in. But I go by, goDELONG: And, and, third most important at the moment, at least important financially, but also very, important for the quality of human work ismodern advanced machine learning models as not so much chatbots, but rather as text summarization and brainstorming engines. that, that back during World War ii, say for Richard Feynman to do his job as a calculating physicist at the Manhattan Project required 40 people, one, Richard Feynman to write down equations, and 39 women with.punch calculators, manual punch calculators to actually do computations come the spreadsheet. You need only one guy to write down the equations. and you can run through huge numbers of extra scenarios. You can do much more calculations than could the 40 person anthology intelligence, that was Richard Feynman plus his 39, female employees back during the Manhattan Project.It's a wonderful thing. It changes accounting, it changes analysis, it changes an awful lot of things because now you have a number processor that would actually really, works well. With the exception that you actually probably should really have become a real [01:00:00] computer programmer and done all your work in, FORTRAN or C because your Excel spreadsheet is impossible to debug and almost certainly has an error in it somewhere. but easy to use revolutionary entire back offices filled with people with calculating machine. Both calculators, mechanical calculators vanish overnight, just as with the coming of automatic switches. The 600,000 women who used to plug cables into plug boards to make telephone circuits work vanished over the course of 15 years or so.now comes, the modern advanced machine learning models as natural language interfaces to text processors. To expand a sentence into a paragraph, to contract a paragraph into a sentence to brainstorm 55 ideas. they have one big problem, which is that the way they were initially trained was because they were a text demonstrator, a technology demonstration by open ai.They trained them on the internet. So as a result, what you produced was something that was a pretty good model of the average internet troll, say a vibe poster, a meme poster, and you then, like, there's a huge industry, right? Andre Carpathy is especially eloquent on this, on all the things you have to do to a model to make it not just the level of the typical internet troll.But instead useful, rag, RLHF, this is the, that's the others, the different acronym of the day. Prompt engineering, context engineering, such, et cetera. it's going to be quite useful, [01:02:00] because we can now poke it into places where it doesn't think, but rather it repeats elements of human thought in ways where you can quickly say yes or no.And it has the possibility to get everyone up to what used to be a 90th level of facility with right 90th percentile, the level of facility for writing prose, which massively democratizes, the ability to make yourself persuasive. Yeah. it also, right. it also enables you to deal with information overload in a sense that you could not before.Because it allows you to survey, at least if it can find it, a huge chunk of everything that has been said and compress it and distill it in such a way that it can read more than you could and a year in a day. And then we'll give you a starting point of what things to read more deeply in order to acquire the information and then to conduct, urinalysis.I mean, when you think of it, we really don't need to build an artificial super intelligence. Some because we already have the anthology super intelligence that is the collective human mind as it has been building ever since the invention of writing 5,000 years ago. for the past thousand years, students who have gone to college have done so to learn how to be, Good draws on good users of good front end nodes to and in, the real super intelligence that exists today. The anthology, super intelligence of the collective human mind because individually we are not smart enough to know, remember where we left our keys last night. But as long as we can [01:04:00] draw on this anthology superintelligence of humanity, we can be very smart because we can draw on the best of all that has been thought and known.The role of liberal educationDELONG: And, the purpose of a liberal education, of an education for someone who will neither not have a choice because they're a surfer, a slave, or not have a choice because there'll be a thug with a spear who has a place in the society of domination that is quite a nice one and doesn't need a different job if you're in the middle.If you're in the middle, you have to make a living by your wits. And being a knowledge worker is the best way to do that. And by being a good one, by going to university and studying diligently, you both allow yourself to enrich your life by drawing on the best of all that has been thought and known. And also make yourself potentially useful to whatever thug with spear or their tame accountant, bureaucrat or propagandist has decided they need an extra person in the office.Right? It'll hire you. That's the origins of the university, that continues. Information technologies change, they change radically. there's the question of whether modern advanced machine learning models as text processors are more like the, are relative to the old fashioned typewriter. More like the, say more like the Moog synthesizer is to the piano.Or like the Moog synthesizer is to actually having a stick and a tin can, to bang it against. there's a question of how big a jump this is. This is a jump, but this is a jump that leaves the essentials of being a white collar worker intact. You have to survey the information and find the relative question that you, or that your bosses will want answered.You then have to process the information and you then have to disseminate the information [01:06:00] both in the form of making it accessible so that the next person to start asking this question can draw on you as you have drawn on all the people who have written in the past. And also persuasive so that the people who need the information you have produced, who need the conclusions you've reached to act on them, actually believe you.and you know this. Research question processing, answering, and then dissemination is still the same steps. And what you really need is you really need to demand from your professors an education that will let you do this for pros, especially in the age of information overload, in the same way that the data science tools that you do this for numbers.so people going to college especially need to demand that they be properly educated to become good front end nodes to the anthology superintelligence. And if you do that, you are going to be able to do very valuable stuff no matter what your job is, no matter who your boss is, because it's the same kind of process of figuring out what is thought and known and how do I make, reach the right conclusions about it, and then make those conclusions.Properly persuasive, both in fixed written form and in oral presentation or oral text chat form.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and the interesting thing about all of this, to your point, about that the, the overall, a glutton nation of human knowledge over the past, 5,000 years of, writing, of literacy. Like it is also like we're at this moment now where the value of a liberal education.has been, has never been greater because now there's so much uncertainty with regard to professions, [01:08:00] with regardDELONG: kind of liberal education. It's the right kind ofSHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, but,DELONG: It's the kind that makes you be persuasive rhetorically in person. It's the kind that makes you persuasive on paper, either by. Figuring out how to use AI in order to get your pros up to what used to be the 90th percentile or becoming sufficiently expert in using it to push yourself from the 97th to the 98th or the 99th percentile in the words you actually commit, to the screen.And it's perhaps most of all, figuring out how to use these tools to do a better job for your research rather than just going to Wikipedia and regurgitating what you find there, which is not at all bad, right? Just not at all bad, but you know, how to become much better at actually finding what is the information I need to know to answer the question I ought to be asking, what is that question and how do I determine if this information is reliable?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well what andDELONG: those are things, that are not closely add to the data science skills. And those are things that are not that closely aligned with current college curricula.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I agree. No, there's, gonna have to be changes.DELONG: yeah, like I was having lunch with my friend, computer sciences at Adam Quare, my friend from elementary school, Adam Qua yesterday here in Berkeley.And, talking about things and similar things and him still pushing for his, education at St. John's, right? That these are the 80 most important big canonical books. We will read them deeply. and me saying, well, yes, this is an ideal education for the 14 hundreds when there really are only 80 worthwhile books that have been written.[01:10:00] most of them in the Latin language. But these days you need to know how to be able to read shallowly and effectively, and to use all kinds of summarization engines as well, because, not all knowledge is gained by reading the 80 canonical books as deeply as you can. Even though say Martin Wolf and I were both enthus on the internet last month about how great a book Thomas Mons the Magic Mountain is and how important and valuable it is to read the Magic Mountain deeply.these days, and in some ways these days more than any others, since the days of the 1920s when it was first published, that deep reading has a place, video has a place, audio has a place. shallow reading has a place, summarization has a place, brainstorming has a place. saying that using AI is cheating, is I think educational malpractice.Saying we can't assign term papers because we don't know if they will actually write them, is also intellectual malpractice because you then call people in and have them talk to you for half an hour about their term paper. And by then, damned well how much of it is theirs in any real sense? in any real sense at all, getting people to learn deep reading, which is a very valuable skill, is I think a more difficult nut to crack.and is one where the current youths are not that great in getting worse as time passes, and I don't have a good solution to that at all.SHEFFIELD: Well, I guess that could be that, that, that's another episode then,DELONG: another episode, another call me in a month, call me in a month, and I may have ideas about pedagogy in the way of ai. Then [01:12:00] behind that, there is the remaining use of modern advanced machine learning models, which is outside of text summarization and processing. Outside of trying to protect, spending tens of billions of dollars to try to protect your existing profits by giving people the best natural language interface to your services behind taking money from gullible investors in venture capital.There also is extremely big data, extremely high dimension, extremely functional form regression and classification analysis of all kinds so that you no longer have to throw situations or people into say 15 different boxes and say, we treat things in this box this way and in this box that way. Instead allowing an algorithmic custom customization of how the complicated social system that is our society can deal with and react to individuals.The future of AI applicationsDELONG: So far, the only uses I have seen of this that are good on a large scale have been a bunch of mapping, a bunch of geographic uses of mapping things, and also Facebook claims that it's using it to massively increase its ad targeting. And thus it's ad revenue. Although whether this is doing this by showing people things that they will be happy they bought or hacking people's brains so they buy things they then regret is not a question that Facebook's minions are interested in giving us any information about.But there will be additional mammoth use cases from very large, very big data, very large dimension, very flexible, functional form, large scale classification [01:14:00] regression and prediction analysis. We just do not know now where they will be valuable for us, but they will be see my colleague Marian Haw and her co-author Kieran Healy, and I think the book may be called The Algorithmic Society.And since I have it upstairs on my bed, it's embarrassing that I'm too dumb to remember it. Say ought as an East African plains ape to have a better visual memory than I do. thus demonstrating we're really not that smart unless we can, as Isaac Newton said, stand on the shoulders of giants and draw on every good thought they have had.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And, it, you're reminding me here also that, there's a longstanding phrase within, techno reactionary circles that crypto is libertarian. Peter Thiel has said this, crypto is libertarian. AI is communist. And they seem to believe that because specifically that, the human corpus of knowledge does not seem to fit well with their anti-government, ideologies and, futile belief systems.and that's why they're cons. Elon Musk is the great example, of course, constantly complaining about his, grok and other AI LLMs being woke. and, they never stop to think, well, why is that? is it because you, what if your epistemic processes are inferior? and, that's, it's, a subject.I think that people who are not reactionaries, that we ought to be examining this question a lot more. I feel like.DELONG: I don't know. it's, [01:16:00] no, it, is very odd, right? That you got, that in some sense. The root of their problem seems to be that they seem to believe that they deserve some kind of respect, right? that they are not getting. But, it's,there's really no reason why they couldn't right? That. instead of trying, getting, making money by selling crypto grifts, mark Andreessen could be an evangelist for the web browser as a product category for democratizing access to global information. And do you know if he'd done that, he would be rich, not as rich as he is, but he would sleep easier because he would not have to think about, gee, all the people who put their money into these crypto funds, what's gonna happen to them and what's gonna happen to their customers?and he'd certainly, be rich enough, right? That I've long thought that, that most of them would very much rather have been Steve Jobs, right? who on the one hand was an incredible a*****e as a boss, but on the other hand was an incredible motivator and director of people who could take that and thought it was worth having a truly brilliant boss with his particular sense of taste and.Brain that actually had a finger on the technological pulse of the [01:18:00] world, from his grabbing Steve Wozniak and saying, you are gonna build the apple one through the Apple, two through the Macintosh, through the, iPod through the iPhone, you on, through the Apple Watch and the AirPods, every single major revolution in how we interact with our technology, led by people motivated by Steve Jobs following his aesthetic psychological taste, and, so he's rich.but he also was enormously respected and even loved, even though I know very, few people who would f found it any fun at all to work with him, or who thought he wasn't, especially. Good person except for the fact that his, I'm going to show you. Drive was focused. I'm, going to show you how to be about to make and ride a better bicycle for the mind.they could be doing this right. Instead, they thought that they would get to a point where when they made the most money by being venture capitalists, they would've won something, and indeed they have won something, but it's not what they want, and they somehow feel they need to reorient the culture.Sure. In a way that plutocrats like them get lots of respect. and then for some reason they think we should, they should all align themselves with kleptocrats to do things. Thinking that kleptocrats regard them as their friends, and actually kleptocrats regard them as their prey.SHEFFIELD: And we saw that with Trump and Elon Musk, that as soon as Musk wasn't useful, he was the fall guy. That's all heMusk, Trump and the tech eliteDELONG: Musk thought. I am [01:20:00] going to elect Donald Trump. I am going to give him more money than God has for him to win the presidency. And I am then going to, be the fall guy for actually cutting back on government spending by firing people. So Trump can then reverse whatever things I do he doesn't like.But he starts from a point of view of the federal government that's been severely reduced in size and in return, I get an end to legal harassment of my businesses by the government that actually wants, say, SpaceX not to pollute as much as it does. I get, carve outs from tariffs so Tesla can continue to function as a profitable global value chain enterprise.I get the, I get the tax credits for EVs continued and for Cafe continued. So Tesla is act not just a functional production network, but a highly profitable one that will actually support my claim to be the richest man out of live. And I get over time the entire NASA budget transferred to SpaceX. Musk thought he had gotten all those four things and had a deal with Trump and then Musk learned that he did not, the only thing he got was the end of what he regards as legal harassment of his companies.And Trump is threatening to return that unless Musk shuts up. it's an interesting example of how somebody or other says everything Trump touches dies, and confess that I don't know how Musk is going to function going forward. I'm. Personal bankruptcy is definitely not outta the question, given his current situation and given theSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Those, tax credits and the,DELONG: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: the, the, because so much of their revenue was coming from other car companies,DELONG: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And also, and also the market, [01:22:00] right? They, a 300 mile electric vehicle in a United States with a very spotty, fast charging network is a luxury purchase. Right, the sweet spot. If you are going to be, if you are a, if you live in normal America, rather than say San Francisco or Berkeley and want a car, the sweet spot is a plugin hybrid.both if you are worried about gas prices in the future as you should be, and if you want to do something for the environment, as you should as well, it's not an electric vehicle. Right? The electric vehicle was a bet made by environmentalists who wanted to declare allegiance to a forward looking, progressive future of new and high technology.And, to the extent that Trump, and Musk are seen as at all alike as together waging war on the woke unquote, and to the extent that the environmentalism drops away, the. The market for Teslas vanishes as well. It has effectively vanished in Europe already. people would like EVs that have, more modern platforms, have better build quality, and also have companies with nicer, more pro-environment figures that their heads, and the market, for Dukes of hazard themed cyber trucks with confederate flags painted on their sides is very, small. And yet that seems to be the direction that Musk cannot help but keep pushing himself.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it will be interesting. And, he's, and I, it, is notable that he, seems to have, been trying to pivot toward X ai, which [01:24:00] purchased Twitter in a paper shuffling, recently. And so, we'll, see how he ends up going there with that. But, there, there is with regard to grok, that Grok keeps having these, right wingDELONG: you know the point. Yeah. As we say the point, it's been trained, it's been trained on the typical internet, right? And the typical internet associates right wing beliefs with anti reality craziness. so as a result, you ask it to express rightwing beliefs and it then says what kind of words are linked to general Rightwing beliefs?Well, calling myself Mecca Hitler is linked.SHEFFIELD: Well, andDELONG: and behold, here we're,SHEFFIELD: Yeah.DELONG: this doesn't necessarily, it's simply that yo the reality based community has a liberal bias, I think for pretty good reasons, means that if you are going to create. a reality-based chatbot liberal views are going to leak in and scrubbing it, is extraordinarily hard and must has not been willing to invest in hiring millions of people to write essays that are half propaganda and half true facts about the world, and use those as the training as the basic raw pre-training corpus for X ai.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's, interesting because like, so I'm working on a, a theory of, integrating dual process with, ai, which I can, share with you after we're done here. But, one of the things that, that I've discovered in working on this is that basically the psychological state of the right winger is the only difference between complete reactionary insanity and just milk [01:26:00] toast conservatism.In other words, they have the exact same epistemology, the exact same epistemology, is what I believe is true, because I believe it. and they have no method of adjudicating between something that is completely insane and completely nor,DELONG: And they'reSHEFFIELD: just of, a country club Republican.Right-wing epistemology and AIDELONG: That, Travis Kalanick going on a right wing podcast to say that my interactions with chat GPT have brought me to the frontiers of physics, and further advances are imminent, and the right wing hosts gull swallowing this.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Like they, they have no method of saying, well, what is truth? Independent of what I think. They don't have it.DELONG: That that,SHEFFIELD: when youDELONG: indeed, as we say, we, we are pretty dumb. We cannot remember where we left our keys last night. And we also are primed by evolution to reach agreement because it's better that the whole band go down to the water hole at once than someone digging his heels and say, I'm not going down to the water hole until half an hour later.This is too early. Right? The one who goes down half an hour later gets eaten by the leopard after all. and soSHEFFIELD: Yep.DELONG: are quite dumb, right? That, the ancient Germans, right, the ancient Germans. Actually believed that in some sense the rumble of the thunder was the rumble of the wheels of a giant cart in the sky drawn by two magical goats.And in that cart there was a very large red figure with, a enormous, magical hammer named Ner, an anger management problems. And, you did not want [01:28:00] to deal with Thor when he was angry. Therefore, do not stand on top of a hill during a thunderstorm. Right. conclusion is quite reasonable. It is good not to stand on top of a hill during a thunderstorm, but rather the cower in a ditch, I understand seeing a lightning strike and saying, what could this possibly be besides ulner, the mighty ma massacre of miscreants. But then one goes on to wearing a hammer. Around one's neck and praying to the guy to help you and to sacrificing useful animals and burning their corpses for so he can smell the smoke and so forth.we're easily misled even when the basic cognitive message don't stand on top of a hilltop during a thunderstorm is actually one that is very useful to know. And without actually a theory of electromagnetism kind of, it's Thor, he has a magic hammer and big anger management problems when he is driving fast is as good an explanation as any to lead you to the conclusion it's memorable and you know it's leads to good actions.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's serviceable for a small, achievement, but not for anything bigger, basically.DELONG: On the other hand, Chris Hemsworth is truly excellent as the character. and do you know,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well,DELONG: very much, I'm very much on a Thor on the Thor side of the Thor versus Loki. I think Thor was better played than Loki in that.SHEFFIELD: well, I, we'll, have to let people sort that [01:30:00] out in the comments.DELONG: Okay. Alright.SHEFFIELD: all right. Well, Brad, so, for people who want to keep up with your stuff, what, where, what's your advice for them? You got any books you're working on or,DELONG: brad DeLong substack.com also my 2022 books vouching towards Utopia. The economic history of the long 20th century, I think are both supremely great. and the market appears to agree, as well or at least enough of the literate market, that it makes me very grateful, for my 50,000 Substack subscribers, more books.We'll see what I actually managed to accomplish this fall. I think there are four things that I might push across the line well enough to send out to publishers to see who wants to actually publish it, but thank you very much for inviting me to theory of changeSHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good. All right. Thanks for being here.DELONG: You.SHEFFIELD: Uh, let's push stop here. All right. Ooh, so. 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  If you’ve watched or listened to this podcast for a while, you probably know by now that Theory of Change is about stories—larger trends that happen and the narratives we tell ourselves about them.We’re finite beings; we exist for a moment within a small slice of spacetime. To understand anything at all about externality, we have to simplify it. But sometimes simplification makes things more complicated and confusing.The historical moment we’re sharing together is incredibly messy and confusing which is why I firmly believe that while the 20th century was the age of the economist, the 21st century is the domain of the philosopher—an era of interpretation.That’s why I’m excited to bring you today’s discussion with Virginia Heffernan, a really fantastic writer and thinker whose work you may have seen in the New Republic, Wired, or at her Substack, “Magic and Loss.” Virginia has written a lot of great journalism over the years, but at heart, she’s a literary critic—a profession that I think is very well-suited to interpret our interesting times in which the division between text and sub-text is often impossible to delineate.The video of this episode 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 can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content• “This Present Darkness” and the fictionalization of evangelicalism• How an oversharing Christian blogger inadvertently documented his own radicalization• Why 90s Christian pulp fiction explains today’s Republican Party• How Democrats got trapped in the fictional politics of “The West Wing”• Jeffrey Epstein as the synechdoche of cruelty across political ideologies• The Big Ten rises up against TrumpAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:42 — The 21st century as the return of philosophy10:54 — Oral versus written traditions13:32 — The fragile nature of reason within society19:33 — The end of purist capitalism and communism20:35 — Universities as places of public goods versus privatized goods26:34 — Jeffrey Epstein as a synecdoche of corrupt compromise34:02 — QAnon as projected right-wing Christian fear about internal predation41:45 — Lewis, Tolkien, and the rise of fictionalized group interpretations of reality51:08 — Richard Rorty's continued relevance58:19 — Opposition to cruelty as a guiding principle01:04:53 — Understanding why people believe lies01:08:10 — 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 Virginia Heffernan. Hey, Virginia. Welcome to Theory of Change.VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN: I’m so glad we’re doing this.SHEFFIELD: Yes, me too. Absolutely. Well, so why don't we start with that the title of your Substack is called politics–or the subtitle of it, I should say, is called “Politics for English Majors.” What do you mean by that?HEFFERNAN: Well, so title is the same as my book title from 2016 book, Magic and Loss, and I can tell you about that title if you are interested. But essentially comes from engineering. That's lossy. Lossy sound representation is representation that loses something obscure from the sound that we might not be able to perceive with our ears. But that can be quantified. And that's the loss.And then the magic is sort of that term of art. From tech or a term of marketing from tech that, any te technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. It was a big Steve Jobs word. So the book was about, the internet was about those two sides of the internet, something obscurity lost for which we're grieving and something gained that almost tripped our minds into kind of superstitious thinking, into magical thinking.And so that's the title of the book. That's the title of the of the, of, the Substack, which began a bit to be about tech 'cause that's what I had written about for so long. But I'm trained as a literary critic. I did a PhD at Harvard in, in, in English. And the topic of the dissertation was sort of finance and various novels about finance and in particular about inflation.So. short, the [00:04:00] idea that to save money is to lose it American fiction at the turn of the 20th century. And that has all kinds of consequences for nostalgia and preciousness money and value. so all those things were propelling this Substack as I went into to write it.And I really, but I had also very much since 2012, been writing about tech and politics since the digital election of 20 20 12, which I was, I wrote about Yahoo News. Just, pounding the pavement, going to the conventions, studying the Pinterest of, MIT, Romney's wife, like that kind of thing.So I, and, I had my old podcast Trump cast had just been ca ended because we thought Trump's reign of terror was over right after Trump's, after Trump lost the 2020 election.I looked forward to not writing about politics, to writing back about tech because I figured the ship of state had been righted with Biden as president and that politics would become boring again, and that I'd be able to write full time about AI, which I, was writing about for Wired at the time about AI and also some biotech with Ozempic and other drugs.And I figured that would be that would be my future. But then Trump was reelected and so it stopped being tech and politics and wanted to be, or I felt it wanted to be ta politics again, but all of it. Including the book Magic and Loss all the way through has been influenced by training, and I can only call it that as a iterate critic.I, don't say that to establish my authority as much as to say that's what I was soaking in for so long. My father was a literary critic. And it's, these things are hard to get out of once you have hermeneutic strategies and, methodologies, but also a [00:06:00] lot of politics seems to me. To come down to textual analysis.So a very simple one is, originalism, right? Like, it's crazy to hear people talk, to talk, hear constitutional law. People talk about originalism or to hear religious folks talk about fundamentalism without using the tools of literary criticism. Originalism has, there's a lot of faith that you can read words the way they are originally either intended or laid down, or, and this is kind of the work of literary criticism, is to understand why there's nothing simple and transparent about language that's put on a page.There's nothing that you can see through to either the intention of an author or to reality. And. Maybe you can, right? So that's another argument. But the fact that people have arguments about originalism absent the language of literary criticism and the methodology of literary criticism is just leaving a lot on the table.It's leaving a lot of tools on the table and I've seen computer scientists and other people kind of in philosophers, swoop in on conversations in, public domains in other domains and say like, you know what? We have something to offer here. This is Aristotle, and psychologists coming in with physicists or and so on.And that I'm an academic at heart. I like interdisciplinary studies, and I think it can be very useful to use some of the techniques of literary criticism, and I could give more examples of that to, understand kinds of facets of American politics.The 21st century as the return of philosophySHEFFIELD: Yeah, I definitely think that's right. And and, in a lot of ways the, politics of this moment, the, of the 21st century, I see it as the, this is the century of philosophy. The 20th century was the century of [00:08:00] economics. But we're, and, going back to philosophy as the, nexus of politics that is the historical reality of it.And that even, like the term economics, that, that comes from oikonomia, which, is the Greek word. And, Aristotle was one that put that in. So this wasn't a discipline that arose on its own. It was created by philosophy, just like so many it created so many other things, including religion.HEFFERNAN: I really, appreciate, and I do, I agree by the way, if with the implication that literary criticism or criticism is a subset of philosophy I, double majored in philosophy in English. My problem with philosophy and Aristotle as an example is just that I could read so little of it in the original.I mean, certainly not ancient philosophers, but also French philosophers and so on. So what I like about the, that I think some people forget when they think that what I, we study in English departments is, literature, right? We are trying to focus on just literature in English or in the American language and paying close attention to the way the English language works.So I have much, much less to say about than I do about what Whitman for obvious reasons. And I am not confident to. Even if I can get through a copy of Madam Bovary in French, not capable of reading it very deeply. Because my vocabulary's limited, because my understanding the grammar's limited because I haven't been soaking in it and I just am skeptical of the translations that I get when it comes to ancient texts.I'm not sure, you just did like a lovely translation. We had to, do in the PhD program I was in, we had to have two ancient language, sorry, two ancient, two modern languages. And one of my ancient languages was old English. So [00:10:00] we can do those translations, but it's incredible how revelatory they are when you press on them and you wonder how much you might be missing.So anyway, just emphasize that. Literary cri English literary criticism in English and American literate literature is a subset of philosophy, especially since it's got this incredible laser-like focus on the English, and particularly in my case, the American language.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And if we look at Socrates asa philosopher, you know, he explicitly said, I don't want to write anything, because to write down something means to, lose the meaning of what I was saying and that it can be misinterpreted. Uh, that people willsay that I was trying to say something when I wasn't trying to say it. And and I, but if I'm talking to them. They can be completely clear as to what my intentions were. and,Oral versus written traditionsSHEFFIELD: IThat's obviouslytrue.HEFFERNAN: I mean, I love thatSHEFFIELD: Yeah.HEFFERNAN: I don't know if Walter NG's work but he was, I think, a, minister in one of the founders of, Media Studies, if you take the University of Toronto with Marshall McCluen at the, as the avatar of it, as the birthplace of media studies.And he he contrasted the oral and written traditions in a somewhat similar way to say that, there's something that written language always ends with QED. It's like, I'm going to close the case. I'm not listening, I'm not, and I can do this as a, like, as a compulsive filibuster.I can like shut out the other person so that I can make my point. But that is in dialogue, not what dialogue, what conversation with other people exist to do. And very few people are talking aloud in a room where most writers are just writing in a room and making meaning together as Socrates did in dialogue is a wonderful, is maybe the only way to [00:12:00] really extend extend your thinking on a matter.I think David Graver and David Gro, who wrote the dawn of Everything together in that book, talk about how. Some, there's some neuroscience and I'm not going to get it right, but that says we can only hold a thought in our brain for a certain number of seconds.SHEFFIELD: Working memory as it's called. HEFFERNAN: Yeah, right. But in conversation, we could hold a thought forever. We could run, and you and I could probably go for hours here. And,SHEFFIELD: We could, but we won't do that, guys, I promise.HEFFERNAN: We'll spare you our mutual filibuster. But but anyway, so, so I think you, that's, I think that point about spoken language is absolutely right. I think that literary critics see themselves as in some kind of dialogue with another text.And that's the way we get around the idea that we're just, writing in our own heads. There's something incredibly intimate about reading about close readings. Justalmost begin to imagine, the author has. An infinite number of choices about what next word to use.And you're on a precipice in the spaces between words of what's going to happen next, and when you can start to make guesses about what it might be or sort of understand why that word was chosen. It's almost like riding the rails of someone's very nervous system, and that is, I think, a kind of intimacy that is like a Socratic dialogue.The fragile nature of reason within societySHEFFIELD: This is so relevant now because we're in this historical moment for humanity in which. There is a minority of people who do believe in the scientific method and what it means and apply it to their own lives, but we're the minority and we have always been the minorityand, yet, excuse me, and yet the that minority has [00:14:00] always operated as if it was the majority.HEFFERNAN: Yes. Right.SHEFFIELD: has a more functional and, a, an epistemic process in which can, layer upon itself, add, infinitum. It supposes that everyone else agrees with that, but in fact, the majority of people don't agree with it and probably have never really fully under understoodit.HEFFERNAN: I mean, I'm not sure. So do you mean by scientific method,SHEFFIELD: Well, I just mean the idea that, you know. That we can improve our understanding of reality by observing it and then creating hypotheses about how certain aspects of it function and then testing those hypotheses, like, and, then if they're not true, then we abandon those hypotheses. So it's, it is about continually falsifying our ideas and being open to the idea that nothing is always true.Oris indubitably true? As, as Carl Popper had, said very convincingly with regard to science, but that applies beyond science. Like the, that you have to keep an openness to revising your priors as peopleSometimes say,HEFFERNAN: I,I I just want, for listeners, it seems important to flag maybe where our opinions diverge and I mean, you can probably imagine that as someone who was sort of. Had was woken out of my own dogmatic slumbers by a philosopher. I started doing analytic philosophy when I was in college at the University of Virginia, and then the University of Virginia hired Richard Brody, a philosopher, but he refused to be in the philosophy department because he was had written his way out of philosophy and in particular analytic philosophy.First, he had been enchanted by continental philosophers including darida, including some of the ones most loathed by analytic [00:16:00] philosophers, and then had. Started to think that he mostly wanted to, be a literary critic and a lit, and for various reasons. And so he started the Department of the Humanities.And by that point I was exhausted by a JA and by sense data and little pennies that looked like an ellipse. And what we could do if there were actually data that floated before our eyes. I don't want to reduce analytic philosophy to just that, but there was some strange stuff going around that seemed to be taking me down a a path I didn't know.And because I was much more drawn to poetry than science I, and for many, contingent reasons came to believe that poetry had greater explanatory power for me than scientific method. So I wouldn't want to say that it's the tools of literary criticism that interests me more than the tools of science.SHEFFIELD: Sure. Yeah. But I'm just saying overall you understand that your personal beliefs are not the absolute truth.HEFFERNAN: absolutely. I mean, I would, saySHEFFIELD: yeah.HEFFERNAN: more than science. So like, I, yeah, I mean, both of us in that way are absolutely Socratic. What I'mAgainst is is an absolute conviction in my own, my own lack of wisdom that my own inability to perceive the world as it is.And, also my enjoy. It's like, like we must imagine the ignorant person happy, or the person seeking meaning happy in the sense of that, that, that, quest for a way to describe the world such that it, crystallizes my sense of identity and then a way to describe the world such that it describes a possibilities or how to improve the world and reduce suffering in the world.Those two different private public projects are a reason to seek some durable modes of expression. I mean, this is all quite, sort of, sounds [00:18:00] sort of boring or circum as opposed to scientific language, which sounds, much more direct, but I'm just a little bit afraid of, well, there are ways of, testing our delusions against reality or, falsifying beliefs or even settling on, absolutely true statements instead of useful and beautiful statements asSHEFFIELD: Oh, well, yeah.HEFFERNAN: Describe that.SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, except, I mean, popper explicitly said that the scientific uh, truth or actually just unf falsified beliefs, that's all they are. So, so that's, I, so I think we actually agree on it. We're just putting a different label.HEFFERNAN: IDo. And I think I, I really like learning that you sort of live in the flicker among these various disciplines the way that I do, because, we're probablySHEFFIELD: we need more of that,HEFFERNAN: of that. AndSHEFFIELD: I think.HEFFERNAN: it was just a very exciting time to come of age as young philosophers.There was just a lot to, at least it seemed exciting to me to have various philosophers kind of bringing us closer to scientific method and, also 'cause we, I wasn't an economist at the time, so we had a lot of space to ourselves. People were less, Bothered by people doing philosophy and criticism because economic economists were competing for these much more highly paid jobs and also paving a way for them to go into finance, which we was not a pathway open to English and philosophy majors.The end of purist capitalism and communismSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and the other reason though, uh, just to go back to something I was, that I had said about, you know, that where this is the time of philosophy versus the time of economics is that, you know, the, end of the Cold War showed that Marxism was not. It was not a possible destination, it wasn't going to work. But then the intervening years since then have shown that pure capitalism doesn't work. [00:20:00] And that, and Peter Thiel, the, uber advocate of capitalism explicitly says in his view, capitalism is about the creation of monopoly.And so it is not about competition. In fact, competition is bad. If you are a capitalist, you want to have no competition. And so in that sense, events have, made economics obsolete in that pure communism, pure capitalism. Nobody wants those and they don't function and you can't even get to them. In fact but even if you could, it would be destructive all around.Universities as places of public goods versus privatized goodsHEFFERNAN: I, just published a piece in The New Republic about the Big 10 conference there, the Big 10 conference in the United States. I'm sure most people know this now. Comprises now includes 18 schools across 16 states. So there's nothing 10 about it, but incredibly powerful organization.Writing about it and writing about its capacities to oppose Trump and and fight back against the against federal overreach and the federal government. I discovered that it was founded by. education reformer who also happens to be the inventor of the game of American football. And just to, I'll, speed past some of this history that was very interesting is that the president of Harvard, the notorious racist Charles Elliot was against football because he thought it was brutal, that there was deception in it and that it shouldn't be, and students shouldn't.He was against intercollegiate football because students shouldn't be performing to entertain other people. That's not what education was and camp thought otherwise. He also ran a factory. He believed that, students should be taking orders and they should be, able to be part of a team, and then they should rise up until they can give orders themselves.So it's very coach driven way of thinking about well, coach driven and, unified executive [00:22:00] sort of presence that orders us into what to do. We take orders and then we ultimately we give orders. Now it sounds like one is somewhat dehumanizing and the other isn't, but one thing the Big 10 understood is that nobody, just to put it quickly, I mean like the Elliot loved competition, right?But William Camp's point is that nobody, that nobody likes competition. Everybody likes winning to your point, right? So it's not just that you want competition, you want a monopoly. And that's, I think that goes to your, idea that competition for its own sake, where not everyone is out for a monopoly makes no sense. Like there's no way that people in a gentlemanly way, even in the sort of Oxford system, are going to, throw the game of quidditch at the end in order to what? Right. It's, it, it's not the, they want a fair game, but they more than a fair game, they want to win.and I think that was actually a very crucial insight of camps and now. The Big 10 while Harvard dithers around with prestige and, backroom compromise and all this other small stuff, the Big 10 is still devoted to building up the most nuclear reactors of any university conference in the world to beating Europe and quantum to winning at football, to making 1.4 billion in untaxed revenue a year.And this thing is hiding in plain sight because it, it wants to win. It's not in the, it's not in the business of pretending to be pro capitalism. It's just trying to nail it's incredible scientific accomplishments and and, build up its resources. And in some ways I feel like it's the reason that you can have so many Marxists there is that there's no one arguing for capitalism.There's just people, making things you know, that are better than other people's [00:24:00] things.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's also that they have a vision of public education for thepublic, and as an integral part to the, states and localities in which theyexist, and that does not exist for theIvy League, by And, large.HEFFERNAN: where the, where Harvard has little interaction with the governor of Massachusetts, although she's a Harvard alumna they, those schools are integral, to their state's economies, like the number four, number three employers in their states. And often they have former governors, or at least in two cases, former governors come and take over as presidents.The governors are, they really like it if they went to Purdue or IU or, Ohio State. And the, they have 44 million fans, the big 10 schools altogether, like the, like these are schools that. People don't have contempt for, like they do for Harvard and Yale. They have an allegiance to, and that allegiance is more strong and immediate than their allegiance to maga, for instance.No matter where they fall on the political spectrum. So, I think there's a lot going right at the Big 10. But the other thing I wanted to say is it's sort of outside that particular conversation about economics because they just are blissfully striving for, monopolies on, on, on things that people should be pursuing monopolies on.I mean, they ultimately are open source, right? 'cause they're public. But on medical research, they collaborate. They do collaborate of course with China on medical research, on green tech, on nuclear power. Because because capitalism, Secondary get arriving at answers, and being the first to arrive at answers, so, I mean, youSHEFFIELD: Yeah.HEFFERNAN: want science. You don't want science and progress without people out for monopolies. You want people who want to get there first.SHEFFIELD: The other [00:26:00] thing also that I think is illustrative about the Big 10 versus the Ivy League is that it is the relationship to. And, you've talked about it a bit here, but you know, just like the relationship to capital that, these schools do have large publicfunding and because they're so integral totheir states, it's a lot harder for the Republicans in their state to, to slash them and go after them.HEFFERNAN: IndianaSHEFFIELD: And they,HEFFERNAN: Yeah. You've probablySHEFFIELD: yes, unfortunately.HEFFERNAN: have basically been obliterated there. But,Jeffrey Epstein as a synecdoche of corrupt compromiseSHEFFIELD: yeah well, I was going to say, but the other thing that you know is different is that because the Ivys are mostly private they do, have to be going out and raising money a lot more. And one of the people who had very many connections to these schools was Jeffrey Epstein.And Epstein has since gone on to become, kind of a, a, figure that as, we were talking about before the recording here, that, you, I, think I correctly identified him as somebody who. Can be the representation of the corrupt bargain that is at the heart of modern institutions in a way that is easy for people to grasp no matter their ideology or how much informed they are or not.HEFFERNAN: So, well, I'll try to, I'll try to, I, as, I ended up in, in the, a circle of people called That was some people, I've been on podcasts to talk about it as a cult. But let's just say had some cult like qualities to it. But the worst thing about it was not that it was sponsored by Jeffrey Epstein.I didn't know who Jeffrey Epstein was at the time, and honestly didn't even know the name of the person that gave most of the money for it, but we can talk about it in a second. But what this organization or a group did is, and end up, and this is what I hated most about, it, was produce so much so sophistry so you can lay at its feet.Things like evolutionary psychology and certain kinds of neuroscience and certain kinds of [00:28:00] bad philosophy. And also in addition to intellectual fraudulence. And and a, lot of people missing the mark of the what's it called, the replicability crisis, right? Like whose studies couldn't be replicated.They also were exerting great dominance over people who worked for them to the point of lots of sexual abuse. And so, that combination of things the headquartered at places like Harvard and MIT where Jeffrey Epstein, supposedly smart washed or whatev some version of smart, washed his money, plowing it into eugenics adjacent departments and faculty and having these people to his house and all that stuff.PR produced office sophistry produced this kind of sexual abuse. And I can just name one after another. This isn't, I'm not, this isn't Q Anon right? This is like actually arrested, documented court documents. Same with Epstein, same thing that I was to some extent complicit in. And lots of people in the academy, in retail, in all these, Victoria's Secret, if you were interested in modeling in New York real estate, if you were in Hollywood where, Kevin Spacey and other celebrities were flew with and hung out with Epstein.Then you that the arts, so Interlochen is another place like arts and acting school in, where he recruited. So these are so many domains that, Epstein touched if you were anywhere near them, you had a creeping feeling that somehow the person that you were, was being compromised, that you were sitting with.Sitting, talking to a seemingly interesting person at a party, and then his girlfriend came up and she looked like she was 15. That happened, and you just didn't say anything about it. I, would tell myself everybody was getting a deal out of it. Or, and this is where I think conservatives I might've [00:30:00] listened to conservatives, my full throat of defense of Bill Clinton for having, getting a blowjob in the Oval Office was very like, oh, we're also, I call this sort of a swanky leftism.Miran has three families and it's all the greatest thing in the world you can do to be, not be puritanical. Right. And American and Jeffrey Epstein was that too. I, he, not know that he was trafficking women. Obviously. I never even saw him at a party, but I, I saw Donald Trump and Melania, and we are accepting what like 30 year age difference is just.It's just a kind of normal thing, right? It's like the thing we delore in Mormons was the thing that we thought was like really exciting and sophisticated and and really like camil foe with intellectuals and with with the rich. So those two things. My proximity to it. Then the distance of other people from it who must have thought seeing movies like Miramax movies that had, all kinds of like outlandish, abusive, cruel sexuality represented, had really weird codes of conduct that like, that, I'm not talking about Philadelphia, which is like a sentimental story that puts, puts Gay, sees the Humanity in gay people, but movies that, a lot of movies that Miramax came out with that were, had s and m dynamics, had dynamics of cruelty and that in the hinterlands or in the Heartland, you just didn't watch those movies and feel like there was something in it for you that was good, and then you were finding that your own. Shudder that you had toward those things was being vilified as like racism or bigotry, or corniness or puritanism provincialism. And I can imagine those two responses, my shuttering feeling, the uncanny response of, former Republicans or Republicans who turned to maga.[00:32:00]They, two responses were a response to something that was rotten in the state of Denmark. And one thing we might, as people who like abstractions refer to that thing as is neoliberalism, right? Or you say econometrics. And a consolidation of the ruling class, the proliferation of billionaires and monopolization of capital.That's how we might, in boring terms, explain what happened with Epstein. Then there is a much more exciting story that thrives in Q Anon, most of which is not true, but a fragment of which is freaking true, right? It's like, like Jeffrey Epstein at these crazy islands was like, it's a little like, we don't like to think that the Russian co like it's very immature or something to say, well, Russian collusion doesn't happen because, Putin comes up to Trump and is like, here's my, here's your tape of you having sex in the Ritz, or whatever it, nothing really happens like that.But Epstein did happen like that. And it's one, it is one way, I think the fact that most of us let, most of us, at least on the left, thought the Epstein thing was put to rest, thought that it was like ground by the pussy or the rape of Eugene Carroll, and it was just another Teflon thing that would roll off Trump.Moreover, I, until very recently thought, well, come on. He never, there's never been a real suggestion that he had sex with a teenager, with an underage person. But there is, and and so I. I feel in some ways that there's a, listening to Q Anon part of this, which is like you were, they were sensing that something was really, weird.And, incest and they, what they call age discrepant relationships or the rape of kids is very common in lots of institutions from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts and so on. And they weren'tSHEFFIELD: Yeah.HEFFERNAN: They weren't wrong. WeSHEFFIELD: Yeah,HEFFERNAN: a creepy feeling. And now we have a name for that creepy feeling.And, Jeffrey Epstein is a much more vivid name [00:34:00] than neoliberalism.QAnon as projected right-wing Christian fear about internal predationSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and uh, your point about the, that creepy sensation that a lot of, the Q anon people had I wrote recently a piece of just looking at the numbers that you know, right wing religious communities. Are disproportionately plagued by child abuse compared to, uh, other communities. And somebody went and, uh, did the stats on just like actual cases of people accused of child sexual abuse.And what they found was that of politics. So she, went and gathered literally more than 10,000 cases be between a yearspan. And what she found was that of politicians who had been accused of, that type of crime, that it was 67% of them were Republicans. And that 1.7, I think, or sorry, 2.2% or something like that were libertarians, which when you thinkof how few elected libertarians there are in this country, that's astronomically overrepresented that party is.Andso,HEFFERNAN: is amazing.SHEFFIELD: and.HEFFERNAN: yeah, go ahead.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, and the same thing is true that when you just look at abuse studies that you know, these far right religious denominations, they, the leaders that operate them do not, they have unquestioned authorityHEFFERNAN: Right.SHEFFIELD: people are not allowed to examine them. They don't provide accountability.And they often, have completely they don't do background checks on people because they know the God. They feel that the Lord tells them they should hire this person. And so they do.Anddon't bother to check whether they have had convictions or whatnot. And so this is why, all of the biggest abuse scandals that have happened have been in the theologically conservative denominations.HEFFERNAN: I mean, I think that we have to, [00:36:00] one of Trump's one of the. The biggest, you never has said to not call things Trump does missteps because he he's right on Surefooted, right? When he looks like he's stepping outside. But I think calling the, Jeffrey Epstein affair, and it's all of it.The crimes a hoax akin to the Russia hoax, which also was not a hoax, but the Epstein hoax Epstein thing. A hoax is saying, well, it all didn't exist right? Like he's, bill Clinton denied knowing what Epstein was doing and denied being a part of it. Trump has not issued a denial. He didn't deny, he doesn't deny a lot of things.He mostly just says it's all a hoax, right? Like that he never met EG and Carol. And so he usually, he doesn't mount a factual defense. He just says, this is all just didn't happen, or it's just not true. Like they, like, like Brett Kavanaugh did with, Christine Blasey Ford, and, parenthetically I would.Love it. If we got, speaking of empiricism, just one person who said, yeah, I didn't really know much about sex. I'm Brett Kavanaugh. I was drunk, I don't know anything. And I tried to take off this woman's clothes and she had a swimsuit on and I was got over ahead of my skis and we've all done it and I'm so sorry to her and I'm so sorry I affected you.And now here's my history of understanding the Constitution. And I'd like to be on the Supreme Court. I think most sane people would say, you know what? That thing sounds like it happened. the only thing that's making me crazy about you is that you just say it. Didn't, you just like obliterated it. You've just said it didn't happen.And I do think because we know. Jeffrey Epstein was friends with Donald Trump, that there's photographic evidence, that there's witnesses, that there's, we know that they were very close. And because we know that Jeffrey Epstein committed a lot of crimes, and we, this is all just o nobody right or left disagrees with any of this.I've never heard anyone [00:38:00] to say that it was a hoax. So to tell us that it's a hoax is to do, you know what Joe Rogan has said? What a, lot of people on the right have said is just to gaslight the shit out of us. And this is a time where we're not having it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.HEFFERNAN: I think that's, I, think that is a really interesting.Finally, at least there's one example, maybe fleeting of a time that, Trump told us to disbelieve the evidence of our eyes that, it was a hoax, like crop circles. Like I was thinking of things that was used before, right? Like world, of the world. That it was like something perpetuated to do by whatever, that this isn't an abstract issue like that.This isn't a complex issue with the word hoax in it that makes you do triple cognitive epistemological back flips. To understand that what each photo is a CGI photo, like all the things you'd have to do to imagine it's a hoax. We just don't want to rev up to do that again. Right now.SHEFFIELD: No.HEFFERNAN: want to just be there and say, you know what?Raping teenage girls is wrong. And I know it in my bones. It's wrong. The fact that it is common. in families we know it's common. We can't pretend that this is not a huge threat in human history. I mean, there's so many disturbing numbers on this, including the ones you just gave, but you probably saw that in England, God, I don't want to get this wrong, but there's some enormous number of people that are descendant from first degree incest father, whose grandmother and great-grandfather, whatever, had sex with each other.And this is this is a phenomenon that we can't deny either because we want to keep our heads in the sand or because we're party to it. Like the Catholic church, like the Boy Scouts like Jeffrey Epstein, like, Mike Jeffries, [00:40:00] who used to run Abercrombie and Fitch. We can't they might say this doesn't exist because they want to call the whole thing a hoax.And the rest of us who don't have those kind of relationships in our lives might want to say it doesn't exist because it doesn't exist for us. And it's too horrible to think that it does. But the truth is it's just incredibly common. And Jeffrey Epstein did it. And I don't know if I want to call it systemic, but I think the numbers are there.The complicity is there and and it in some ways it's incredibly satisfying to finally have an example of cruelty. Then we can all agree is cruelty and that we can all oppose, I thought the murders in Newtown of, toddlers were an example of cruelty. That we should do everything we could to prevent from happening ever again.Somehow the right did not think that. and they think that the, expansion of rights for trans people or even expansion of medical care for trans people represent some kind of cruelty. I don't see it as cruelty. So I was starting to despair that we could agree on an idea of what is something the strong, attacking the weak, causing deliberately causing suffering that we could agree that we collectively need to oppose, right?We don't even need to agree on any moral principles. We just need to agree on what a cruel act is that we see. And it's just very, satisfying to see brief coalition between people on the left and people on the right that trump's participation in the sort of Epstein machine is beyond the pale.Lewis, Tolkien, and the rise of fictionalized realitySHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think so. And that's it. It also cuts across what, you know, the, these, cross ideological understandings have been become a lot more difficult [00:42:00] because. Society has, really transitioned into kind of fictionalized versions of itself that everybody's developed their own, version of it.So like, you know, there's a famous, uh, evangelical book called, uh, this Present Darkness. And it's a novel about, uh, uh, a small town that is being being that demons are trying to gain possession of it through working with universities possessed universities and, a, small town pastor that fights against it, but, and it's a fictionalization, but, and i, bought a copy of it from a used bookstore, and it's fascinating that on the, on it was a 'cause I, like buying. Physical used copies of books because all you can see what previous readers thought about them. and the reader of this book had inscribed it as a gift to someone else. And it said something like, this book is fiction, but the idea is behind it are all real.HEFFERNAN: Amazing. Wow.SHEFFIELD: And like, and, but, and this, type of, a hermeneutic of reality,HEFFERNAN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: is what a lot of people have. and you know, I think everybody probably to some degree, we all have this, you know, going back to, the idea of interpretation as reality or not you know, like it's, it, but it became much more of a thing beginning with the popularization of, mass fiction. So like CS Lewis or Tolkin,And the Matrix,That everybody thinks in terms of, well, maybe not everybody, but like a lot of people really do see reality in these metaphoric terms.And,Peter Thiel to circle back with him,He, names all of his companies after, Lord of the Ringsthings like PalantirHEFFERNAN: Yes.SHEFFIELD: And that, guy Curtis Jarvin, the, reactionary blogger, he sees himself as a [00:44:00] dark elf and people who agree with him.HEFFERNAN: yes. I mean, they are living in something that looks like middle earth or resident evil, 25 or, endless runner games. Like, like, like Elon Musk and I, you, I think you would know better than I do that, like Worlds of Demons, Satan, antichrist that have. Driven people in various panics at, in the past that there were so many in the madness of crowds, right?Like that, that, all of those, almost all of those are driven by panics about forces, and mostly they're mapped onto Christian onto Christian iconography. Yeah. And Milton obviously like huge influence on American life was Milton and Milton Satan. So the, yeah, so one of the other ways that we started by talking about politics for English majors, the fact that these texts, and I'm so glad you mentioned this, present darkness.I hadn't heard of that one. there are, the Scientology foundational Scientology books like Battlefield Earth. The, Turner Diaries is a work of fiction. Ayn Rand, who's always treated as a philosopher, is in fact an author of fiction. If you've read The Fountainhead, if you've read Atlas Shrugged, you've read a novel, right?And a novel by, and you may have thought because it's very unlikely that you read it for the characters, the irony, the metaphors, even, the plot. You come away believing the ideas are real and you may come away believe like you're in scriber of that book, and you may come away from, came, come away believing that you read a work of philosophy or allegory.And this is where the tools of literary criticism come in. And I'm just going to keep one thing succinct. People do not need to learn to fact check or understand facts. They need to learn to read fiction as fiction. Which is what literary critics teach you to do. So that's where the English major is useful.There is a beautiful state of mind and some people interacting with AI understand [00:46:00] this of willingly suspending disbelief and getting into this kind of trance where you're living with characters. People know it much better now, from Bingeable Netflix series. What are you doing when you watch a really cool detective series on Netflix, or you watch the succession on HBO, you're watching Forged History.You're watching people that kind of act like real people, but they speak in heightened language and things happen to them that don't happen to real people and anyone. a gift who grew up reading novels not allegories like the ones that we're talking about, but real novels with ironies and and fiction and characters that are aestheticized and created.Know when you're in the presence of art and take it in, this wonderful way. I mean, I, a great Netflix series or a great or succession is, has this wonderful effect on the brain. I mean, the willing suspension of disbelief is like, that's, coleridge's term is a trance. It's you're not believing.You're not believing what you read. That would be like reading Pizzagate and taking a gun and trying to find the people that are responsible for it. That's, you believe what you read. You read it like, oh, I am a thing happened in the world and I'm going to avenge people by taking out a gun. And again, parenthetically, there've always been people who mistakenly read like that.The Stephen King novel Misery, right? the, there's a reader, the Kathy Bates character in the movie who believes that misery, the central character in a novel is real and she must redeem her. And so she takes the author the author prisoner shaped hostage. There were people who believed Dickens' characters were real, notoriously wept when Little Nell died.And but re taking a novel as real means that you have not acquired the incredibly pleasurable capacity to get into the fiction trance and.SHEFFIELD: Well, it is catharsis as Aristotlecalled it.HEFFERNAN: Yeah. Well say more about [00:48:00] that. You mean in the presence of, in his case, right? Theater and poetry.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's still the same concept that it's, it is art. It is inhabiting a fictional moment as a heightened representation of reality that it's not just, it isn't a pale imitation. In fact, it is a exploration and zoomed in, a way that the actual, you can never get from observing real reality because you have to inhabit your own mind.But with, literature, we get to inhabit the mind of multiple people in the same story.HEFFERNAN: So that's where allegory comes in. And another feature of literary criticism is to help you understand genre. Allegory has a one-to-one correspondence between characters and places ideas in the world. And many of the books that the drive people are simple allegory of pilgrim's progress.The kind of act allegory in English was on people's beds next to the Bible. And taking literally the idea that a character, called Every man was person who then faced things, certain temptations that were like the slough of despondent he had to get through. And this was true and Dante also, but that, that he had to face down with Vanity Fair is another example. And resist these temptations and make this way through the make his way, through the, thickets of, seductions. In order to be godly. An allegory like that and there's like a key at the bottom. I mean, these are the kind of things, by the way, the reading that's taught in by homeschooling that is, that misses irony and metaphor.I'll just put it that simply. And so if I were going to teach anything, it would be to how to read fiction as fiction. What's great about reading as fiction, as opposed to fact checking, which I've also done for a living, is fact checking is incredibly tedious. It's pedantic, it's librarian.Nobody likes to be [00:50:00] corrected. Reading fiction as fiction is an absolute delight, and it's a way to be like, oh, I see, I know when. I am drinking a glass of wine versus, drinking a, refreshing glass of water. And I don't mistake one for the other. I don't think that I should seek hydration, nourishment, whatever in that, in this glass of wine that I might seek in a green smoothie or whatever.And that's true with fiction too, that it's not quite clear. It may give us catharsis, it may give us pleasure, it may give us better ways of understanding the world. It may give us, and this is what Rdy thought, better ways of understanding ourselves, because the metaphor, the idiosyncratic metaphoric, as he tediously said it existed in great literature.There's nothing like it for crystallizing a person's sense of identity and what dies when they die. And what dies when we die. At least I found that to be true. a lot of things are included in, literature there. Of course I've certainly count television and, scraps of thinking on the internet and epigrams from philosophy and all those things.Richard Rorty's continued relevanceSHEFFIELD: And just to go back to Rorty as we're coming up on the hour here in our recording that, I, he he wrote a book, his, finalbook was called Achieving Our Country. And it was a really, good book in a lot of ways, and I wish. That more people had read it in the late nineties when it came out. Because he was trying to, it was, I mean, in many ways a prophetic warning to the left about you have to be able to speak in something other than abstractions. You have to understand that truth is something that is, felt and always in motion and that everyone has to beincluded in it. And that their needs are also part of what truth is and answeringthem and providing for them. And, that [00:52:00] was ignored by neoliberalism.And but he also talked about trying to make sure of, avoiding two different types of dangers that movements that are trying to do some achieve social change.You want to talk about those?HEFFERNAN: Yeah, I I really would love to, I mean, is a, pressing interest of mine in the, in our, my podcast with Steven Metcalf called, I'll just plug it. What Rough Beast. Stephen and I both studied with Richard Bordy at the University of Virginia. That's how we met. And and, he, his kind of pragmatism, his version of pragmatism revelatory, I think to both of us.And and one of the points that he makes on this essay he includes in achieving Our Country, an essay he wrote for dissent in the nineties called Movements and Campaigns. Which is very short and and succinct I think Gatz said something extremely important. Now, Verde was disliked on the right and the left time equally, but he.that does not mean that he objected to the left more than the right. He thought that the pull, that the right, so let's just call it fascism, has on us, is tragic. The pull that some of the worst tendencies of the left has on us. He called a nuisance, which I think is a very good distinction when you hear complaints about ry, right?It's about woke, right? It's like, someone, when Trump was first elected, someone on my Facebook page said, better nuclear winter than more letters in L-G-B-T-Q. Right? And it had really gotten so that the nuisance of left wing, speech codes or kind of efforts to be accommodating, or maybe they were, it was small bits of penry.Were driving people into the hands of like extermination, fascism. That they'd rather die than, participate in this kind of nuisance ritual. And can't mistake the nuisances [00:54:00] from what's now called the woke or formerly politically correct. We can't mistake those for a tragedy and run from them into the hands of fascism.It's just, it would just be, it's a, terrible category error to think of them as equally terrible. However, he does talk about. The problem with what he calls movements. So movements mostly revolutionary. And movements that are extremely focused on utopia and focused on a moment that never comes.So the Kingdom of God or the apotheosis of the worker. Anything that you might have the thousand year Rike, anything you might have heard that's on a, extraordinarily long time timeline and far in the future? A moment that never comes and a moment that we can never fully realize, like there are no, as they would say in business there, there's, there are no deliverables.There's no, what is A-K-P-A-A product indicator? No key progress indicator. I don't know. There's nothing you could put up on your deck for venture when you're, try to get venture capital and say, well, we've realized this, we've realized this, right? Campaigns and so movements as we were talking about earlier.very quickly into two, terrible problems. One is infighting and purges. So like Stalin ish purges or Maoist struggle sessions to choose two, on the would be left. But also separation of rhinos from maga, right? Like rhinos or regular Republicans and MAGA republicans might vote alike on 80% of subjects.But if you read, as I just did Christy No's book about politics, she's so far right that the people that are really in her sights are like Paul Ryan. and she would probably do well to align with Paul Ryan since most of their [00:56:00] politics are the same. But her hatred for him is very, like the hatred on the left for say, the people that qualed in the women's March which were kind of pro-Palestine and pro-Israel feminists, and, that thing came, fell apart because of this kind of infighting and, desire for purity tests and to purge people who didn't agree with you on everything.Now, that is something that the left is often f faulted for because we come up with a lot of infighting because we're trying to have a big tent because a lot of people are included among, say Democrats, a lot of different people with different backgrounds. But that kind of infighting is definitely present on the right and it happens in primaries.And the first fights that Trump picked were with, Jeb Bush. So the, the idea that they didn't even share a set of values because Trump had to be a movement. He had to be like a one man, I don't necessarily want to say cult leader, but cults also style themselves as movements that were moving toward the promised land.Okay. The promised land almost always in the infighting, falls away. So you think of like David Ksh, right at Waco. He originally had some idea of a movement toward a kind of socialist, multiracial something world. But pretty soon. He was amassing guns and the federal government didn't like that he had guns and he had much younger girlfriends, and that was against the law of the land.And then the whole thing became a late stage cult where it's just about fighting against either people on the inside who aren't sufficiently committed or people on the outside who are trying to get you for something. And you've lost sight of this utopia that you first drew people in with. So movements, they lose their utopias and they devolve into infighting.But the last thing that happens is that they commit [00:58:00] cruelty. Because if what you're interested is in is the rapture, this is sort of your territory, but the rapture, the restoration of the kingdom of God on earth. If what you are interested in those things, that if those are the things that motivate you, then anything can be justified in their name.Opposition to cruelty as a guiding principleHEFFERNAN: And those things often turn out to be cruelty. So one thing Richard Ty says is, sum, bonum, any ultimate good can be cited to just by Nazis or by maoists to justify violence. So hope or even, I have trouble even with decency and kindness, even sort of the mild ones. But 'cause his argument was anything that you and I agree on at the philosophy table, that is like the ultimate good truth, right?You can imagine a Nazi or a Maoist torturing someone saying, I'm doing this in the name of truth. So as Ardi says, the thing that we oppose, don't have an ultimate good as pragmatist, but we have an ultimate evil. And that ultimate evil is not the antichrist. It's not the orcs, it's not sour on, it's not something from fiction, it's cruelty.It's. The infliction of suffering on people, on, on people. And the fear kind of cruelty. So let's take the ice arrests, engenders in people so we know cruelty when we see it. That's what I think is useful about Jeffrey Epstein. Why do we oppose cruelty? Why do we behave humanely? Because just because we don't derive it from some truth.There are probably, there are probably efforts once you start with truth, you can derive a, you can derive cruel actions, so you have to oppose the action at the end of it. And that's how you get people to do things, to change the world. So I was in a seminar with him and someone said, well, we would never have gotten desegregation without Christianity because.was a [01:00:00] Christian and because I have a dream cited Christian used Christian tropes and that people wouldn't have been moved to do it. And Richie, Richard Rdy said very memorably, I wish it weren't that way. Right? It's just like, I wish that you did not have to have some doctrine.Then someone else raised their hand and said, I find as a feminist that the kind of thinking around the gaze of the other, which was the kind of feminist, french feminist theory that was soaking up our minds at the time, I find that thinking around the gaze of the other, around the male gaze to be incredibly motivating Dy said, what does it motivate you to do?And she said, well really understand this and that. And he said, but how are you eliminating cruelty or promoting human flourishing? There are a shortage of, this is the nineties beds for female AIDS patients right now. is the kind of campaign that we could all be part of. And I, asked after the fires in Portland, Oregon, I asked a friend this was a couple years ago, like I had read something about someone opening his door from the inside and scalding his hand on the, his doorknob from the inside and getting blisters and burns.And I said, how could I help someone like that? I just want to cool off his body and get him some neosporin. And she said, well, oppose climate disinformation. And I just thought, I think that ship has sailed, right? I don't want a movement about saving the earth right now. I really want to get this guy some bottles of water and some, Some Neosporin for his hand and some burn treatments and a bandage. And that kind of, those kind of campaigns are the kind of thing Rty Rorty really appreciated. And there's a wonderful list in movements and campaigns of the campaigns that he had thought were extremely successful. And you can name tons of them in this country, [01:02:00] including reducing emissions.And a lot of the things, by the way that Trump is undoing. But campaigns that have made the world better public education and that you, and it's measurable, right? So you have a theory of change, but you can't have a theory of change without these indicators of progress, markers of progress toward your change.And some of those markers are the ones realized by campaigns. The most recent one I participated in was the te Tesla take down where the idea was to stigmatize driving a Tesla. And gad fly ish. Nobody likes it. It's annoying. We were yelling at Tesla drivers outside dealerships that like, shame, And this country, sales went down and the stock price dropped. And ultimately Musk was so troubled by it that the Tesla takedowns were included in dangers to the stock and got people to downgrade the stock because, as an insurance question, the fact that its reputation was taking a hit from protesters explicitly was affecting the value of the company.And he left the government in part to restore the Tesla stock price. So it was a very, effective. A campaign. And he was like, the, cruelty that was that we were opposing was his attack on U-S-A-I-D. He put it in the wood chipper and that put children in the wood chipper. So was something wonderful about that campaign, was it?Yes, we can, did it have a charismatic leader standing up there and getting us to effect on him and love him and imagine that there's some magic future? It did not. What it had was us yelling at car drivers so that they would finally decide it was too much of a drag to drive a Tesla. They weren't as cool as he thought people were going to slap incel inside stickers on it.And why not buy another kind of car? And and so that's an example of a campaign being successful. And I have a hard time thinking of a movement [01:04:00] that has ever been successful and have a very easy time of thinking of movements like the French Revolution or Maoism that turned quite cruel and bloodySHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I, would say further that, the idea of countering this tragic hateful political philosophy of Trumpism, it has to be done in, this way of, preventing cruelty and in letting people know that they do have afuture, even if they have these, antiquated superstitious beliefs that, like,and letting them know you, nobody's going to make you disbelieve thosethings.You can, if you want to believe these false beliefs, go ahead. we're not going to stopyou. You just can't impose them on everyone else, and you should be okay with that.Understanding why people believe liesHEFFERNAN: Yeah. There. The one, one last thing I'll say about literary criticism, which is obviously a passion, is that there was a, wonderful book by Janice Rodway called Reading the Romance from the eighties and. a lot in literary criticism, but the main thing it did for me was propose a reason that people believe lies and that they read compulsively.And for romance readers in the eighties, the books really rewarded someone who reads like a detective. So because the story was a man behaving cruelly to you, this is also the plot of pride and Prejudice actually loves you more than anyone. So you're like writing away the current abuse and cruelty in your head all the time in this incredibly pleasurable way.And, in pride and prejudice, Mr. Darcy is like, withholding and snobbish and terrible and imperious. But then it turns out that's the greatest love of all. And to make your life bearable while your husband is ignoring you, putting up a shield of a book. Sometimes these women were reading three, four books a day.They were reading the way people read [01:06:00] the internet now, just compulsive, Tell yourself a story over and over again so you know, you're a single man, as they always say, living in your mother's basement, but reading these things, you are actually Luke Skywalker, or you're actually, Legolas or or a wonderful hero or you're on the video, games believing that because it's, and it ends up being, at least in the case of the romance readers, your heart breaks.they're just as bruised. This was a group of people, women in the Midwest who identified as housewives and were reading these novels, you're just as bruised or, just as single or just as lonely as you ever were, but you've decided to devise a story in your head that, that tells it otherwise.That says, that redefines everything you're seeing as proof of your glory. And I don't know. I don't know. I don't, I, shouldn't say that. I think that's tragic, although that's a use, it can be put to, I mean, We all should read fiction that rewards readers, like the reader is the hero who sees things as not quite as they are.I mean, that's why I think we like detective stories so much. But and I don't want to deny people their pleasures or say like, well, you always have to just face the fact that the world is hitting you in the face and that you're not that cool guy in the video. I dunno what to say about that. I just think that to kind of conclude on something to do with literary criticism, reading fiction as fiction is not just a pleasurable thing to do.It is an incredibly useful epistemological thing to do because you will be drawn to fiction anyway and not deciding that it is fact not deciding you should take your marching orders from JRR Tolkien, but that you and, that you're going to make the world better. If you even read Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, you are, let's face it, not Odysseus, you are not on a hero's journey.You are trying to live your [01:08:00] life. That does not mean you don't read the Odyssey, but you read it as fiction. And there are some wonderful tools from literary criticism that will help you understand how to read fiction as fiction.Closing thoughts and where to find moreSHEFFIELD: Virginia, for people who want to keep up with all of your things what, tell us your recommendations.HEFFERNAN: oh, you mean where you can find me or what I'mreading? Where you can find me is almost everything I write washes up sometime on on my Substack, which is Virginia heffernan.substack.com. It's called Magic and Loss, but the link is Virginia heffernan do substack.com. And I also write quite regularly for the New Republic.So check in on the New Republic. It's, I'm in there about once a week, and I think I, and I have a big piece out this week on the Big 10 conference. And the last the last place. You can find me Is anywhere you get your podcasts. What Rough Beast is the name of the show? What? Rough Beast. It's Steven Metcalf and me talk to an extraordinary, interesting range of guests about everything from the IRA to Jeffrey Epstein to ice and and the guests are great.So just to plug it what Rough Beast and that is always free. It's, it was paywall once or twice in the very beginning, but it's always free. And there's free content on the substack too. You can also get a free trial. And and so that's “What Rough Beast,” virginiaheffernan.substack.com and the New Republic.SHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good. Thanks for being here.HEFFERNAN: Thank you very much.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show. Where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you are a paid subscribing member to Flux, you can get unlimited access to the archives.So go to patreon.com/discoverflux if you want to do it on the Patreon side, or you can go to flux.community if you want to subscribe on Substack. And if you're watching on YouTube, please [01:10:00] do click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever there's a new episode. And that will do it. Thanks a lot for joining us. 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 People often say that history repeats itself—so often, in fact, that the phrase has become a cliché. Yet when it comes to technology, that sentiment holds a lot of truth. We don’t just reinvent the tools of our ancestors; we also recycle the same debates, challenges, and controversies that have surrounded earlier innovations, often without realizing it.That is especially true with today’s artificial intelligence technologies. While AI may feel like a bold leap into the future, its foundations rest on decades-old ideas, and the controversies it stirs up—about ethics, economics, and control—echo the same fundamental arguments that once surrounded everything from the introduction of calculators in schools to the chaotic rise of the early internet.Technology and the social debates it provokes are as old as humanity itself. And as technological development continues to accelerate, these conversations will only become more urgent. In this episode, I discuss all this with Dave Karpf, a political scientist and associate professor at George Washington University where he specializes in technology’s political history.The video of this episode 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 can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content—Large language models are unleashing the power of mediocrity—Big finance and corporate monopolies have blocked the original promise of the internet—How libertarianism bifurcated into neoliberalism and corporate authoritarianism—Discussing the famous ‘Californian ideology’ essay 30 years after the fact with its co-author—Grok’s ‘Mecha Hitler’ meltdown and MAGA’s broken epistemology—The strange nexus of Christian fundamentalism and techno-salvationism—The political history of Bitcoin is not what you may think—Why Elon Musk and other technology investors have become so politically extremeAudio Chapters00:00 —Introduction12:21 —'Satisficing,' mediocrity, and large language models17:42 —Corporations used interns to kill jobs before they used AI23:46 —AI as a technology isn't a problem, it's how it's used26:58 —Escaping bad epistemology is the 'first singularity' for humanity33:24 —Societal elites ignored reactionism and now are shocked that it's monstrous38:46 —View of the world's complexity as the ultimate dividing line of politics41:54 —'Crypto is libertarian, AI is communist'47:56 —Is the U.S. left ignoring technology to the peril of democracy?50:48 —How to use AI responsibly as a regular person55:59 —Student AI use in assignments is a response to larger problems57:57 —The center-to-left needs to stop obsessing over policy fantasiesAudio TranscriptAvailable only to paid Patreon and Substack subscribers 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 Large language models, the computer programs often referred to as artificial intelligence are everywhere these days. There's a lot of hype, a lot of doomerism, and a lot of nay-saying.But despite what all the commentators are saying, the current AI technology is neither a magical god-being nor a tremendous scam. It’s just a really useful technology that is going to be here in the long term, regardless of any of our individual opinions of it. That makes it worth thinking about in more practical terms for what it means to us—you and me. How do LLMs actually work and how do we live with them?Joining me to talk about this is someone who has been asking those kinds of questions long before ChatGPT entered the international conversation. Venkatesh Rao is a writer, independent researcher, and consultant best known for his influential former blog Ribbonfarm and his incisive takes on technology, culture, and organizational behavior. Currently, he writes on his own website now called Contraptions.In the episode, we talk about Venkat’s distinct approach to AI, seeing it as an emergent, messy, and deeply human technology shaped by what he calls mediocrity. That might sound like a knock, but it's actually something much more—a compliment both to humans and the human-created technologies that we are exploring here today.I hope you'll enjoy.The video of this episode 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.Related ContentGrok’s ‘Mecha Hitler’ meltdown and MAGA’s rage about the Epstein files show the consequences of broken epistemologiesThe strange nexus of Christian fundamentalism and techno-salvationismWhy social media moderation debates are more about epistemology than technologyThe political history of BitcoinHow faulty facial recognition software led to a man’s false arrestWhy Elon Musk and other technology investors have become so politically extremeAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction09:29 — Arthur C. Clarke's magic and current technology15:00 — AI's practical applications18:05 — The concept of mediocrity23:06 — Evolution and mediocrity27:44 — Supply chains and resilience31:01 — The importance of reserves and openness35:25 — Copyright and historical context43:15 — Technological evolution and commodification52:24 — The philosophical implications of AI as mirror57:09 — Embodiment and somatic reasoning in AIAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: I'm really looking forward to this discussion because I think that you are one of the far too few people who is taking a more measured approach to AI. There's, it's it's almost, it's 99% of people it seems like, that are commenting about it, tend to be relentlessly hyping it or saying that it's just a bunch of nonsense.And that neither one of those approaches seem to be correct, I think. And you've, written as much, quite a bit.VENKATESH RAO: Yeah, it's as with any big technology, I think if you start fundamentally with a stance of curiosity and trying to figure out what exactly you're even looking at, and that's your first order of business, you'll fundamentally go down interesting routes, whether you end up being critical or, positive about it or you're like paying more attention to the upside or downside.If you don't start with curiosity, usually you end up in one sort of derp or the other. Either it's very predictable, optimistic derp, or very predictable, critical derp. So I think is the key. And I think, the discourse we are hearing in public, you don't see much curiosity and evidence because all the actually curious people who I think are in fact the majority, [00:04:00] they're too busy actually having fun playing with the technology to like in the meta commentary around it. And of course the, and scientists working directly on the production side of the technology. typically far too busy to join in the public discourse, except occasionally, and when they do, often they're like incomprehensible to regular people. So the net effect ends up being what you're talking about, right?Like you have a lot of unimaginative incurious discourse on both the positive and negative sides.SHEFFIELD: You do. and I actually see a strong parallel in this discourse with, with regard to vaccines. I think, especially mRNA, that that here, was this technology that had been around actually for a long time. And that's also true with language models or what was, you got the ELIZA coming out in the sixties.So as a technology, these are not, new things per se, but obviously they're much different, it goes without saying. And the same thing is true with mRNA. So it was proven in the lab in some sense already for quite a long time. But because the people who had developed them were just so far removed from the public discourse that a lot of people had this natural suspicion of it, for, something that's unfamiliar.So I, I can't necessarily fault that it's, it is a failure of, discourse on, on all sides in many ways.RAO: Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think it's the degree of the reaction rather than the direction of it that I think I use primarily to sort my responses like, any new technology, whether it's extremely minor or very profound, like in this case, I do believe it's a very profound new technology. Ultimately it's still made of like atoms based on laws of [00:06:00] physics. It has its properties. Some of them are unexpected, some of them are expected. Some you can model and, anticipate other things. You just have to like, fuck around and find out what it does. And sometimes you will, I know blow yourself up.Other times you will miraculous effects. And you brought up vaccines and, yeah, I know you've spoken with Rene, who's been at the, Rene Rista, who's been at the forefront of the vaccine debates for a while. And vaccines are interesting case. like Rene was the one who told me about the original vaccines way back in the day, the exact same discourse, repeated itself. And, I, think the key to recognize is that there's never going to be anything like a holy grail technology that only has positive effects and no negative effects, and. never going to be actually be a technology that only has negative effects and no positive effects as well. And on the, second category, I like to think of bombs, right?Like nuclear power is generally understood as a dangerous, but generally positive technology. But if you ask people, do you think nuclear bombs are a good thing? Most would say uniformly bad. But if you look at, certain ideas for terraforming, other planets, they're based on exploding nuclear bombs and like causing positive climate change and making them habitable for humans.So even, or you want to blow apart an asteroid that's coming at earth, maybe a nuclear bomb is the right tool you need. So everything has both sides and I think where it throws people who are not used to working directly with technology and like getting a sense of it's hands-on behavior as a real thing, is they tend to. Inflated to mythical proportions of either light or dark varieties, and insist on taking it in. As a mythical thing. It's [00:08:00] either a monster or an angel. It cannot be anything in between. just hey, we do this with other human beings as well. Like your friends and people around you that you know well, you tend to like, give them a lot of benefit of the doubt.And they inhabit a narrow range of human fallibility. It's there's good people, bad people, no outright cartoon villains and no outright, absolute saints, right? But, when you encounter like a very distant culture, often you will do that kind of extreme. So I think part of that is what's, going on. and in general I'm like, yeah, critics need their room to have their reactions. think, one of the thing one of the ways in which I differ from a lot of other people in this discourse is actually happy to ignore the extremists on both side. I don't think they matter in the long run at all. they'll be forgotten in a generation and even if they're extremely noisy now. actually safe to ignore them. You don't have to counter them. You can for the noise to settle. You don't have to treat this as a debate that you must win because this is the extremes. They can have a powerful effects, right?if they get control of say, regulatory app paras like how AI is regulated at the government level or international level, then you should start paying attention because they can have serious impact. But if all they're doing is shit posting and whining on social media and writing like, inflamed editorials, they're safe to ignore.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Arthur C. Clarke's magic and current technologySHEFFIELD: and, there's a, there's another interesting parallel in that, Arthur C. Clark is famous for, saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic and people often apply that I. To these fanciful, sci-fi things that, wouldn't exist for thousands of years, if ever.But it actually applies to technologies that exist in the current day. and and you really do see that not just with vaccines, but like with television, with, [00:10:00] as you said, nuclear power. just a variety of things. the internet was supposedly going to turn everybody into a satanist, and so was rock music.Rock music was going to turn everybody into a, satanist and turn everyone gay. Like these were all things that, were very confidently proclaimed by various people who were not, didn't, know how these technologies worked or really what they could be, or the limitations that they had.RAO: Yeah. And that's partly because, that's partly why I feel comfortable completely ignoring them. But I do enjoy analyzing the responses of people who are consequential. yes, I, know you, you a lot of interest in unpacking the critical discourse. I think for me, a lot more. Value is to be found in analyzing the That's neither critical nor super positive, but just puzzle that responds to the mystery of the thing, right? Because there are things that are courtesy Clark type mysteries, but only to lay people like you ask the experts who build the technology, they understand what's going on, even if the lay people don't.And a generation or two later, even the lay people catch on.AI is interesting in that even the people who know the most about the technology and are working at the, in the depths of it, they struggle to understand what's going on, how to make up, mental models of it. And I've been thinking about this aspect in terms of a wonderful book I read a couple of years ago by Benjamin LaBute.It's called When We Cease to Understand The World. won a couple of major prizes. He's a Chilean author, but he, it's semi-fictional, semi factual. Collection of like biographical stories of famous physicists who were the first to encounter really profoundly new ideas and thoughts that were like, crazy enough to drive people insane.So the idea of a black hole, things like that, right? the book is [00:12:00] fascinating and a recurring theme that happens is these pioneers who are the first to encounter these mysterious realities, they often don't know how to even wrap their minds around it. And many of them literally go insane or have like other psychotic, reactions to it. so this was a labate theory, but then I came up with a three phase response theory for this kind of, profound new technology. I, think of it as the first phase is the Laban, when the first wave of people encounters this technology and has like an unprocessed first order response to it. Then you have what I call a Lovecraftian phase after, HP Lovecraft, the science fiction author, you're starting to wrap your mind around what it is, what its shape is, how it behaves, but it's still fundamentally horrifying to you. And at that point you come up with basically love.Craft and mental models of what it is. And we've already like speed run to that phase of AI. Like literally we are using Lovecraftian models. We are calling AI OTs soho Gods for, those who are not familiar is it's a species of ancient alien that Lovecraft imagines this part of the world. But it's it's an interesting kind of ancient alien. It's basically protoplasm matter that's just f. Just below the threshold of being sentient or conscious. And it was created by another alien race that created it as like a slave, organic technology. But then it gets just smart enough to, get into a war with the other regular aliens. And it's not surprising at all that the sh got turned out to be a very interesting mental model for the Lovecraftian phase of AI. And then the third phrase that I think of is, I call it ardian after JG Ballard. Another, luminary of science fiction and the ardian phases. It's not that you fundamentally sorted out the mystery or solved Arthur c Clark's, sort conundrum of, it looks like magic and you can't unpack it. At some level you've [00:14:00] normalized your relationships with it, right? so we get in planes all the time and fly at 40,000 feet in this amazing technology. We don't understand it.I'm an aerospace engineer by trade a long time. Haven't worked in aerospace for a long time. But yeah, one of the interesting things is we still don't understand fluid dynamics well enough to like have a clear non mysterious explanation for how lift works in wings. Like we have, like the mathematics and we get it. But at some level we don't understand how flight works. it's still mysterious magical technology, it's not. A horror, right? Every time you get into a plane, you don't think about kullu and OTs and other things eating you up.You don't have the paranoid psychotic reactions that the early physicists had to like fundamental physics discoveries. So flying in airplanes, despite remaining kind of magical, has reached its ardian kind of normalized phase. And I think they're starting to see that with AI too.AI's practical applicationsRAO: Like I'm fascinated by the number of Astoundingly banal, but still very powerful things, people are using, AI for. Like a couple of examples from my own life, I found, one of my hobbies is like tinkering with electronics. I'm not very good at it, but you can buy these cheap bags of assorted parts from Chinese stores and it'll come with chips and parts and stuff. with like sometimes, a little chart showing the part numbers or something. You can just take a photograph of that, upload it to chat GPT and say, what is this? Explain these components to me, and then suggest some experimental toy circuits I can build with this to learn how these components work. So that's like a kind of banal. Use I'm doing with it. That's not profound. That doesn't have a spiritual or epistemological dimension, but it's normalized. The magic has been normalized. And another one from my home life is my wife has discovered that it's a really great, mentor for, helping [00:16:00] her make her own skincare products.So she likes making face creams and things like that. And she's using it as a consultant, chemist and formulary. And again, it's a lot of really banal conversations of which ingredient will make the face cream more oily or less oily. But you're seeing this all over. yes, the critics are still having their, don't know, pull clutching reactions.The crazy theological, boosters are still like talking about acceleration or doom or whatever, the everyday people are doing surprisingly banal and normal things to it. Now it's important though, not to this just because you can, 99% of the things people are doing with AI are banal. Doesn't mean that, Lovecraft in horrors can't come out of it as two, right? swarms of drones being programmed to attack military installations. We are already seeing that in wars around the world. So yeah, AI does have like profoundly powerful dark side technologies as well as upside, users.the number of proteins that had like plausible structures went from like around 3% to nearly a hundred percent when DeepMind did its, big protein model, right? So yeah, both these profoundly I don't know, powerful things happen as well as banal things, but I think the overall shape of how. AI is entering society. The person who's written, I think most cogently about this is a professor at Princeton named Arvin Nan. He wrote this, wonderful paper called AI as Normal Technology. And it presents a worldview that argues that is not a fundamentally different kind of technology. You don't have to invent new religions and talk about like weird multiple universe thought experiments to think about it.You can think about this the same way we talk, about nuclear technology, vaccines, many other big technologies. It is a normal technology and I think, yes, that's the frame with which to engage with AI.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, to be aware [00:18:00] of the possibilities, but also the limitations. And really that's what it's about.The concept of mediocritySHEFFIELD: And I guess related to that is the concept that you have of mediocrity and that people tend to—mediocrity has a bad rap. But at the same time, everybody loves it for the things that they do, the things that they don't want to have to worry about.I think that's probably, you're talking about the banal applications of AI. What I mean, this, is mediocrity, available for everyone in as many things as you can imagine it. And, but under, as long as you understand the limitations and, so it's not good at current events, it's not going to help you with that. It's not going to help you with, understanding the nature of reality contrary to some of these people that, get wrapped up in, in, Jeff GPT God stuff.RAO: it may not be good at that now, but it'sSHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: in a way where it can help you with all those questions.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: much better at current events. Even in the two years I've been using it, the lookup and web browsing capabilities have really gotten good. thing with first time I tried to have a metaphysical discussion on the, ontology of consciousness or whatever, two, three years ago, it was like crappy. It was not even as good as like bad sophomore, smoking pot. Now it can hold up its end of the conversation really well and challengeis my relatively sophisticated view on that topic.it can't do, I think it's important to qualify with yet, like a lot ofSHEFFIELD: yeah.RAO: rushing to judgment on. It fundamentally cannot do X because they've come up with their own pet theory. You have one, I have one a dozen. Other people I know have these kind of like metaphysical treatments of what AI is that leads them to of as.SHEFFIELD: or what it isn't. I would say.RAO: like [00:20:00] pseudo theorems of fundamentally AI cannot do X because I have this, abstract model of it that says it cannot. So this is like all those people who said, heavier than air flight is impossible. your model was wrong. It turned out not thatSHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: air, air flight was not possible.So I wouldSHEFFIELD: Yeah,RAO: anything you think AI cannot do, qualify with yet theSHEFFIELD: correct.RAO: right? AndSHEFFIELD: Sure.RAO: do, it'll probably do better. But it may not get to like super intelligent or super capable version. This is why. I'm a huge skeptic of like generalized claims of super intelligence or even general intelligence.if you talk about computers being better than us in some narrow way, that's been true for 70 years. They were already better than us at Arithmetics 70 years ago. And other things like, image recognition, translation 15 years ago, they were better than us in some ways. but other things, yeah, they may reach like maybe of mediocrity that's below us. Sometimes they'll be slightly better. And this is because intelligence is fundamentally not a quote unquote thing that has generality to it. Like we've fooled ourselves into thinking about intelligence as a generality thing because we hallucinated this idea of a G factor and these statistical results of IQ testing and it's like a whole house of cards that allows us to think in terms of intelligence as a generality thing. But to connect your point about mediocrity, the AI aspect of it is at the very origins of, of course, you look back to Turing's original formulation of the Turing test, he made like half cynical, version of the formulation, which is, hey, I'm not aiming to create like a really superior intelligence.I just want to create a mediocre intelligence. Something like the of at and t. And this was basically him snaring at the, this was, this happened in the at t Bell Labs cafeteria, and he was saying it loudly because the president was just walking in and he wanted to troll the guy. but there's something important there, like [00:22:00] is. I think profoundly high potential and powerful technology it's mediocre. It does things in like these fumbling human, human-like ways that suggest was broader potential. Whereas if it did one thing really, well, right? airplanes fly hundreds of times faster than humans can run.So they do one thing well compared to humans. But it's because of that, that we scared of airplanes, we just think of them as it's a specialized technology. We know exactly how it works and we aren't afraid that suddenly airplanes will start doing better philosophy than us because airplanes are like so good at being faster than us.That is evidence that they're not the kind of thing that can be that can compete with usSHEFFIELD: a threat.RAO: But it's the mediocrity and the reason, this is like a profound philosophical theme that I push on. So partly I do it to troll people because we live in an age of excellence and hustling and things like that. And it's fun to, be the. Bad guy pushing like a meme everybody hates. But also I do have like foundational beliefs on why mediocrity is like a fundamental property of the universe.Evolution and mediocrityRAO: for example, Darwinian evolution. A lot of people who haven't actually studied the nitty gritty of mechanics of evolution have this weirdly dumb idea that evolution is an optimizing process, that it somehow gets better and better at quote unquote fitness. And then it creates like the optimized version of everything. No, it doesn't. It's actually really, good at not getting trapped in like local Optima. It gets bumped out. And what evolution is really good at is actually maintaining enough reserves of e evolutionary potential so that it can adapt to completely new circumstances. And there's a whole book about this view of evolution. It's, I think it's called good enough. So it's by a evolutionary biologist that. explores various, examples of how how evolution does not in fact optimize and everything [00:24:00] to the 99% performance range. Like a simple example I like to use is, the reason we can hear, the reason we have ears is of course, the three little bones in our ear, those tiny ear bones that are part of our oral canal and allow us to become hearing agents.They actually were the result of evolution working on the surplus material in our jaw bones. So our jaw bones were not optimized. They were like. In a sense fat, they were not lean, they were fat. There was too much bone for the job. We had our jaw were too strong for the kind of food we had to eat. this is not true. Not just of us, but all mammals and therefore some of that surplus material. When the environment of, evolution was right, it evolved into ear bones. And then we got this extra ability to hear out of the surplus material of unoptimized ears. And this is how all evolutionary processes work.There is slop, there is fat, there is noise in the system that bumps it out of local Optima and the global processes. There is no global optimum to search for because it's a constantly changing adaptive fitness landscape. So evolution is constantly probing and trying to like. Chase a moving target. It never quite lands.It's always chasing the moving target of how is the world changing and how can I keep up in a good enough way? So that's mediocrity in evolution. And you see this in like human cultural evolution too. So my favorite example of that is there's this wonderful paper, by, I think the author is Shameless. It's called the Mundanity of Excellence. So he studied competitive swimmers in swim meets, the league, stack of leagues of swim meets, and he discovered something very interesting, the finest swimmers who get all the way up to Olympic grade. They typically don't actually max out their potential at any given lower level of competition. What they do is once they get good enough to like consistently start winning at say, city or state or high school or whatever level, don't try to world records at that level at that point. So maybe at the 70% [00:26:00] level, they start actually making changes to their technique. They experimenting, they start experimenting with new ways of swimming. They find new coaches that break them out of their rut and they level up. So they go from say the 80% tier of, one level to say the 50% median level of the next tier. And then they start improving that, there. So then never go to the end of the S-curve on any one level. They jump to the next S-curve, right? So this is what chainless means by mundanity of excellence. It looks like excellence. When you look at the end product and you're looking at an Olympic grade swimmer, like looking like a completely out of the world alien, but they didn't get there by chasing excellence at each level. They got there by understanding how to stay in the zone of mediocrity at each level, but then simply leavening up so that what was. Trending towards excellence at one level simply becomes mediocre at the next level. And you can't continue to improve by doing the same things you used to do. So this is like my natural history of mediocrity across AI, biological evolution, and human cultural evolution. And this is why I find a AI so exciting.It's not one thing that you can do Lean Six Sigma on and Toyota Lean manufacturing approaches on and polish to a absolute state of perfection. There are technologies that do that, and they're great. They go into a local minimum and they serve us well there, they become completely perfected and recede into the background where we can forget about them.They just serve us in the background. But there are technologies that are open-ended in this mediocre evolution way, and they can be our core evolutionary technologies for the rest of our existence. So those are powerful technologies. Indeed. That's why I'm so, excited about AI.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Supply chains and resilienceSHEFFIELD: and it is a fundamentally different approach to technological development, as you're saying, because and we saw during the pandemic that these perfected technologies of of supply chains, they had extracted all possible [00:28:00] value and all possible, minimized all possible waste.But what that did is that made them fragile and it made it so that they broke when they had, to deal with any sort of, variation. and, that's, and that's the, and that's another parallel with evolution, so that, the fact that appendixes exist.it shows that, evolution does not maximize for all, waste, to, minimize all waste and maximize efficiency. But that's why also why it works is because there is, there, there waste in some sense is good. and what you call, what people call waste is actually, capacity that is necessary to handle future disruption.RAO: Yeah, it's, I, think the mistake made by. and optimizers of any sort is the belief that any reserve capacity or surplus you have must be used towards goals you already have. So if you want to run faster, every ounce of like reserves of any sort you have must be used up in going faster and faster. But maybe going faster is not actually the adaptive thing to do next week. Maybe what you want to do is lift the heaviest object, which means you have to start doing something else with your reserves. and the supply chain example is interesting actually because, I think, more recent research on what happened during COVID I is adding like a twist to the tail.So it turned out that the supply chains weren't actually fragile in the way people thought they were actually capable of meeting the demand and keeping up what actually broke them was extremely poor regulatory responses. so one version, like a crude version of the story is. Governments around the world gave too much by way of cash stimuli to citizens to them over the, period. And because there was also inflation starting to get underway and cash is worth less during an inflation, were hurrying to buy far more than they [00:30:00] actually needed. So it wasn't that the supply chains were not fat enough to do the job of meeting like demand to weather the pandemic, but they didn't have enough fat to also deal with, like above and beyond, stimulus mechanisms and poorly conceived economic management, regimes. And even within this, there are like, tweaks. i, used to do a bunch of consulting work for Amazon at one point, and Amazon actually survived The Pandemic Sur Survive, surprisingly well because it's, it basically built up its own shipping logistics fleet with its own ships, its own agreements with different ports, and therefore when basically the global trade system based on national treaties and like movements of goods and, services, it started to break down because governments were like mismanaging what was happening. Amazon's own system actually was much more, robust, so they actually managed to continue serving their customers a lot better.The importance of reserves and opennessRAO: So it's not a single story, but I think the overall lesson to take away from COVID is no matter how well you plan, there will be contingencies that are not in the thinking that went into the design of a system that are not within living memories.So maybe you have to dig back a hundred or a thousand years to find appropriate things to learn from. And the only way you can actually deal with them well is to have unallocated fat in the system. And there's, a lot of good research that supports this basic conclusion that the only way to survive long term.So this is, there's a book called, the Living Company that came out of, research from, BP in the eighties. But the headline conclusion there was the companies that last the longest simply have two properties. One is they have enough reserves and surpluses to like weather a lot of uncertainty. And the second is. They are open to ideas, so they're not closed off, they're not hide bound in their thinking. So that's really [00:32:00] it. You have to have reserves and you have to be open to like external inputs that can like, give you new ways to behave. If you close yourself off or you get your reserves down too far, you will die.That's basically it.SHEFFIELD: yeah, it is. And and there are, there are so many companies that are examples of that. just, mobile phone technology, how many times that the, top players, just completely ceased to function in the market. the. Happened so many times now.Just as one example. But the other thing though about just, in the, AI context is that I think that, people who, people are still trying to figure out, how can I use this thing? Because, like that's, and it's not going to be the same answer for everybody.And, some answers that people have, or that they want to have in a given moment might not, be functional for what they need at that moment. but it might be extremely useful for somebody else, So and I think a, great example is, art. Like the capabilities for art generation just were horrible, for such a long time.And, people would mock it, things like that. But, if you try it now, it's very good. Like a lot of, it's very good. And and there are legitimate concerns. Because visual representations are in some ways more, there's not as many of them as linguistic permutations.and so, artists have some very valid concerns in this regard, but compared to linguistic recombination, because we have so many words that, the number of, possible permutations to make a sentence, we're talking in the quadrillions here, right? so nobody can really say per se that, that AI is going to rip off [00:34:00] their, writing, although, obviously we have instances of that.But art is a different thing. But nonetheless, the capabilities got there or, and are just only continuing to improve, like with video and things like that. it's, that. But then other people are getting, their brains, messed up by using AI improperly and not understanding that, it's not a, this is not a spiritual advisor, you should not take, religious advice from a chatbot.But, and, the media is trying to hype that now, I think in, a lot of ways. But, as, as, you had, we had talked, before this, you had said that AI is more of a, is it, is the product you get from AI is related to what you put in and it's what you expect.it's almost like the, the Yoda, scenario with Luke in, the Empire strike, back strikes back. It's, AI is only what you take with you in a lot of sense.RAO: Yeah, so I, I think I'm probably, I'll probably come across as an extremist on this particular topic with respect to attitudes that are prevalent today in living generations. But in historical time, I will probably come across as a moderate. So with that qualifier, let me explain the position I'm, outlining here.Copyright and historical contextRAO: I'm an extremist on thinking copyright is bullshit. So do I mean by that? in language, it's easy to see, if you go back far enough in history and you look at, say, the Preprinting press, literature or folk traditions and stuff, there was no notion of one person laying claim to the Arthurian, legends, for example, to take a random example I'm reading at the moment. So the Arthurian Legends is a good example to take they. Evolved as a folk tradition across France and England over several centuries. They were at some point, like [00:36:00] compiled in France and various clusters. There was Jeffrey of Monmouth who had a history of kings of England and so forth. And at some point in around 1480s or so Thomas Mallory came up with the Death of Arthur, which is the definitive edition.But the reason it got locked down as a definitive edition, and he became known as quote unquote, the author of, the King Arthur Tales is printing press was invented and the printing press when it was invented, it introduced a certain kind of like freezing or, what's there's this book by Elizabeth Eisenstein called, the, printing Revolution and its impact on Europe, where she talks about this notion called fixity. It took a lot of fluid. traditions that had huge numbers of people chaotically contributing to it and introducing a fixedness to it. And at the same time, it created this archetype of an author as a figure in the public imagination that had a certain relationship with a fixed work. And that relationship is what eventually got legal, teeth as what we now understand is copyright. Same thing with visual arts, right? Like you go look at very traditional painting techniques before the Italian Renaissance in Europe and much later in other parts of the world, will find that authorship is a very loose and fluid concept.you look at ancient temples in Asia, you'll have like lots of like carvings and paintings. Nobody knows who the hell did them. They were like parts of traditions where everybody collectively. Owned a commons of creative production knowledge. And they were used to like, decorate public works and copyright was not necessary to mediate human relationships with their collective output.So I think one of the things we are seeing right now is the printing press in some sense created a few centuries of a very anomalous relationship between human creative labor and the products of that labor that was very individually circumscribed by a particular [00:38:00] legal, regime. Right? and it didn't exist before about 1450, and I suspect it'll not exist again after about 2100 because we are now getting back to a mode where our relationship to Our artistic production is at some level, a fractal, collective mutualist thing. Yes, there's individual threats to it, but there's also group threats to it. There's like national thread to it. Let's take an example, the big over, studio Ghibli. Now Miyaki is a very well-known and deservedly so he's done legendary movies and they're like, for what they are, they're exceptionally good movies, but. would be a bad mistake to pretend that Studio Ghibli, which is the studio he runs, is solely the author of the works of Studio Ghibli. if you go beyond Miyazaki and say, let's count the hundred or so artists who have worked on Studio Ghibli movies for the last 30 years, even that's not a big enough circle. he had a lot of inspiration from Disney and American animators earlier in the century. He had a lot of inspiration from earlier traditions in Japanese visual arts. So you start counting up and rolling up all these collective legacy and inheritances of human creative labor, and you find that there is something I'm a deeply. Self-absorbed and narcissistic and individualistically, small-minded about a relationship to the artistic tradition that I have a big problem with. So I think we're going to go back to the pre-print era of like more collective collective ownership of commons of artistic production. So that's one half of what I want to say, but I don't want this to be mistaken as the ethical responsibilities of AI companies, right? So I disagree with the, his hypocrisy of individual artists and also that kind of like performative gestures, putting little signif notifications on their articles or artwork saying, Hey, no AI was used in this. You use the equivalent of like [00:40:00] thousands of years of human creative production as an artistic heritage, which is the equivalent of A LLM in pre-computer eras.So you did use an LLM. The LLM just happened to be human history itself. So that's one way to think of it. So yes, I don't let artists of the hook for being bad faith and disingenuous about the arguments they make. But this is not the same thing as excusing, open AI or atropic or any of them.They have an ethical responsibility too, but they need to work it out for themselves, who that is to, and how to actually deliver on that responsibility, right? if they think they're drawing on a lot of common tradition from the internet or the long history of humanity, give back to that tradition, right?They should release open source weights. They should like, they should leave the commons of human artistic heritage richer than they found it. They should not leave it extracted and devastated. So anything that's going into the LLMs, yes, they have as much right to it as any individual artist, but what comes out of LLMs, I think it should create a new commons.And it's starting to happen. This, the private companies are not exactly doing great work here but the people pushing hardest on open weights, LLMs, for example. And it's ironic that China is the leader on this with deep seek and others that they're like going really hard at this. But beyond that, we need even better, there's a couple of efforts to do basically public commons AI. so Kevin Kelly has this notion of, public intelligence and I just came across this, let's see if I can find, this thing there's another effort to build a truly fully open source stack around AI. Yeah, I'll, share it later if I can. But yeah, there's a bunch of efforts that's happening like this that are about like building AI in a distributed, open access public way, that leaves the commons much richer, than they found it.And I think, yeah, to some extent there's a humane there's a humanitarian concern here, as traditional artisans and crafts people who do [00:42:00] who sit around in villages around the world practicing like centuries old crafts, they deserve to be somehow taken care of.And technology messes with what they're doing. modern artists deserve the same like humane considerations, but, we should not take their, ethical posturing at face value any more than we should take the ethical posturing of the AI companies at face value. We basically need to renegotiate our collective relationship with our knowledge and art heritage in a completely new way.Like what has worked for the last 500 years won't continue to work.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I would say the same thing also applies to software patents as well. And because, and I when you look at the way and the technologies that go into, pretty much every model, they're based on open source technologies and many ways. And and I, suspect that if somebody were somehow to do an audit, of these technologies, there would be a lot more that is under the hood that is not being, disclosed, perhaps.That is my suspicion.RAO: and there's even an. A pragmatic, selfish reason to promote this commons and, open source and public view of things.Technological evolution and commoditizationRAO: So whenever we think of the evolution of technologies, often people note that the end stage of any technology is quote, unquote commoditization. At which point it either becomes like there's no, alpha left in it, or it even becomes a nationalized utility run by the government or something. There's something not quite true about it, right? trains became nationalized and became like a commons commodity like a hundred years ago. But then new technologies came up for maglev, new kinds of like train technology, and the frontier opens up again. Now the question is. What do you do with technologies that go through a cycle from like frontier pioneering innovation to a temporary commoditized stage when the frontier shuts down.So maybe for 50, 60 years, nothing new happens in that [00:44:00] sector, but there is still like subterranean forces that can erupt at any moment and restart that sector, right? So you have to be open to that potential reopening. And I think the best way to steward that latent potential that might, reopen 50, a hundred years down the line is in fact as a public commons, not as a nationalized by that nationalized government entity or as completely extracted private sector.You have to have a commons, to stewarding late stage technologies because that's how you nurture their long-term potentialities. And I think we are just starting to The societal disciplines needed to do that? open source software is one of the first cases where we've learned how to do that well.we are not saying that, hey, this kind of software is really take word processes. There have been word processes for 50 years, but what we are not doing is saying, Hey. This is old enough. Let's give it to IBM to maintain as a legacy technology and IBM's Department of Word processing can do it.We're not saying that, nor are we saying, Hey, this is basically a utility technology. Let's give it to the government to run in the Department of Word processing technology. Both would be absolutely terrible ideas. Just because word processing as a class of application has doesn't mean it's going to stay the same 50 years from now.like AI is actually opening up that frontier again. Like what it means to work in an environment like Google Docs or Microsoft Word is being radically rethought now with AI being plugged in, right? So obviously there's going to be new kinds of word processing in the next five, six years. So that means we need to learn how to steward these things really well.And, commons, open source. These are all going to be societal disciplines for us now.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and, the other thing about this perspective is, getting technologists themselves to not be paranoid about a matured [00:46:00] technology. So like we see, Peter Thiel, I think is. Us in this regard for claiming that, oh, we don't have any innovation anymore. innovation's dead and it's all, the communist fault or whatever.And it's no, because, as you said, word processing spreadsheets, these are things that, largely we figured, that they're, they're mature technologies anymore than, we don't need to have a new Astro lab technology. And we're not lamenting that we don't have any new AstroLabs, they're fine with what we have.and, the real innovation is in, either, completely extending existing mature technologies or inventing new things that do the same function. and that's, the, I think that there is of late, especially, as, some as some investors and, have, and, tech liberation types.they, they, haven't understood this point that, a maturation is not a bad thing. It's a good thing.RAO: I, would characterize their views slightly differently, but this is fine for our conversation here. Yeah. I think Peter Thiel is an overrated idiot on these topics, honestly. his famous line about Twitter versus, I wanted flying cars. I got for one 40 characters. It's sofa morrick like, he was one that described to me as his thinking chopped with a lot of the rings in Iron Rand.And, he has apparently read some re Gerard and, I think his he's overrated. He, plays a couple of good bets as an investor and he's really smart as an idiot savant kind of, way in certain, kinds of behaviors. But I wouldn't take his views on this sort of thing seriously. but, what's a sophisticated view of maturation and I would say rea awakening of technologies. It's that nothing is ever done, even AstroLabs are not done. It [00:48:00] could be that the next interesting technology that we invent suddenly does something very weird to AstroLabs. fact, they have not been done, like people have been updating AstroLabs with lasers and other smaller refinements.to take a similar era of technology sales, for example, technology reached a peak of. Perfection with, I would say the 1850s tee clippers just before steam ships in, America. phenomenal sailing ships. They wouldn't hold a candle to the sailing ships we see in the America's Cup type races, today, right?Because these new sailing ships, they use fiberglass. They use like complicated like computing CFD software to optimize the sales. If you've ever seen one of these, yacht races, it is amazing. These things fly like far faster than any sailing ship. 200 years could. So it's not true that we've lost or that it's stagnant or only incremental things are happening. And it's not even just like it, it's not that it's a marginal sideshow because of, change and, energy concerns. People are actually now starting to build cargo ships that use wind power and powerful new waste. So there's a few new designs for there's literal sails that are like carbon fiber based that are used on container ships.And then there's other things like, there's a form of wind propulsion that uses rotating cylinders. That was a type of wind power that was never used at all in the earlier sailing era. So yeah, you can't write off anything. SoSHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: finished story until, our species is dead and earth is burned to a cinder.It's isn't over until it's over. uh, it,SHEFFIELD: and I'm sorry, just on your point on sailing, like the other thing, the, technology is continuing to be extended even further because like with, spacecraft and using the solar wind,RAO: exactly.SHEFFIELD: that's the ultimate application of sailing innovation. and if people hadn't kept thinking about, how can we refine how it works with wind, we wouldn't have had that.RAO: And, Astros too, like this has [00:50:00] been standard on spacecraft since the beginning. One of the ways, do attitude positioning so they have lots of methods to do it. But one of them is literally star scopes. So they have like little tiny telescopes that orient on particular stars, and then they use that to get a sense of like their orientation and correct them because they need a multiple redundant systems to position themselves.so yeah,SHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: are alive and well,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. there's, the other thing about that's circling back in a lot of ways is that that AI it's opening up the idea of what is consciousness, what is intelligence in a way that, that hasn't really been thought about for a long time.And, I don't think, he did gets enough discussion nowadays, I don't think, or, and maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff, but Marvin Minsky's society of mind. So that actually appears to be true of both humans and of LLMs. That so LLMs function, through, and the analogy is not a very good one with the idea of a neuron.but nonetheless, the idea that a, that a, token has multiple relationships across many different spaces. and so, basically an attention head algorithm is functioning in the same way that a neuron in a human or animal is that, our, consciousness, there is no fixed self.It doesn't exist. and really what that's, I think in some ways is scary to people who want to imagine that there's something magical inside of us. But when we look at, other animals like dolphins, they have language, they have abstract thinking, they have names for themselves, with their signature whistles.there, there's just, we're not nearly as special as we think we are. and I think that might be ultimately what motivates a lot of people who are, obsessed [00:52:00] about things like, Quaia or stuff like that. It's just we're and it's fine. It, like understanding that we're not that special.That's, I think that mediocrity there, like that's the ultimate mediocrity perhaps.RAO: Yeah, we have a very mediocre flavor of consciousness, not a special flavor. But yeah, I think that this is one of the, threads of discourse that are most worth watching.The philosophical implications of AI as mirrorRAO: gets to the point I think we were talking about before our prep call on AI as a mirror, right? a lot of people have pointed out that every technology that's ever come along, every major technology, let's say people tend to like, see their own minds reflected in it.But I think AI is indeed special because it's the first technology that was literally inspired by, our own, not our own brain, but cat's brains. Because the first neurons that was studied that eventually became neural networks was cat neurons. So yes, are special. They're not like, if you look in, say, the era of Descartes you would find clockwork analog for how the mine works. And he had an idea that consciousness lives in the pineal gland and things like that. But clockworks are good for understanding certain aspects. So it's an okay mirror. It's not a high quality mirror.You can understand some aspects of brain functioning that way. Butis are exceptionally good mirrors. And, yes, Minsky is I think, one important thread of understanding what both ais and brains are. And I think we are getting closer and closer to that model. the latest mixture of experts model that has now become the standard architecture.It already has a multiple agent structure. It's still a little bit of a hierarchical, architecture that I think is not quite close to the way the human brain works, but it's getting there. So I would say today's AI's in the mixture of experts architectural paradigm. There's somewhere between a Cartesian theater approach where the prompts come in and then they get out to the mixture of experts and so forth. And future [00:54:00] state where we perhaps won't need that. Like when we have embodied ais and robots that have their own sensors and actuators, that loop is closed in a richer way. We'll drop even this slight fiction of a Cartesian theater that we have going on in current AI models. and it's getting there, like on the models front, a lot of people are getting inspired by, cortical columns, which are these structures within the brain that have would say Minsky, society of mind resonant, architecture.So that's one direction that's to watch. Another in interesting direction is this is a little bit of like a. Cultish line of research, but it still is interesting. It's on active inference, stuff by RIS term and people who study things like the free energy principle and so forth.So people building models of the brain as thinking and cognitive, machinery, but as thermodynamic systems described with in terms like, entropy, free energy, flows of energy and signals of information. So there's lots of really interesting work happening along those lines, and I think exciting stuff is going to happen once we start putting LLMs and LMS and multimodal models of all sorts into robot bodies adding like reinforcement learning loops and. Operationalizing some of these newer models of free energy principle and active inference. And what'll happen then, I think is we will lose this, we'll lose what's left of this Cartesian theater metaphor that's still lingering with us. And we'll get to, AI embodiments that can mirror human thought much more richly.I, think at some point they'll startSHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: because silicon and, neurons are fundamentally different types of hardware. So theySHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: start diverging. They've already started diverging with transformers. It's not quite the wi, same way neurons work, but they will [00:56:00] be equivalently expressive. And by that that. Even if they turn into completely alien intelligences that are nothing like us on the inside and think very differently, they will still work as the most expressive mirrors we have, where when we interact with them, we will in fact be able to ourselves in them. And yeah, to go back to your earlier point, conversations about like philosophy and spirituality if you're so inclined and have that be as good or better or more interesting than with other humans.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: to rank all these on the same scale. to a great philosopher about your religious views might have one kind of value, but talking to the best AI model 20 years from now about your views on religion might have a completely different kind of value.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: sitting around on your couch with your dog or cat and communing with another species that way is a fundamentally different spiritual experience than talking to another human with whom you resonate a lot and. I, I would say they're like equally valuable, like when I sit with my cat and we are watching TV together, it's a very different but equally valuable spiritual experience as talking to somebody who's sophisticated about those topics.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Embodiment and somatic reasoning in AISHEFFIELD: and yeah, and ultimately, I think that the, where we're headed with all this stuff is that, within cognitive psychology, there is the broad consensus that there are two types of reasoning. there is our somatic reasoning, our bodily based preservation instincts, things like that.and then there's our abstract reasoning and AI. Because it hasn't been embodied yet. it doesn't have that somatic reasoning. And and, but that ultimately is the foundation of all meaning, as, because David ,Hume was right, when he was talking about this, hundreds of years ago.That our reason is and forever will be the slave to the passions, and that this must be the case and it should be. And so that's ultimately what meaning is, that [00:58:00] me as a physical, being in limited space time, this is where I see things and this is what matters to me. And so whatever the substrate is, whether biological or, mechanical, that doesn't matter as much as, as where as that meaning can be created.RAO: Yeah, and I think we are already getting there. Like embodiment is farther along than people realize. Like already people are sitting in, self-driving cabs and like after five minutes the novelty wears off. that's what happened with me when I sat in a Waymo. But this is a beast with a lidar and a lot of sensors and loops and it, has a certain organic embodied presence that is very different from interacting with chat GPT.It's a very different type of intelligence. And, yeah, I think the philosophical, track your, gesturing that is in fact the right one. hue I think came a little too early to, he's a useful thinker on, these matters. But if you fast forward a little bit I think Gilbert Wild is the philosopher to, think about quite a bit these days to some extent, high Decker, like I'm not a huge fan of, high Decker. There's lots of problems with his thinking, but some of his ideas about being in the world and, how you, how embodiment and, you're calling the somatic aspect of consciousness this, interplay. They're really, interesting. So there's a line of hi thought that I found interesting which comes out of his. Otherwise, like crappy philosophy of technology. But he has this notion of readiness at hand and readiness to hand ofSHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: integrates into your body. And, a bunch of philosophers, Simon Dunn and lately Han and others, they've carried on the Erian tradition. And they're say, starting to say very interesting things about how being an embodiment work in the modern world, their views colored by the general kind of like. Dismal nature of Hi [01:00:00] Arian thought. So if you can pull that out andSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Get past the,RAO: bit. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: yeah.RAO: way to think of.And Gilbert trial I think is under, underrated. I have to go back and read more of how he came at these problems. But yeah, a lot of philosophical work to be done and I think more and more exciting raw material will come for the philosophically minded in the next 10 years. And I, think the same thing I say to people who are like, trying too hard to optimize their AI experiences right now. I would say to philosophers as well as well. So a lot of the AI hustlers as I like to, call them, they very eagerly make up like really complicated prompts and recipes and things like that. And I'm lazy. I just use AI right outta the box. And my response to those people is, you're doing all these complicated things, it'll be obsolete in three months because the models themselves will become sophisticated to do that.initially chain of thought prompting was something you had to do manually. Now it just does it right, so you, it's, very valuable to be lazy these days, like both as a hands-on technology user, just be lazy because anything you try to overdo, chances are the technology will do it better in six months.And I think the same is true of philosophy. very energetically trying to form about consciousness or quality or something, I would recommend just. a lot more lazy because six months from now you'll probably see three or four very intriguing new things happening in AI that'll actually lead you to better conclusion.So I, I think my current stance is around and find out and experiment in a playful manner with the actual technology, but really as much as possible, leave open without an urgent need to answer them. It's important, it's more important right now to collect the good questions than to find the good answers because so much interesting data is coming our way that we'll keep finding better and better answers as the years go by.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.RAO: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. [01:02:00] Ultimately what matters is what you can do with it, not what slot you can put it in. I think that's what it comes down to. Yeah. All right. we, we could probably keep going for a lot longer, but, I don't want to do that to everybody. But, so for, people who want to keep up with your writings and such, what's your recommendation for them?RAO: I write a Substack newsletter called Contraptions and I also run a program called the Summer of Protocols for the Ethereum Foundation. So a lot of my work is in those two, places. So if you Google, if you look for contraptions on Substack or the summer of protocols, just search it on Google.You'll find a lot of, what I'm up to these days. But beyond that, yeah, basic information about me is kote.com. So the basic 4 1 1 stuff is there.SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. All right. Thanks for being here.RAO: Thanks for having me.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 have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And my thanks to everybody who is a paid subscribing member. Thanks very much for your support. We have options on both Patreon and Substack. If you are interested in becoming a paid subscriber, that is very helpful. Thank you very much. And if you can't afford to do that right now, I understand these are tough times for a lot of people.but you can help out the show if you share it with your friends and your family. That would be much appreciated as well. And if you are watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode. All right, so that'll do it for this one.Thanks a lot for joining me, 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 In the aftermath of every presidential election, a flood of analysis pours in during the following weeks. But the real data actually takes a lot longer to come in. And now, several months after the fact—nearly a year actually—all of the most serious validated voter studies have come in, and they have some interesting findings for the losing party.One of the things that has become apparent from all of these analyses is that the Republican Party’s leadership and political consultant class has far more modern political strategies that fit within the social media age than Democrats.Joining me today to talk about how both parties are adapting or not adapting to the social media age is my friend Rynn Reed. She is a political strategist and also the founder of Creator Congress, a new group that is connecting progressive content creators and influencers, giving them services and connections to each other and to political actors. In our discussion, we talk about the 2024 election and how the Democratic Party and its allied groups spent almost all of their money on television ads, despite the fact that many Americans do not watch traditional television because they fast-forward, mute, or block web advertising.We also talk about how right-wing Americans have done much more to fund cultural products that are not necessarily political but have deep political undertones. Over the decades, Republicans have invested billions of dollars in selling their larger values and political brand while Democrats seem to think that a barrage of easily ignored video ads can counteract it.This is a serious issue for Democrats because Donald Trump's 2024 election victory was largely thanks to people who had never voted before or who rarely vote. They had the idea to vote for Trump because of the advocacy media and cultural conservative content that they consumed on a regular basis told them they shouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris because she's an extremist.That’s an absurd viewpoint given Trump’s long record of authoritarianism, but since millions of people pay little attention to politics, his narrative was successful enough to win the day. If Democrats want the grand rejection of authoritarianism they frequently say they desire, they will need to dramatically modernize their campaigning.The video of this episode 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.Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch on either Substack or Patreon. Paid subscribers get full access.Related Content—Reactionary comedians are changing the political landscape for young Americans—How right-wing media manipulated a father—and a nation—Low-quality pundits like Jordan Peterson succeed by telling their audiences what they want to hear—Why right-wing billionaires are funding ‘post-left’ grifters—The John Birch Society and the birth of the far-right rage machine—How political propaganda hacks believers’ psychologyAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction06:33 — Non-voters and young voters have few opinions but are willing to develop them if given the chance08:29 — The Trump-as-moderate myth11:12 — How Trump made Republican consultants more innovative by throwing out the obsolete ones17:20 — Democrats haven't realized most people think America has been on the wrong track for a long time25:59 — What Trump and Republicans instinctively know about viral marketing31:32 — After a loss, Republicans change tactics, Democrats argue about policies38:41 — The role of authenticity in politics40:25 — The data mirage in political campaigns46:23 — The future of democratic engagement52:36 — Creator CongressAudio 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 year after an election, as you know, a lot of research organizations come out with validated voter studies, and so now there's been like, I guess six or seven publicly released ones and from various organizations. And, everybody has their takes, but they do line up in a lot of similar ways . And sometimes these ideas contradict the exit poll data, but, a lot of times they don't.And this year I don't feel like there was a lot of contradiction. What [00:04:00] did you think?RYNN REED: Yeah, no, I don't think that think the pol felt pretty aligned with the data that we were seeing, or at least the takes Iwas listening to about the reports. I think it's really difficult to tease out. something that I've just been thinking about a lot is teasing out the focus on.The electoral college and the states we needed to win, whether it was in the Sunbelt or the blue wall and, how that can discourage voters. I think especially after Trump's election in 2016, losing electoral college, but winning the popular vote like two things happened. I think it discouraged voters that might've turned out otherwise, and I think it led to some of the suppression time.I really, I just think people were like, what's the point if I'm not in one of these places like. the electoral college is all that matters. And then I think like what we lose there is momentum. We don't have, handed Trump a mandate, not really, but like perceptively because he won the popular vote.But I think a lot of that had to do with some of the messaging tactics. And I think it's really hard to out the effects of the polls and what happened after with like how we messaged and where we targeted.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and, I think the other kind of side effect of the way that the, Harris campaign and its various allies did their spending and, focus is that because they did focus overwhelmingly on the swing states. that it didn't buck up a lot of these congressional candidates.And so those people, who, and obviously, all the studies do indicate that the non-voters would have supported Trump more this year. But on the other hand, if you focus specifically on your select people who do like Kamala Harris at least, somewhat. there probably are some house races that were lost. I think that's pretty clear, especially in New York and California.REED: Yeah, and I, and what I heard on the ground is from [00:06:00] these races are people that were supporting in congressional races as they were being completely ignored by, by, the spends and by, by the party real large. Ithink really interesting to me and I think there's some like counter data that's really interesting.There was a really good citations needed episode on this where they cover some of the exit polling and, what might have been missed in that non-voter account and how actually difficult it is to say how a non voter would vote. it's worth a listen. I, thought it was really interesting.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Non-voters and young voters have few opinions but are willing to develop them if given the chanceSHEFFIELD: studying the non-voter, it is tricky because a lot of times they are more likely to say that they supported the winner of therace than, they actually might have been. Or they don't really have firm opinions. AndREED: and that's somethinginto a little bit. It's like when we're talking about, especially like young male voters, like how firm their opinions are at any given time or young people generally. Like overwhelmingly up until this election, young people have swung tremendously to the left, especially during first Trump's first And, young voters just have very polarized opinions. They're still forming their thoughts. I think it they're just not a like hard set group that we can just be like, yes, this is how they're gonna vote throughout their lives and, going forward.SHEFFIELD: yeah, although there is some research that does indicate that your political opinions when you were a certain, when you were young, are a bit more fixed for a lot of people than they might, otherwise want to think.REED: Really.SHEFFIELD: Um, yeah, unfortunately.REED: I feel likePretty dramatically or had lots of like iterations or add-ons, butSHEFFIELD: mine certainly did, but what, tell me what you mean in your context.REED: I think, I was just reactionary. think I called myself like a Chomsky libertarian at some point. I was very like, what do we need [00:08:00] government for Mutual aid is theSHEFFIELD: I.REED: things like that and like bucked systems, or would've been like a third party supporter until I started working in politics and realized the limits of my own ideologies and had toFigure out powerSHEFFIELD: oh.REED: were and how to be a good, good soldier in that way.SHEFFIELD: And to actually take politics seriously as a polREED: actually.SHEFFIELD: matter of policy. Yeah. Yeah.The Trump-as-moderate mythSHEFFIELD: and that, yeah, like that is definitely a, a huge problem of Republicans that they and, having been one, I can say that, most of them know almost nothing about policy. and, and Donald Trump is a perfect example of that.he's a guy that, probably, obviously had some kind, some racist attitudes and things like that, in a of ways was just a conventional New York resident. not against the government and probably, for it overall. but, and he, he was a moderate Republican.At least if you look at when he very first came on the scene, there were two groups of people who supported him and it was the anti-immigration people, and then it was moderate Republicans. That's the irony. That was an attraction for some people for Trump, and it still continues to be like, there's I've seen a number of polls over the years that, a lot of people, even now still think that Donald Trump is more, that he's less conservative than, most Republicans even, even though it's very clear now that he just does whatever the, far right Republicans tell him to.REED: And, but isn't that partially, I mean about the kind of establishment versus non-establishment. Like they can like we shock test and project onto him the versions of things that they wanna see because he doesn't fit an archetype of [00:10:00] politician.SHEFFIELD: I think that's a huge part of it, but also just the, his rhetoric that he. Talks about and that, like I, and you can even see it on this budget bill that, the Republicans have been working on for so long that, just, recently as we're recording this on the 3rd of July that he had said the day before on the 2nd of July that, you know, I always tell Republicans you don't touch, Medicare and Medicaid and social security. and then somebody was like, but wait, we are touching Medicaid.REED: Yeah, and I think this term in particular, I've noticed his like slides into kind of cogent speech, especially around like Iran and Israel was really interesting, the kind of decisive ness of his media appearances versus the bill where he like weaves and, ducks and is not, I just won't commit to anything.The Republicans in general have actually been really good about this. We were trying to like, find clips of them saying they wouldn't cut Medicaid, and they were very strategic, very aligned and never said, never said those wordsHow Trump made Republican consultants more innovative by throwing out the obsolete onesSHEFFIELD: The other thing I think hasn't really been talked about in some of these studies is the role of television advertising in democratic campaigns versus Republican campaigns.it's just. Insanely disproportionate that Republicans put their money a lot more in digital, a lot more in media, like for, produced media advocacy media. Whereas Democrats tend to dump everything into two buckets usually, which is TV ads and on the ground, door to door knocking and within political science, both of those things are pretty clearly not effective. And that's it. It, there's just this weird irony, tragic irony of democratic politics [00:12:00] in that there are so many political science professors, who lean democratic, and yet the party doesn't actually learn anything from them. It seemsREED: I feel like it's such an outsourcing to the class too. we just have these like deeply like entrenched consulting class that just refuse to learn and have no real impetus to, I, can't, totally track the difference because I'm just like, don't understand the Republican side as well, but.feel like we have more consultancies that do non-innovative stuff and just refuse to update their priors. We'll have mail campaigns sending out, and this, we saw this with Acacia's Race, right? Like AOCs Race when Crowley sent out 25 mailers or something, some kind of absurd amount and, they just weren't clocking. They weren't clocking where to go with things. And I think I've seen male firms doing that up to this day and just their client's money a little bit. and Cuomo's race too, right? I was seeing that although Momani actually put a ton into TV ads, which I thought was really interesting, I think 70% of his race, of hisSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Although he did a lot of produced.REED: of earned media and a lot of digital, so he up the difference with free media.SHEFFIELD: With regard to the Republican consulting class, it is a different that they, things, changed because of Donald Trump, because when he first came on the scene, pretty much all of the Republican consultant class hated him because they thought he was a liberal a rhino that was actually like, people forget that's how things, that's what never Trump was originally for most of these people. It was that he was a rhino and, Republican in name only and a liberal who's gonna betray the party and make them get in the league with the Democrats.REED: [00:14:00] Sure.SHEFFIELD: so they wouldn't work for him, but also Trump hated them as well. So basically this sort of, calcified layer of Republican consultants, he threw them out in the street and he had brought in these people who were state level operatives, basically, like Corey Lewandowski or Susie Wiles. And and they had no. They had no priors to use your wording for it. And so they were willing to do whatever seemed best, or to import techniques that they learned from commercial marketing.And, because, commercial marketing doesn't work the way that. Camp, especially presidential campaign marketing works.REED: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: they, figured out a long time ago that TV ads, all they do is establish branding. That's all they really are for. They establish prestige, but they don't motivate or persuade.They just remind people that you're there. And so yeah, so now the Republican consultant class is this entirely new. Wave of people who are. They're not set in their ways. They, haven't been doing the same stuff since the eighties or nineties. and and this is why they've been able to, like they were able to see again, the Trump campaign was, they were open about this in 2024, that, our goal.Here is going to bring in non participate, people who don't traditionally vote. And we're gonna be focusing on young men in particular. And and beefing up trump's numbers among Hispanics and, black people. And I. They said they were gonna do it and then they achieved what they said they were gonna do.And it's not like Democrats couldn't see that coming. 'cause it was in the New York Times. Seems every few weeks. and Politico and everywhere else,REED: Totally. it's an interesting thing. I think what they seem to really understand and to your point about Investing in TV [00:16:00] ads being like just present, like presence in the media space. Democrats are always just about presence and never about persuasion, where I feel like that second tier, the sort of like digital media, new media tier where people can actually be moved one way or another.That's really where Republicans have just dumped all of their investments. That feels like kind of the constant, hum of where they've invested since, know, 20 14, 20 15.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that, and I think that's right. And, the, I remember back when I was a Republican consultant, I would, I wrote a big long article saying that, you guys need to stop trying to beat the media. You need to be the media.REED: Sure.SHEFFIELD: and, then I just added up like all the audience size of Fox News and, these various things.And I was like, look, you guys have nothing. No one sees what Republicans are talking about, and then I went and left the Republican party and they followed my memo.REED: they really did pick that up. Nobody sees people see what they're talking about now more than. more than anything the Dems are doing where they just can't seem, it doesn't matter what they do, it's just their presence and the more that they are present, but like the Republicans have turned people against them, it actually just creates like a factor, like a fly buzzing around.I, I just think they can't puncture it right now.Democrats haven't realized most people think America has been on the wrong track for a long timeSHEFFIELD: yeah, and it's, and they don't understand that, in politics after the rate recession, the, zeitgeist. Is a hundred percent for, maybe not a hundred percent, but the vast majority of Americans think that the financial system sucks.They think that the, getting a job sucks. They think that, paying for food sucks and or dating and, whatever it, all these things are basically have been taken over by extractive. Capital that is trying to financialize everything, trying to monetize everything.And [00:18:00] people hate that and re Republicans seem to understand that. But, and of course they don't want to do anything about it. And if, anything what they do makes things worse for her. Financialization. And they got just in, in their bill. They're trying to, make it so that states can't regulate ai for 10 years, a moratorium on it.And this is just one of things. So it's, it but Democrats are the Democratic brand is they, haven't understood the people. They don't, see things in terms of the issues necessarily. They see how you talk to them and your overall vibe, if you will.REED: Yeah, no. One of the most interesting things from this, the passing of this bill was the public lands giveaway, and I feel like I just saw so many people online talking about how. It was great and they should sell it to do an auction and like generally average citizen should be able to, auction and purchase this land. And then also complaining in the same breath about, the cost of going the land and wanting to roam on it freely and how it to be open to the American public. like those two things are completely at odds, right? Like an auction off to, normal citizens and like free roaming and like access. And just this like weird, oh, the government shouldn't control it. Even though the government's, the people, like I just, people don't think about policy that deeply. They, truly, they're not putting those two parts together. And I don't think that's even, people will say, oh, the American public is just stupid.And I really think it comes down to of rational ignorance and, just distrust. They don't want to listen 'cause it, they've been burned so many times and they've been talked down to. yeah, I don't think the Democrats have that at all. And the Republicans have nailed the, presentation of it.Even if they haven't actually changed any of the policies. There's pushing same thing from, 1954.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. [00:20:00] and with, and Trump is able in a lot of ways to, just to circle back to something we were talking about earlier, that, he's able to get away with being seen almost as not a politician, almost as not part of the very laws that he himself is enacting and bullying Congress into signing because, because he's so good at deflecting.Blame and saying, a anything, it is literally the Trump public posture that anything that is popular, I did it and anything that's unpopular, someone else did it. And, Democrats never say that and never point out just the naked cynicism of it all. they, and it's not like they don't know that.Like they all know that's what he is doing. and they'll say that. Privately in the, they, and they might say that, in, in an occasional podcast discussion or if they're on, I don't know, bill Morris show or something like that, like they might say it in those venues, but they don't understand, like that's an insight that the public would love you to tell them.REED: Yeah, I think there was like, there's a. Treating the public like children in our messaging. I think there's a lot of talking down to, or I really like the phrase we talk like about the working class, not to the working class. We treat it like an anthropological study when we talk about people or voters. and I don't think it works. I don't think people like it. And I think Trump has just really nailed that sort of attention and talking to people in a way that they feel heard and seen.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and then, of course independent of him, they spend so much money on, media, on advocacy media, so I. even if you might not like him very much. 'cause that's, one of the things that, that I noticed in the exit poll was that, [00:22:00] when you looked at people, so they asked him, do you approve of Trump?Do you approve of Harris? And there were people, a pretty sizable number of people who didn't approve of either one. And, Trump won that, vote. and so basically, and that's what advocacy media is doing, I think, because it's essentially obviously, that Republicans are less extreme than the Democrats, but a lot of people.Actually have been inundated with that message so much that they actually really believe that. and, and the, only caveat though is, in, in a lot of these analysis analyses is that, and I do want to make sure we talk about it, is that, like the particular candidates, sometimes I think people.It is easy to draw these broader conclusions that may not be fully relevant in light of who the candidates were.REED: OhYour example?SHEFFIELD: I like, just like with Trump and Harris, so so Harris, as a woman, studies have persistently shown that people, that people. Think that women candidates are more left wing than they are, and so just by virtue of her being a woman.That itself might have made people, she think she was more extreme, some people. And then whereas with Trump, with these non-voters or, non-regular irregular voters, unlikely voters, the fact that he's, was famous celebrity and has been for decades. That might have some, a significant kinda shape for him, uniquely that no other Republican candidate can match, at least, unless they pull a, a Tucker Carlson or a kid rock out of their hat in 2028 or something.I.REED: Yeah, the Tucker Carlson, [00:24:00] beef was really interesting during the conflict with Iran. I'm curious like how that landed with you or what you think was happening where there's just like that real tension with Tad Cruz of kind of advocacy media turning on. The Trump administration. And it was just an interesting, like who has the power here?who wins out at the end? And I think it was a real, game of chicken for a while there.SHEFFIELD: yeah, it was, and then, and TrumpREED: I,SHEFFIELD: in the end, just, was like, we're gonna bomb him. it was such a complete waste of time. Because, and they, even admitted beforehand, that, one of the, places of the nuclear sites was already so far underground that they didn't even bother putting the, bunker busting bombs in there.They just sent some tomahawk missiles from a summary. and it was like, that's where all the uranium was. So nothing of any of, like some stuff was destroyed at these other sites, but you didn't really do anything. And, they knew that going into it. that's,REED: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: again, that's not something I hear Democrats saying.Not really. have you seen that?REED: the challenging of it.SHEFFIELD: challenging that it was just didn't even accomplish what he said it would accomplish.REED: No,SHEFFIELD: little.REED: they got, did breach that, I believe the pushback they got was like, do you not honor, do you not honor the men and women who were like executed this mission? and then we back down, we don't, we we get one little hit, you get one punch in the jaw and we crumble. And we did not follow that all the way through.SHEFFIELD: I think that there is one significant thing with the way that Republicans Democrats seem to, what you're saying, like with the, like they, they want to make the 0.1 timeREED: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: and then they think that's enough.REED: Yeah.What Trump and Republicans instinctively know about viral marketingSHEFFIELD: And it's if [00:26:00] you listen to Trump, Trump's been saying the same thing for 10 years.The immigrants are coming to, to kill you and take your jobs. And, and the Democrats are, they're trying to make all your children transgender, and, transgender communists who, worship black people or something like that. That's the message. They've had the same message for 10 years. I think the democratic leadership class and consultant class, they look at that and they just roll their eyes at it instead of realizing, actually that's extremely effective. So you can think it's dumb and you can think that, it's manipulative or whatever. whatever you want to think about it.But you know what, it, it works because a lot of people don't pay attention. And so if you have to repeat yourself a lot.REED: Yeah, listening to a, I think it was Chris Hayes and Ezra Klein, and they were talking about like mimetic policies or these like policies that have just like kind of grants. And sweeping ability to say a lot of things at once, build the wall or I don't know. But build the wall is like, the big one that kind of sticks out is this very textural policy proposal that's not really a policy, but just a meme that you can just share forever. and we don't really do those. we ourselves in, we're like, oh, This thing, this built the wall. It's too simple. It's not a real policy, but then he executed on it, right? Like at the end of the day, like Trump has delivered on the promises he's made to people. In a lot of ways he's terrifying ways, that are deeply e unconstitutional.But I think. I think those things, when you are able to bring the people with you, when they're able to what your points are really simply and, iterate it, you build this sort of outside amplification network that allows you to move things forward outside of, compromise and legislative like organizing. [00:28:00] Which is just really interesting and something the Democrats have really never done. they've always relied on internal we have to win over the coalition. We have to win over this power player. And all this backroom organizing where I think Trump and his ilk and like this kind of new branch of the Republican party rely on external factors.They rely on advocacy media. They rely on their own base to amplify their message and, push it throughSHEFFIELD: Yeah.REED: it, because it's textural and like sticks with them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and, yeah. And that, idea of having the, having a message that is, is simple enough and dis discreet enough that your own voters become the messengers. that's what, viral marketing is. if you're launching a, new. A new makeup brand or a new clothing line, obviously you're gonna enlist celebrities for it.But, there's, people only know, pay attention to celebrities so much.REED: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: and, and even if you love a particular celebrity, you're obsessed with them. if she takes a picture in some, pants or something, I, you're, there's no guarantee you would see that even if you're obsessed with that particular celebrity.And so, they have to do more than that and, which is why that they invest in, giving free products to people, and just, and then let them say whatever they want about it. And, that influencer, like that is the influencer model. And Democrats really have not kept pace on that at all and well, and it's also that besides the fact that, that people have actual contact with these influencers, or micro influencers, it's also that that they have more credibility because of course a fashion brand is going to tell you that their, that their new line [00:30:00] of jeans is awesome.REED: the best line. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And of course, a celebrity who's being paid to tell you that these genes are amazing. Of course she's gonna say that they're amazing, right? So they don't have inherent credibility. Now, whereas the, micro influencers, and even if some of them are on the take and That's, that is its own issue perhaps, and arguably for the, FEC or something.But but but to, just to the people who, you know, like watching somebody because they, they love her takes on, I don't know, real Housewives in New Jersey or somethingREED: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: and and she makes a little comment, oh, and I just got these really cute pants. They're awesome.that means a lot more from her.REED: And there's a lot of good research on this and I think the Democrats have still not totally caught up. They like, 'cause even I, a lot of the creators I've loved, I. As they've been roped into the Democratic establishment, I think their message just gets less and less salient Over time, you become like, are you saying this 'cause you actually believe it, or are you saying this because you work directly with the Democrats and this is what they're telling you to say? Which I think is a real problem. we don't work with creators the way that the right does because they really like, people are bought in. There's an ideological project there where they like. Bring people in from high school, college, and I think they have a lot of true believers, and I know that's not true across the board, but I think they do create true believers firstSHEFFIELD: Oh, I knew, yeah.REED: amplifiers second.And I, don't think that's the direction that we that Democrats broadly go in.After a loss, Republicans change tactics, Democrats argue about policiesSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's right. and, and the, other thing that is I think it worth talking about here for us is that about public perception and, the issues because, there's there after a losing presidential election. it's interesting how each, each party handles the loss because in the Republican side, they almost, there, there are some people that it will be [00:32:00] like, oh, it was this issue that lost us, or that, but generally they don't have that conversation.Generally what they say after a loss was, lately now they claim it was stolen from them, but,REED: yeah.SHEFFIELD: But aside from that, that obvious lying and whining, usually what they do is talk about tactics and strategies. That, so they don't say, oh, we need to reevaluate our policies.They say no, we need to change. what we're doing and how we talk about them or where we talk about them and, who we're targeting, that's what they do.You don't see, these right wing pastors being like, all right, that's it. Packing up this whole Jesus was a fraud. He, he wasn't real. I was lying to y'all. That's not what they're doing. and they changed the, strategies and they focus on that.And whereas for Democrats after a loss, there's just these, drag out. Policy debates and they're like, it was, and each side of the equation is like, it's your fault.It's your policies that made us lose. It's your, and these are not, these are again, are not supported conclusions, because if policy was the number one thing for voters, republicans would never win elections.REED: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: It's that simple.REED: I, I had this conversation a few weeks ago with one of my superiors, and he asked me like. Should we have kept saying abolish ice? Was it a mistake to embrace that term back when it was like being used? Really 20 18, 20 17? and I was like, that's not the right question.The question is how should we have handled it tactically? Because if the right wing had been doing it, if they had a pol like a phrase or an unpopular policy, they wouldn't have backed down on the policy. They would've doubled down on how to make it popular. [00:34:00]SHEFFIELD: or they just wouldn't talk.REED: But they wouldn't, but they would figure out how to get their way in another way. What we've seen is like when abortion was unpopular, they moved, it, right? They moved it into contraception or they moved it into the states like, like they were trying at the national level. They moved it. There was always like a tactical change to your point where I feel like we, we see something as unpopular, we justSHEFFIELD: Drop it. Yeah.REED: and say, we'll just move further right on this issue and people will follow us.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and another example of that is like their anti LGBT stance that, so none of them has changed their mind with regard to same sex marriage,REED: right.SHEFFIELD: They all want to get rid of it.REED: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: and the vast majority of them, probably want to make it a crime to be lesbian or gay like that.REED: absolutely.SHEFFIELD: That's what they want. Like they haven't changed their opinions. And yet if you talk to, hell, you talk to every, the average political reporter, they, don't realize that. Because republicans, they just, so when they have an unpopular policy, they don't change their viewpoints, they just don't talk about it.REED: sure.SHEFFIELD: That's primarily what they do. or they redirect it as you were saying. So with the, the, anti-SIM sex marriage viewpoint, instead of emphasizing that, they went after trans people. And then when they whip that into a frenzy, then they can be like, oh, and by the way, we also.Hate lesbian and gay people.REED: Yeah. Then it becomes a question of like gender checking and chasing that rabbit downSHEFFIELD: well,REED: further Yeah. exactlySHEFFIELD: yeah. 'cause we all know that, just being exposed even for a second to someone who's a lesbian is gonna make you a lesbian. We know that, this is a fact.REED: And that case will be so much easier to make [00:36:00] after years of anti-trans sentiment. use this analogy a lot when I was a door, like a humble organizing door knocker. One of the things they teach you is to get a few yeses before you make an ask. And I think the Republicans are really good at this.They'll set up like very simple, inductive, logical blocks that you're okay, I get it. I'm like here with you. And then they make a leap. Leap by the time they make that leap, you've already said yes a few times and it's like you, you set the stage for yourself to agree with them.And I just opposite of that. What the democrats often do is they'll start from like a deductive place of oh, we all agree on this principle. Ergo you should agree with this smaller point, or this like principled point. we are missing the fact that people don't agree with us on that principle at all.They've already been like that principle point has been eradicated.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and it's also that they often, democrats often, like they, they insist that people agree with their methods firstREED: Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly.SHEFFIELD: before agreeing with their policy. So they're like, we all know that this is the sound form of a epistemology. And it's like the moment you're, using that word in political rhetoric is the moment you've lost.REED: lost. Yeah. already, put yourself in a place where you have to defend that first principle that you're working from. And if you're in a place of defensiveness, you've already lost. Like you, you don't have that like space to argue and engage.And what's so interesting is we saw this with their meme warfare. from Russians in 20 14, 20 15, and I feel like the right wing actually ended up adopting a lot of this, these tactics. There's this great piece, or like a study from Nebraska about the internet research agency and, how they, the tactics they used to influence the elections. And yeah, so it is like they studied from 2014 to 2018 and this piece came out in 2019.Very, like highly recommend. It was a good read.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah. [00:38:00] we'll, put it in the shoutouts if you can pick it up.REED: I.SHEFFIELD: but with the issues though, so like people have their different positions, and it's, it is probably true that some positions might be liabilities or whatnot, right? But the other reality is, that both the.Centris side and the progressive side. Both sides actually have policies that the public doesn't like. And both sides have policies that the public does And so really, I. and like people who are progressives like to rag on rom Emanuel and because he's, done a lot of things that he's very opposed to progressives, right?The role of authenticity in politicsSHEFFIELD: But on the other hand, he is a good campaigner. Like the guy I. Knows how to win elections. And in some sense, I think if you look at, if you compare and contrast him, with, Zora Ani who just won the, primary of the mayors in New York, like both of these guys have completely opposite political viewpoints, but they both understand how to tap into this dissatisfaction of the zeitgeist.this dis dissatisfaction zeitgeist that, that everyone has in, their own unique ways, and that's really what the message that people should be trying to learn in democratic politics, I think.REED: I think that's right. Ani is just such a generational communicator. I like, I knew him as an assembly person and, did not realize his game. He isSHEFFIELD: Oh.REED: at seeing through sort of the questions being asked of him and directing them head on and I don't know, ramen, I don't know if I've watched Rah Emanuel speak as much as I have mom Bonnie at this point.So I don't know if I can speak to his, like efficacy as a communicator, but I think. Ron's like a generational talent. It's very, fun to watch him, tackle points head on and, feel like he's really connecting with the audience and not ducking and weaving and being [00:40:00] mealy mouth about things.And I think that to me is modern politics is, I just think it's not even just authenticity. It's like people need to know where you stand. I think you do need to make a stance on issues in some ways. Not even policies, but just People need to know where you fit. Andof like and hawing that the Democrats are so used to isSHEFFIELD: It's not what people want. Yeah.REED: people want.Yeah.The data mirage in political campaignsSHEFFIELD: on that point though, like I, think the reason why a lot of Democrats have these kind of.He, hedging answers and misdirections and whatnot, or trying to say, not commit to anything is that, they're very poll driven. and to, going back to what you were saying about the, that they, talk about the working class rather than to them or with them that.For a lot of Democrats, they, use polls as, the way to understand what people think instead of just talking to them a lot. And so as a result, a lot of the ideas that they have, they're data mirage is what I call it, that that they can point to some numbers and they can say, oh, look, this ad.I tested was more effective than these three other ads. So therefore it's a good ad. And it's but there's an underlying assumption, and that is that TV ads work. And, and the political science research is pr pretty unanimous and has been for decades. That like my favorite study on this point was that, a guy.Went. And so when Rick Perry was the governor of Texas one year he had no opposition, in the general election. And so his team still wanted to run TV ads. So because just for like brand projection and protection and I guess, they wanted to cash in too, probably. So they [00:42:00] decided to do it anyway and.This political scientist, he was like, hey, can I just study those ads? there's no risk to you to let me see it. Everything from top to bottom in how they work and report it to the public because, you're not gonna lose man. You what, can you lose? So they, let him do it.And what, this guy found was, so this was a me, this was the ideal environment for a television ad that there was no opposition there wasn't really much of any other kind of campaign messages floating around. And so he didn't have people attacking him. the issue in environment. There wasn't a lot of controversy going on.When he put these ads out, what they found was that when the guy found, when he talked to the voters, is that the longest that any of them lasted in terms of a measurable effect on public opinion in this ideal environmentREED: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: was 72 hours.REED: Wow, that'sSHEFFIELD: That was it.REED: easy.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and, and that's the ideal environment.So what that suggests, is that probably they may have. An effect like for an hour. In a regular high controversy, high epistemic load environment that they just have no impact. and I would say for Democrats, it's even worse for them though because they don't have advocacy media.That you can, I, you can see a, five or six ads for Kamala Harris, 32nd spots. But then, you go and flip over on your YouTube and you've got Joe Rogan, saying, oh, Kamala Harris, she's incoherent, she's sucks in word salads and she's an extremist. and you sit here and you, listen to him tell you that for three hours if, three days a week or whatever, That [00:44:00] ad mean nothing to you, and if anything, as you were saying, it might have harmed her.REED: Yeah, could and I, 'cause it's something like a lot of the data I saw out of like social media from last year is that the Democrats produce like a billion views, which is like absurd. That's like an absurd number. But when you think about it, like how many of those views were just reinforcing the points that the right wing was making?Like how many of them from our side were actually just. Like doubling down on something that people already believed from the right, because they were hearing it so much more frequently. Like one thing from that kind of infamous now media matters piece that like stood out to me that I just feel was never really talked about is that the right wing is just so much more frequent, right?We looked at the bubble graph and saw like the red wave, like all the bigger red accounts. But the thing is, and I know we've talked about this before, is that there's lots of accounts that are actually like dem leaning. That the Democrats never actually invest in or speak with or engage with at all that are not reflected on that chart. it, so there's that, that the Democrats just actually don't embrace this world at all and are now just trying to create their own accounts to fill the void instead of leaning into what exists. And then the second point is just frequency. There's no investment or like understanding of it. The right is just constantly putting stuff out.It's I don't remember what the exact stat was, but it's so much more content and so much more often, and we are just not prepared for that.SHEFFIELD: No, and and the whole idea of, oh, we need to have a liberal Joe Rogan. it's a completely wrong, it's wrong thinking is what it is because, number one, Joe Rogan wasn't created by the Republican Party. That's number one. So he has a personal brand authenticity and, longevity in relationship with his audience.and then number two is that, It. Let's say you magically were able to create a liberal Joe Rogan and from, [00:46:00] a top down fundraising, like that's not possible, but let's say that it was right. That there's one Joe Rogan, he's one of 500 right wing media personality. So even if you had a liberal Joe Rogan.That's not really gonna offset all of these 500 other people. That's just not how it works.The future of democratic engagementSHEFFIELD: And, Democrats have, I think a lot of the democratic I. consultant class and, or we'll say leadership class, that they think that, as you were saying, that you can just create these top-down things and not, accept people, your own voters ideas and engage with them directly and in an authentic way because.It's okay if they don't agree with a hundred percent of what you say,REED: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: because guess what? Joe Rogan doesn't agree with everything Donald Trump says, and neither does Tucker Carlson, as we said, like. people, that's, the other aspect of authenticity that, that you can't get through a political party anointing media figures.and it's why it's real, because, and, again, like it's dumb and like misogynist and, all those things. I am, I agree with that. Whatever bad thing you wanna say, check, I'll check the box right next to you, about 'em. But, it's still it's still, authentic, at least in some sense.That they believe the things that they say and they have some independence in the things that they say.REED: And in that, in the, as your client, Chris Hayes podcast I was listening to this week, they also say something like that really stuck with me. That, the attention economy can no longer be bought and it must be earned. And I think what the right wing has found is a bunch of people who earned a lot of attention. And whether they co-opted directly or co-opted over time or just slowly like, partially influenced, like we said, They don't have, they don't actually fully control Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or Theo Vaughn. Like all of those people are actually independent voices [00:48:00] simply know that relationship to the Republican party is a juggernaut for views. Like it actually produces, like an incentive analysis there that I think that Democrats have just never really benefited from or actually invested in. And where mom's race, which is really interesting to me. Created that incentive structure. They only spent $2,000 on digital ads at all. And compared to the absolute, like millions of dollars they probably created in our media from their, own viral videos and then a bunch of creators picking up the mantle because they believed in what he was saying.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.REED: that is the sort of structure that the Democrats could have if they would just release the reins a little bit and they. Frankly, up to this point have refused and I think are gonna have a very rude awakening in 2026 if, they don't let, up a little bit. And I don't know that anyone's gonna let go of that kind of power.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. yeah, like people, you, people in this day and age, like politics, it is a form of entertainment for a lot of people. and, and it has been for a while. cable news, that's the model. It's infotainment. especially on the opinion side of things, people watch the shows they watch 'cause they have a parasocial relationship with the host and, this is not something that's new.and it's you, can go back to talk radio, like the reason that people are, because when you think about Joe Rogan's show, just that's an example. Like these, shows are interminable and they're about nothing. Most of the time. it's like Joe, Joe is sitting there, scrolling on the, on his screen and being like, oh, I saw that there was this, new vitamin thing, that they found in Malaysia.what do you think about that? Oh, I don't know. I never heard of that before. Jamie. Look it up. Like that's the Joe Rogan podcast. it fucking sucks. [00:50:00] It sucks.REED: It's a lot of dead space. Yeah. It'sSHEFFIELD: It's, yeah, but, you know what? but, but some people are willing to listen to it and like it because they were conditioned through talk radio.REED: Sure.SHEFFIELD: like that's Rush Limbaugh. that's Rush Limbaugh, just with more weak,REED: And I also think it's like familiar and builds that parasocial relationship. Like when I started listening to right wing media, just to like better understand it. One of the things that shocked me the most was how vulnerable Dan Bonino can get on his show. He will talk about his wife, he'll talk about like personal things, intermittent, these weird supplement ads and intermittent, these like weird political takes.a or he'll shout out his like chat a lot. There's a lot of engagement. There's a lot of the, real investment in Parasocial. Relationship building that I, again, it, I, it feels like when the Democrats engage with this, they're like above it and they just wanna really like tightly control all levels of engagement andhow important that relationship is.The parasocial elements of it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, the bidirectional elements.REED: People wanna be seen and heard and reflected in the person they're speaking with.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.REED: yeah, we just ignore that. And I think, I, keep going back to Mom Bonnie's race because I'm obsessed with how they went about things. of the things that struck me the most is we're, we talk about their platform, it's being like, brought from the working class, which I, think feels true.And, maybe they did do a study, maybe free buses, grocery stores, and like freezing the rent. Did come out of some like more thorough analysis of what people wanted, but, most likely it was probably a little bit heuristic. And the way that they got past that is they did the man on the street style video and they captured a perception of their engagement with people and then ran on this platform.And I think that's kinda the brilliance of social media is that you can create these perceptions and that's the fight that we're [00:52:00] actually having with the Republicans all the time. It's not. These like actual things happening in the background. It's this like kfab WWE style perception of reality. And I do think the Mom Donny campaign actually did do those things in the background, but it also didn't matter because they were able to create this world that people like believed in. we are, we were just terrible at that. Like I just don't think the Democrats understand how to do it. And I think. Trump in particular, but now the Republicans kind of writ large and especially the advocacy media class, are able to like toy with that perceived reality. Yeah. In a way we just have not masteredSHEFFIELD: Yeah.Introducing Creator CongressSHEFFIELD: and, to that end though, I did wanna make sure we talk about your personal project creator Congress. tell us about that and what you are doing with it.REED: Yeah. last year I was seeing a lot of content coming out from primarily democratic creators or Democrat aligned creators, and I couldn't get over the fact that it felt inauthentic and it was often from creators. I actually had, I. Like pair social relationships with and enjoyed their content.And then suddenly they got involved in the Democratic stew and I was just like, I don't get this, I don't wanna share it. It doesn't feel like relatable to me. So I started just talking to people. I, my sister's a content creator on Twitch. I started doing some organizing, which is my background. It's what I do. And what I came to is that there's really a missing like organization for creators to help them. Be authentic to themselves, particularly a lot of creators were being iced out over their stance on Palestine. So I started to figure, try to figure out what does it look like to have a space where creators who are further left of the Democrats, who want to share their authentic voice and still be in politics and not be completely marginalized and to, chappo fraction faction of, the party.what does that look like? Where do they go? And I found that there were not many places and. I created Creator Congress to be [00:54:00] a bit of a home for folks in that in that in-between space and like, how do we get them political messaging? How do we help 'em with strategy? How do we engage them in the process outside of just like big tent, big party politics? I,SHEFFIELD: and, you've got several different people signed up as well to, That they're down for it,REED: yeah, we have about. I've recruited about 60 creators at this point. The followings range from like 10,000 to 3 million. like big followings, the way to smaller followings. But the, goal is to have a shared place. Um, we've been working on ways to help people get possibly healthcare and, resourced because I know that those things are really important and, it's, difficult. It's a lot harder to find funding in this space. But I'm down for the challenge. I really wanna figure out how we can help people in that. 'cause I actually think that's the future of the Democratic Party. I.SHEFFIELD: And what did the creators who were assigned up, what did they think about it all? When, you.REED: have gotten nothing but glowing feedback. People are just really excited to have a space where they are brought into strategy. Like we just had a creator brief a few weeks ago where. Instead of talking at them and feeding them staffs, I brought on a couple of experts and another creator to mc and it was just like a really like open space where people could ask questions and the content we got out of that brief was just incredible.We got, I think we ended up with 10 million views on the topic and, people interpreting in their own way. There was no top down talking points and yeah, I think we just got phenomenal feedback and I think we hope to do more of those in the future.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. yeah. 'cause ultimately, the, weird paradox of the way that Republicans and Democrats do their own politics inside is that Republicans are more democratic in a lot of ways than Democrats are.REED: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And, and, the public I think, can see that. In [00:56:00] some ways to a large degree, I think they can see it.REED: there's a supportive network, right? Where I think what we recreate in the democrat creator organizing space is a really competitive environment. One where the, top, the creator with the highest following is, actually like the most resourced. And the people with very few followers who are actually probably more trusted by their base. They're not getting any resources. They're, they had to pay for their own DNC trip, which, the RNC would never let that happen. If you have even a remotely, like large following, the RNC would've probably paid your way. But like large creators, 500,000 followers, plus were paying their own way like limited access. It's not a good system. It's like we really, we do a tiering. We're always about hierarchy. We're not welcoming. SoSHEFFIELD: Yeah.REED: figure out how to do this in a way that is not like that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. and what's the website address for it? if people,REED: creator congress.net.SHEFFIELD: okay, cool. And then, what social media platforms would you want people to follow you on?REED: Yeah. Instagram and TikTok. It's just creator dot Congress on Instagram and just creator Congress on TikTok.SHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good. Good to have you here. R.REED: Yeah, so appreciate the time. Thanks, Matt.SHEFFIELD: alright. 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 TheoryOfChange.show, where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes, and my thanks to everybody who is a paid subscribing member. Thank you very much for your support. You have unlimited access, and if you would like to become a paid subscriber, just go to Theory of change.show or you can go to patreon.com/discoverflux.And if you can't afford to subscribe right now, I understand that. But you can still help out by spreading the word of the show to your friends [00:58:00] and to your family and, sharing some of the links that we post about it on social media. That is much appreciated. And if you're watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we have a new episode.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  Politics is a battle over elections and policies, but underneath it’s really a battle over stories, the cultural myths that shape our sense of identity, power, and possibility. And few stories loom larger in the American imagination than the saga of Tupac Shakur, the rapper and actor whose influence continues to resonate across the globe nearly 30 years after his death.It’s easy to see why. The problems of poverty, racism, capitalism, and inequality are as present today as they were when Tupac and other early hip-hop musicians began telling stories that no one else would.Talking about all of this with me today is Dean Van Nguyen. He’s the author of a new biography of Tupac Shakur called “Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur” that highlights the political legacy that was lost when the emcee was gunned down in the streets of Las Vegas in 1996. While today’s rap industry has largely been absorbed by the capitalism its pioneers once resisted, the radical spirit Tupac embodied still echoes—sometimes in unexpected places.One of those places is Donald Trump’s political movement. In a bizarre turn, Trump has increasingly styled himself as a hip-hop folk hero—and, surprisingly, more than a few rappers have gone along with it. This is a conversation about symbolism, masculinity, memory, and resistance.The video of this episode 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.Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch!Related Content—A flashback look at how Donald Trump reached out to hip-hop stars to push his 2024 message —Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, and toxic gravitation: How reactionaries bond over mutual narcissism 🔒—Why the decline of the black church is helping Republicans reach new voters—Doja Cat and the lies we tell ourselves about sex and race—Many Black Americans don’t like Democrats, but they loathe Republicans even more, which disdain will prove stronger?Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:53 — Tupac’s continued global resonance09:14 — The origins of hip-hop and its commercialization11:35 — Tupac’s legacy of contradictions18:41 — The Black Panthers’ influence on Tupac’s mother23:50 — Masculinity and gender within hip-hop29:06 — Gender and sexuality in the Black Panther Party35:56 — Obama and Trump in rap39:12 — Former Panthers still have hope for the future despite Trump41:31 — Trump’s 2024 campaign reached out heavily to hip-hop artists46:22 — ‘Coolness’ as a non-political voter persuasion method50:22 — How Van Nguyen brought oral history into his book58:19 — Eazy-E, another political West Coast emcee 01:01:55 — The meanings of ‘thug life’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: And joining me now is Dean Van Nguyen. Hey, Dean. Welcome to Theory of Change.DEAN VAN NGUYEN: Thank you. Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So this book is, it's a really important book, actually, I think especially because it's connecting a lot of ideas that got started during the life of Tupac Shakur, obviously by him, but also by other people.And he's a guy that continues to remain relevant despite having been killed decades ago. And you write in the introduction of the book that you see him as America's last revolutionary figure. Tell us about that.VAN NGUYEN: I think America actually isn't a nation that tends to create these. Figures. It's been a, a stable political, system for quite a while now. So I think when you see where Tupac's icon has resonated mostly across the world, and it tends to be in countries that have histories of colonialism and colonial oppression and anti-colonial uprising such as my own country, which is Ireland and nations that have suffered brutal dictatorships and have had uprisings against that and things of that nature.So he, I think his icon has grown to, to be almost this, almost like avara figure where he. He represents [00:04:00] ideals, like to see his image ignites certain feelings within people or certain ideas within people of, revolution and resistance. And I don't think there's actually too many Americans as you could actually say that about.Yeah, I think if you got, like there was, of the, figures in the book as well who's icon, who's I comparing to a little bit is like Bob Marley. Che Guevara. So, yeah, I think I, I can't really think of anyone who's come since him that really matches that, that that symbol that he's become, side of the us.SHEFFIELD: If we expand outside of the us other non-American figures can you think of people after Tupac generally that are, that widely known and recognized as revolutionary icons?​I think he's certainly, I think, the single most recognizable icon that hip hop produced. I think maybe the other one might be Eminem, but I'm not sure that when people, recognize who m Andm is when they see him, but he, doesn't ignite the same se a set of principles that like, that Tupac does.VAN NGUYEN: S so, yeah, and I think that he's probably even eclipsed, say, Panther forebears certainly in terms of his ability to be recognized just from pictures of 'em and things like that. Like he's, I think he's more famous than Huey Newton, Bobby Seal and Eldridge Cleaver, and people like that.yeah, I, it's hard to, it's hard to think of o other, even his contemporaries really, who match him in that regard.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's right. And it's, there's a lot of reasons for that. one of them obviously is cultural fragmentation. I think that's a huge part in that. But it's also, as you say, that his music is about telling stories in a way that is. A lot more authentic compared to especially the people who came after him.Tupac's continued global resonanceSHEFFIELD: your connection as you mentioned earlier, that you're from Ireland and you had a particular interest in [00:06:00] Tupac as a kid growing up. tell us about that.VAN NGUYEN: Yeah, so I, I from a school system where I think is probably stereotypical what you might expect, a Catholics, the Catholic, Irish school system to be as in like school uniforms. I went to an all boys school. Most of the schools, I think in Ireland at the time, probably still now, I'm not sure were, single sex and.it was just, it was a very drab existence with no really extracurricular activities to speak of. So I think for us that we found and to be a, an escape or, certainly something to be interested in. For some, and for some of us gangster rap was, popular. There was another set of kids, like Kurt Cobain was the guy for them.And like for us, I think probably above everyone else it was, Tupac. He had died by the time I got interested interested in him already. But I think that even added to the mystique around him. and yeah. And I think that there's, but you, like even, I, was just talking to last weekend actually, my, I had a friend over who's from New York and is partner for the first time.And she had just been down in, I'm from Dublin and she had just been in Galway, which is another town that's on the other side of the country, but she was saying she'd seen a mural of Tupac there. and yeah, in the, book a little bit, I mentioned some of the murals that have popped up about him and there's just, there is something in the Irish psyche that seems to, like him.I, had to take out some instances in the book I've just seen anecdotally that kind of shows Irish people's affinity for him. And I think again, it just speaks to that he resonates in countries with a particular history. and I, say I go into some of those, the other nations and places like Sierra Leone and the Solomon Islands in the book as well.So, yeah, I think he was just, that was, he was just the guy for us. And in terms of probably the rapper, we most particularly, certainly some people anyway, most particularly [00:08:00] gravitate towards and certainly who, could like evoke a real sort of sense of. loyalty and, interest in maybe more so than guys like Nas and Wu-Tang Klan.We also all listen to. But yeah, tu, Tupac just seems to, stand above all the rest.SHEFFIELD: yeah, and I, think there's it, the, obviously the fact that he, died so young and so suddenly, that obviously it, put him to a higher status. But on the other hand, there were a lot of, guys who died young and didn't get anywhere near that iconic status.So it's worth thinking about him. and also the other thing about Tupac, I think that makes him stand out is that because he was there, in in the beginning of the genre, and then never. a chance to sell it. who knows whether he would've or not. It's hard to say, right? But, he didn't, and, but he was able to preserve that original ethos hip hop and rap. And so talk, talk, talk about that though. Like how rap originally was as a medium.The origins of hiphop and its commercializationVAN NGUYEN: in, in, in the book, I, had, if I saw it as there being an opportunity to do a tangential narrative on how hip hop came from radical origins like I, I go into Tupac's Black Panther parentage and his, heritage and, hip hop was born in New York on the same streets where the Panthers, hop the newspapers and had offices and it was.Just it was just slightly, just, a couple of years after their, the peak of their influence in New York. But it's, I think that it was still, it's from, it's like it's from the same streets. It's from the, conditions in which the Panthers sought [00:10:00] to, recruit and, sought to, provide relief for, in terms of the poverty that a lot of the people who lived in those areas were experiencing.oh, it hip hop was a, was it was a youth movement, really no commercial interests, at all. And I think you see as, it grows, it's the commercialization of it becomes obviously incredibly intense. And I think when you think about like original hip hop, it, came, there was various, sections to, or segments to where you had, break dancing, graffiti.These are called like the parts of the five elements that they call, they say of hip hop. But the only one I think the capitalism finds any great use for is rap music. So it becomes the dominating strand, which is why kind of rap and hip hop become, synonyms of each other really.yeah, that's, I wanted to tell that story and I think with Tupac, he, he's, he exists within obviously the commercialization of it. he was a massive selling, he was like a massive selling artist in his own lifetime. But I think in, in, it's almost in his aftermath that some, of his contemporaries, have become among the richest people in the US and they've created this billionaire class of, rap artists.There was almost this, race to see who could become hip hop's first official billionaire for a while. so yeah, as you say, it's, I. It would've been interesting to know how he would've, how he would've seen that.Tupac's legacy of contradictionsVAN NGUYEN: I, I, I tend to believe that be he would've held onto to his, Panther principles in terms of the Panthers were a, Marxist Leninist movement.he held onto a lot of those socialist principles in life, which he, spoke about in his interviews and in his songs. But, yeah, you never really know what the, indignity of aging will do to his people. But I do tend to, [00:12:00] I rather, when I consider how he would've aged, I prefer to look at his, the Panthers of his parents generation who, who never really strayed from their original principles rather than maybe some of his own contemporaries who became just, highly interested in, in, in the entertainment industry and how, kinda high, how much wealth they could accumulate from that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and, they didn't have a, an ideologyVAN NGUYEN: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: any sort, of political education on their own. it, that, that tension between capitalism the, the allure and opportunity of capitalism for people who were creating this new musical genre, it was immense.the gravitational force of that was huge. But yet at the same time they, came from an environment in which there was really no way out for a lot of black Americans who were, they were, they went to these terrible schools. the, governments wouldn't spend more money on them, or if they did, they wouldn't provide resources out of school.So kids were basically just stranded there in a lot of different ways. and it was an environment in which sports and, hip hop was the only way out, which is, and, a lot of times people who are, right wing racist will look at that and they'll mock it, but they don't understand that th that, that, that was the only way out like that was, if you don't have a, an education, how are you going to pull yourself up by your bootstraps?And like that contradiction, it was something that. The Tupac, I think, much more than a lot of other rappers really did explore that a lot in, part because of his own family [00:14:00] ideology that he was brought up with.VAN NGUYEN: Yeah. And you mentioned there, there, is these, this lasting joke. I think Dave Chappelle was one of the people who made it about, oh. Music and as you say, sports being the only, the only roots out of poverty and those jokes are, think are still made just because they seem so long lasting.And I think when I talk about the, how, hip hop becomes consumed by, capitalism. One thing I say about it is it's more so than nearly any other art form. It does capture as well the, crush of capitalism. it, it gives, I. It's probably the clear, it's consistently given the clearest dispatches of what it is to, exist in the, at the bottom of the capitalist system.And, and to be at the, say, the bottom of the sharp end of it. But I, two, I think one is, one thing is that most wrappers rappers be when they, when, trying to solve, trying to achieve upward mobility through capitalism, they, that it become, that's a core theme of rap music.And very few, certainly in the mainstream have ever put forward socialist ideas within their music or, esp like socialist principles or a socialist perspective to say that the system isn't, is set up. That it's always going to have this kind of class at the bottom who are, struggling.there are some like rap rappers like Paris and, a no name, but I think of the one, obviously the, one to every esp any sort of sost principles in his music and in his interviews that became clearly the most famous was Tupac. And I think that he, obviously, he inherited those from his mother. And, and yeah, and like he, unlike, most, he was, very, I mean he, hated wealth inequality as one of the real that people always talk about the duality of Tupac or the contradictions of his, music and how he [00:16:00] could, put forward one set of ideas and then maybe contradict himself within, a couple of tracks later.But if you look at. That is hatred. He had a wealth inequality. it's one of the real consistencies of his life. And he always maintained that it wasn't right for the rich to have so much and the poor, to have so little. yeah, and I'd say it would've been, it would've been interesting to that he hopefully would've, he would've kept those had he had, he died.But I tend to believe he, he would, like even he was planning his own company around the time of his death, but within that he had like plans for like, school programs. And I think he wanted to have a kinda, an egalitarian slant to it. so yeah, was, very in tuned with that, side of America, I think.And that's who he saw. I think as his base, as his people, like his, he saw the people at, the bottom of the capitalist crush being, those, he, most wanted to reach and speak to.SHEFFIELD: yeah. and also yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that. I was actually gonna bring that up. yeah. and I guess, in some ways, you, mentioned No Name, like she's in, some ways trying to do some of that herself actually with community centers that she is. Involved with in trying to help get started? do is that a thing you followed at all? notVAN NGUYEN: Yeah, like I've generally followed her career and I know for example, it's very interesting, which I think she passed on doing a song for the and the Black Messiah because she saw as downplaying the actual ideology of the Panthers. And I think that is actually a, it's funny because the Panthers are the most lasting from that era of, revolutionaries.I think they're the best remembered more so than say, the Weather [00:18:00] underground or the Black Liberation Army that came in their wake. But they, their ideology tends to be very reduced to the lowest terms as people just consider them. Like a group who were only interested in, killing Whitey.But like that they were, I say they were Marxist Leninist. They didn't see white people as such as their oppressors. They saw the capitalist class, their oppressors, and they would've included the black capitalist class within that. that's why they were able to ally with groups like the Weather Underground, who were all majority white, if not all white.That's what like, they were encouraged the White Panther Party in, Ann Arbor to, establish itself. And that was another thing.The Black Panthers' influence on Tupac's motherVAN NGUYEN: I think I, I found an opportunity to do with the book because if I was gonna do a political history, it was obviously important that I chart it his mother's life that.Who would, that, who ultimately both influenced his, ideology, but I think gave his, icon a sense of historic continuity where even if you have very limited knowledge of Tupac's life, that he came Black Panthers. So I really wanted to actually show readers who, the Panthers were and how there was more to them than, the fists in the air.And they were actually this intellectual movement and were, yeah, they like Huey Newton, I think was a, a very trenchant political thinker and writer. and yeah, a lot of that tends, to get forgotten.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it does. And, the other thing about them, I think that is. Different from, let's say, today's radical left traditions by and large, or at least ones with popular audience. like a lot of the popular leftist content creators of today, they don't, actually build anything. A lot of these modern day leftist personalities or number one, they don't write anything. They just talk on YouTube, [00:20:00] primarily. then number two is that don't build anything. So where, and that's a huge contrast with what. The Panthers were doing to try to create a lot of different local groups, chapters and, things like that.And within, the book also, you talk about some of the connections that they had within the, with the, Irish Republican army and some of the people who were trying to fight against the, British, domination and, subjugation of Ireland. You wanna talk about that?VAN NGUYEN: Sure. yeah, just, to pick up on your first point there. And I, think that's why the Panthers were seen as such a threat, in the minds of j Edgar Hoover and, other people in power, because not only did they. Voice socialist principles, but they put them into action, right? They set up the school breakfast program, which was, it was a free to the community where parents could bring their children to make sure that they had a decent breakfast before they went to school.Because, I'm sure every study has shown this, if not, before. Then since that children who, if who aren't hungry are obviously going to more, able to perform in, classrooms. they put on like a free ambulance service for, their communities. Yeah. Like, it's what, it's still such a big issue in the US in terms of he healthcare that's affordable and, accessible.And so they were putting in real time programs that actually helped people, in a very real and tangible way. And I think that's what scared the establishment so much that they did, Viciously go out and to crush them in, this kind of very deliberate, clandestine way.And, unfortunately, I don't think any group could have stood up the, tyranny that was, put on them by Hoover and others. but yeah. You, mentioned they did. Yeah. They had, they, I say they had links to. They were in [00:22:00] solidarity with movements all around the world who they saw as, in, in league with theirs.And, they had the Irish Republican movement in Ireland was, one of them. And there's, always been these between Irish freedom fighters and, like Black American freedom fighters as well. So it, that's just the one, example of, how they come together and like the Irish Civil Rights Movement the, sixties, it, took a lot of its cues from, the Civil Rights movement in, the US as well.And I think that's what I was getting at earlier in terms of, there's something in the Irish psyche, I think that. That Tupac appeals to, and the fact that I think he died violently is part of that. Because that's something that happened to all of Ireland's revolutionary leaders. the leaders of 1916 rising.they all were, they're all killed violently. so yeah, I think that's why you see him turn up in, in murals and and memes like through meme culture guy, like Irish kids have been trying like solidifying those kind of bonds as well between two PAC and Ireland.So, yeah, it was, I think it was, in that tradition and for me, I suppose as an, Irish person, that's why it was why I wanted to make it part of the prologue of the book just to declare my, my my, my kind of status within, the, within as a person con considering Tupac and, Yeah, I think it was, made me feel that I was well placed to talk about him as, a global icon. As as, much as I, as a man.Masculinity and gender within hiphopSHEFFIELD: Yeah. and, one of the other, I think, reasons why hip hop as a genre, besides the fact that it was very innovative and different, [00:24:00] from, the other musical forms that had preceded it, that was made it appealing to a lot of people was that that it, ex early hip hop really did explore a lot of themes of, what it meant to be a man. In a way that other genres really even now, still don't do. and it's, significant because that those topics, really are politically extremely relevant now. And, and I think that's part of what gives early hip hop, especially Tupac, a lot of the continued relevance was this tension between, not wanting to be controlled or dominated, but also as, Tupac was trying it. And, talk about his contradictions after this, but, like his aspirational idea of saying that, look, yes, I want to be in control of myself and set my own destiny, but I understand that, I'm part of a community and that I'm not gonna be just a nihilist out for money.VAN NGUYEN: Yeah. as I say, I think that he saw himself as, in league with the go, the global proletariat. And, that was, I think he said specifically in, in an interview like, as long as I had, it doesn't matter about the authorities. this was, he was at the time experiencing a lot different court cases.I think he says, as long as I have the, hearts and the minds of the people, then, I'm always going to be. Important or relevant or, I'm not quite, I'm, paraphrasing. I'm not quite sure what word he used there, but that was his, that was, I think, a part of his outlook. And again, I think it just came from his, mother's generation.And, it's the off reference and off, spoken slogan of power to the people, he, came from that stock. So yeah. and I think that it's one of the things that, [00:26:00] that sets him apart. It's certainly from his contemporaries. And yeah, I think that what's, interesting as well towards the end of his life, because undeniably like, when you look at like his all eyes on the album, it's, it moves away from the earlier socially conscious stuff that he made of his, the, more famous socially conscious music like Brenda's got a baby and, Keep your head up and stuff like that.There are, those are earlier songs. He, definitely moved towards this more like Hollywood blockbuster gangster rap. Sound, but when you get to Machiavelli, which is the last album he completed in his life, it, it was released after he died. But, it was his, he, finished the album. So it was his, vision of it.much more, I think, returning to his roots where he very specifically shouts out people. Some of his mother, Afeni, Shakur's comrades, people like Seko Odinga Jamal Joseph Matula Shakur, I think he mentions as well. yeah, he, I think he, he died while, interested in, reigniting those, values that he always had when, but as we'd say, he, was very malleable.And I think he had a sometimes to, often I'd say to his detriment, this tendency to this kind of chameleon tendency to absorb the people that were around him. And often he wasn't surrounded with the best people. most famously I would say that Suge Knight was probably not for Tupac. The man, he was not the, best figure to be in his life at the time.Obviously for Tupac, the artist, it proved that during his period on death row, he created some of his best music. But but yeah, I think, but then like when we, talk about him as, an icon as well, like the, I think it's the, it, is those contradictions that malleability that appeals to people how he can, he serves so many different roles for [00:28:00] different people.And if you talk rebel Soldiers who've fought in, places like Sierra Leone, I like one of, I think one of the things that they identify with was. Some, it was, the fact that he was seen as being able to look after himself, that he was, a lot of these, like we're talking about the child soldiers of Sierra Leone who really embraced him.A lot of them had been in jail and they, that was one of the reasons that they identified Tupac as well. So he had been in jail. So I think it, it is, it's like this kind of perfect recipe, that this symbol came to be. And with the book, I, think one of the things I did want to do is, not only discover of how that came to be, but also to, to, delve into the man too and, just and like the Panthers, as we were saying, he, I think the further we would get away from Tupac's death, the more, the fear is that his, that he can become just his, the symbol can start to overwhelm the man.And he his icon can be, as flat as, the posters that people of him hang on the wall. so yeah, that was also part of the, I think the, appeal to me of, to do a project like this.Gender and sexuality in the Black Panther PartySHEFFIELD: On the question of masculinity and hip hop culture, and especially for Tupac, as you note in the book that for the Black Panthers. It, there was, Newton. He was, very known as somebody who was hyper masculine. But later in his life he a lot of what he had been inculcated to believe about all of that stuff, and actually became a supporter of, gay liberation and made that a pretty big focus for, the Black Panthers.That's something that I think that, lost in the, historical mist, and you bring that out a bit.VAN NGUYEN: it, goes to what I was saying, I think about the Panthers being and, being, simplified. But one of the things that does [00:30:00] is forgotten is that a huge amount of the rank and file members were women. And it was made clear in Panther doctrine that women were not there to service the Revolutionary men.They were there as comrades in arms, which was, I think, a real departure from the, ideology of Newton's and Seal's Hero, Malcolm X, who was relatively socially conservative on, women. so, that was quite at the time. Now, what's I think interesting as well is that while All Panther men, I think, would've signed up for that and they would've.Believed in it. For the most part. it's very, it is still, it's difficult for men to completely shed themselves of the misogyny that they've been raised in. And I'm not just talking about that era of, men in America. I'm talking about to this day, and I'm talking about myself in that as well.Whereas you're as, a man, I, was raised a society which is inherently, misogynistic. So once you reckon with that, it's, I think it's a lifelong process to, to rid yourself of those impulses and those, ideas as much as as much as you wish to. it's still, a process.So I think the pan, the male Panthers at the time were probably going through that. And so the women had, it really was a struggle within a struggle for them in terms of they were part of the greater liberation movement for, black people in America. But they were also within a, kind of a movement as well.It. Being seen as, equals to the, men in the party. And I think they were, among the, I say 'cause they were made up so much of the rank of file, they, took on a huge proportion of, things like the, breakfast clubs, the Children's Respect Club, but also, and about in the book, like Afeni Shakur, they were also [00:32:00] willing to be there for some of the more difficult moments.And by Afeni Shakur herself told a story in, about how she w was willing to be take part in, in an armed robbery, which is been my theorized by some of the journalists that the Panthers would sometimes do appropriations, these, yeah, these missions of appropriation to help fund them.And she wanted to be a part of that. So she, wasn't going to shy away from that element of being a revolutionary either. yeah, I think it was, yeah. Good. It was a good moment. It was a good opportunity in the book for me to talk about that, element of the Panther history and, the progress, the progressive nature of the Panthers in terms of gender ideology or gender equality rather. And, also difficulty it was in putting it into practice and how it, it, wasn't executed perfectly.SHEFFIELD: Just. Going back to the idea of gay liberation within the Black Panther Party that, you know, the fact that many of the member, or some of the most prominent members, or the inner circle of the members were women who were bisexual or lesbian, also provided a direct way of, Newton, as you note in the Book of Newton, realizing that, he needed to reconsider this.And, that was something that was a big, huge departure from Malcolm X and lot of the other, black leftist or left wing leaders more broadly irrespective of race at that, especially at that time.VAN NGUYEN: yeah. like Newton wanted gender equality as part of the Panther ethos. He was also a big supporter of the Gay Liberation Movement at that time. and, he, Wrote openly about how, similarly to, like, how I was saying, how men need to confront the kind of, the mis the misogyny that's been ingrained in them through society and through, their upbringings.Newton was open that about him having to attack and confront the [00:34:00] homophobia that he had previously and the homophobia attitudes that he was raised, to, experience. So, yeah, again, that was, a quite progressive element of the Panthers at that time.And, again, it's just part of, I think about how Newton and the Panthers general just saw themselves in comrade ship with all the, liberation movements around the world. And, for them, gay liberation and black liberation weren't to be decouples. They were one and the same.SHEFFIELD: yeah. And, you you have that, as, that's the title of the book is Notes for my Comrades. that's it's, I think that a lot of people who might have more leftist economic viewpoints, there's a, they, there's a temptation for a lot of them to think, we can't, we should never focus on any of these other identity politics issues because we should just focus on the economy and people's needs with that. But that's really not what the people who, you know, who they purport to admire were going forward. Like they were trying to do the full spectrum and, be there for all the comrades as, you were saying.VAN NGUYEN: Definitely, and the title it comes directly from a, Tupac lyric. But it's from that last album, Machiavelli, I was talking about, from a a song called Blasphemy. But again, I think it, the lyric itself spoke to that period of his life, Tupac was wanting to reengage with those roots.And he said, I, have words from my comrades, I think that he was speaking not just to that era of, activists who I, mentioned earlier, he actually names drops, say the global, the global proletariat who he saw himself as is as one of, and, in comradeship with.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Obama and Trump in hip hop cultureSHEFFIELD: and, I mean there's, two people I think that [00:36:00] perhaps could be. Regarded as at least at one point in their lives, as similarly iconic. And, but they're not musical people, and that is, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. both of them became universally recognizable. And, it's notable that they both also played a, a and obviously Tupac wasn't really talking about either one of them.But on the other hand, they, I think they both represent some sense this these kind of dual or the conflicts that existed hip hop, even in its earliest days.And you talk about, Obama in that context as a, the first black president, but also Donald Trump, as a, I think maybe a lot of people have forgotten, but the, as you talk about in the book that, Trump, in the mid, early to mid two thousands, he was, name checked quite a bit and got a lot of respect and, which, doesn't red down well to the people who were giving it.VAN NGUYEN: Yeah, it's, funny because Obama has sometimes been referenced as the first hip hop president which I, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Although, but Trump, he was actually in the nineties, he was regularly name dropped songs. In rap songs because he was seen as this, figure of big business and of, business ingenuity and of flashiness.So like he even, I think he appears on a Method Man album as a, skit as well. So he was happy to embrace that. And he was, he was a New Yorker, obviously, which was from the birthplace of hip hop too. he was pretty much well liked in, I think in hip hop circles before he entered politics, except the one person who called him out was Tupac in an interview, not so much Trump the man, but he called out just the [00:38:00] idea of the, a mega, the mega rich, to hit to Tupac. Trump symbolized everything that was wrong with the way wealth is distributed in the us. say, how can a private individual own planes when parents can't provide.Meals for their children in the same country. so yeah. And so it's, funny to me as well, that Tupac is right there as well. I almost if the birth of, I would say, which is, I dunno if this is simplified and some, it's not my, this is not an original idea of mine, but I, do find it quite, appealing and quite neat that it's often said that Trump decided he wa he wanted to run, be president when Obama mocked him during that speech, And one of the things that I think Obama was poking fun at him was he was. he was going to return to being, to, to being this kind of conspiracy theorist. And one of the things he said was like, who shot Biggie in Tupac? So it's just funny that Tupac's name was mentioned during what is sometimes considered the genesis of Trump.The, person, or sorry, Trump the politician.Former Panthers still have hope for the future despite TrumpVAN NGUYEN: I think in initially Trumpism wasn't as big of a concern in the book, but then the. The reelection happened. which was actually quite near the end of when I was finished finishing, but it became a little bit more pertinent.But I, one of the things I, think I wanted to get across in it was how I noticed that upon the second election that Amer American progressives and the Democrats and anyone really, left of that there was this desperation, this, defeatist nature where it was very different to the feeling of when he was elected the first time, when it was very much okay, the resistance starts now.And it was just like everyone was, you had this, all these tech billionaires just lining up to just, worship them and, to just, bend the knee and declare [00:40:00] their loyalty and the way, which is, it's actually, it's good to see that recently of things like the No Kings, protests have been more encouraging.But I, wanted, I think to get across in the book that panther, the generation of Panthers who I had been talking to and, telling their story. I, they, I had most that generation, like sixties and seventies revolutionaries. I had asked them some sort of variation of the question like, are you, do you still think the revolution is coming?And they all, they like to a man, they all said to a man to and to a woman, they all said yes. And I, I dunno if they are like just really, optimistic or they wouldn't admit, want to admit not being, but was I think, heartening to see that even they who've lived from everything from, as I say, be suffering from at the hands of the, of their own government true now to this dangerous new reactionary form of politics in the form of Trumpism.That they maintain their belief and they've never strayed from the. Their kind of core values and they, I think they book that trend or that idea that, the older you get, the more pragma, the more, pragmatism you start to show and the more to the center you kind of drift, but they've never given up hope.And I, if there's one hopefully lesson in there, maybe for some people in the book, it's that, not to, stop believing.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and and this ha happened after the book was already, in print.Trump's 2024 campaign reached out heavily to hiphop performersSHEFFIELD: But is the case that leading up to the 2024 election, you did have several different rappers come out in favor of Donald Trump. And, now one of them, rolled it back later.So Sexy red was infamous for, supporting Trump for a while. And then she rolled it back once, the, once Roe versus Wade was overturned. there, there were, Lil Wayne went and with, PO [00:42:00] posted a picture with Trump and even Snoop Dogg said, he had no problem with Trump. So there, there, is something, like the, Trump people. They very clearly were trying to become, le to, leverage a lot of these hip hop legends to improve his standing among black Americans, and in fact, all of the most reliable pulling analysts. pulling analyses have showed that Trump did in fact increase his percentage pretty, significantly among both black women and black men, and also Hispanic men as well. depending on the poll you look at, he got the majority of Hispanic men to vote for him. So there's, and, and you talk about in the book, the, about the film Scarface and how central it became to a lot of, hip hop iconography and lyrics. They, the Trump people also tried to do that with his mugshot, like they tried to, make him into a Chi Guevara type figure. and I think that's one of the most perverse and awful things that, they've essentially tried to turn Donald Trump into Tupac. I think that's actually what they've done.And for a lot of people. They really do see that. Like they actually think of Trump as the inheritor of Tupac, which I know it sounds absurd delusional to you, probably, but I think that's the reality that a lot of people are looking at.VAN NGUYEN: like I, I, Did see online somebody Photoshopping a maga hat onto Tupac, and I think I said that I have the cure for that with this book. But, yeah, like I, I think it did irritate me when I saw, the photograph of trumpet, his fist in the air and, the, kind of the [00:44:00] maga movement seizing on it.Because like for me, or I think the fist in the air is not for people like Trump. It's for the, it's for the left, it's for the proletariat, it's for the revolutionaries who, who fight for equality and justice from the left. So that was irritating to me. But I think you're right as well about it's funny how the, some of the rappers have started to snap into line because in, in the book I did mention how, I can't remember the wording I used, but it was basically how any, no.After being generally embracing of Trump in the nineties, once, his first presidential run kicked off and. And that he started attacking, Mexican Americans and people like that. he became persona non grata amongst rappers. But I think since I finished the, book, I have started to notice, yeah, there's, there is this reversal now, or it's not quite a reversal maybe, but as you say, like they, they're starting to one by one fall into line a little bit.And again, I think it's just part of this just desperation. And I wish I get, it's, hard, it's easier for the psyche sometimes to, accept it or to try to convince yourself that, Trumpism isn't inherently, a, fascist right wing, reactionary movement.And to try and, try to see it as being somewhat normal just so you can live your life. But, but yes, say it's, encouraging to see at least as some of The, the pushback to, the ICE raids and things like that that are going on.And I think that in, hopefully in the, there's, in the book there's maybe lessons for the modern left in, terms of of learning about the history of movement of the, of radical leftist groups movements the importance of solidarity [00:46:00] and the importance. and I think the, idea as well that, no revolutionary actions or protests or any sort of, movement or any sort of activism is worth doing.And it's never wasted, no matter how desperate the situation currently feels.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.'Coolness' as a non-political voter persuasion methodSHEFFIELD: and it's interesting, there was a study that just came out on this point that, I, think that a lot of Trump opponents, they really haven't figured out he has cultural cache and, that is why many people support him, and they don't even know what his PO policy positions are. And so so there's a study that just came out, the New York Times has a piece on that they we're recording this, said that they, that was a study across different regions of the world, 12 different countries. And, they asked people, what is, what does cool mean? And there was almost remarkable unity.And, it was the attributes that a cool person is said to have is that they're extroverted, they're hedonistic powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous. And that's pretty much the image that Donald Trump projects of himself. And, obviously he has a lot of other that make him repel it and, authoritarian to people who actually know what he's about. if you don't know what you know his positions are or the things that he's done, just see those images and and for people who wanna oppose him effectively, you've gotta get into the culture and, project something in a similar way if you, wanna stop this movement, I think.VAN NGUYEN: yeah. And that's, that seems like a bizarre actually definition cool. but yeah. Yeah. He's, [00:48:00] he, it's say it's been, he, it's strange now to see as well that did see the democrats who've seemed to have settled on the idea of defeating MAGA is to almost be MAGA light and I am, again, it's encouraging to see the recent election there in New York or the, mayoral sorry. and but to see that there that charismatic politician can come through with good ideas that appeal to people, and it's always, it's, something that Penny just never seems to drop sometimes with Democrats that it's actually policy that, that is going, that winds over, is going to win over voters and, ensuring that your policies are gonna work for, working class people or for people who areSHEFFIELD: But you gotta do it in a way that people will find entertaining and can break through all the noise of theirVAN NGUYEN: Yeah. And the, pageantry of politics as well. which is a whole other, sphere. but, yeah, and I say I think that with The, the book in particular, and it was for me, a this ability, I think, to tell this kind of 50, 60 year history of, American radical politics and resistance and activism.So it, it goes up to the, the Black Lives Matter movement and how they have hugged Tupac's icon so closely. And he's almost I think this perfect through point because like you think of a song like Changes, which became a real Black Lives Matter anthem. And he specifically, invokes the name of Huey Newton in that so it's like a song that was recorded in the nineties that drew inspiration from the radicals of the sixties and then becomes an anthem in the 2010s, 2020s.so yeah, [00:50:00] he, I think that was one of the, things of the book was to try to, Was to, bring it into the contemporary and to, and the, modern political temperature, or sorry, climate that the US finds itself in, which is, easy, so volatile. It's changed even so much, even since I, finished the bulk of the book.How Van Nguyen brought oral history into booksSHEFFIELD: And in terms of, so your technique with the book here, like You I, the other thing that's, that I, think is really notable is that you are telling the, you talk to a lot of the people who were personally involved, and these are people that. journalist, as far as I can tell, really talks to them all that much.except for, in kind of a superficial way. But you were actually talking to them about, about their ideas and what they thought about things other than, oh, tell me what was he like as a kid? What was his favorite, ice creamer, whatever. And that's, that's the kind of important entertainment journalism that I think we need so much more of rather than just this bullshit sucking up to people. That's what is the difference between art and entertainment, I would say, is that, the lyrics actually mean something. They weren't written by a committee and they tell a story about shit that matters.VAN NGUYEN: I, I think one, one of the things that was, important to me to do with the book was even though it's a political history and as I mentioned it, it's this 50, 60 year history of, radical American politics, but it's also a biography of Tupac. if you don't know much about his life, you should come away with a good knowledge of the story.But I wanted to do whatever I could to differentiate it from other tellings of the story. And I was willing to, I did dozens of interviews for it, but I was willing to talk to anyone, but I was particularly to keen to talk to people whose stories hadn't been heard as much. So rather, if you watch documentaries on Tupac, you'll often see some of the same faces.which was cool. And I, talked to [00:52:00] some, people who talk about it regularly as well, but I found that, yeah, some of the best sources were people you actually don't. Don't speak to or don't speak on him as much as maybe others. And I say talking to the, radicals of the sixties and seventies was very, re rewarding.And I think they, I was really honored of how candid they were with me and, yeah, it was, I it was yeah, just, tr trying to be, I think it was not a lot of traditional just muck wreaking journalism in it as well of kicking over stones and seeing who I could find that was adjacent to this story.and even like things that I completely, I didn't expect for. So for example, I visited the, spot where Tupac was shot in Vegas. And, I was talking to the taxi driver who was taking me down and He had actually been working that night. He was, I think he was a waiter at the time, and he was driving to his shift and he passed the scene of the shooting.And he, was telling me how he noticed it was unusual that there was only one detective car there, but he started repeating then all these stories or all these theories probably some of them unsubstantiated. But when you, talk to someone who's been in Vegas for so long like that and you, really learn that Tupac has become part of Vegas lore now.he's, almost, he's you think about the icon iconography of, Vegas, you think ex people like Elvis and Sinatra and stuff and is there with them now I think as well on the basis that was, there and just, yeah, as he's speaking to a text driver, which was completely unplanned and you realize again, just the.The size of the man's meaning, and, his importance that he just, he evokes these, the, these, sentiments and these, conversations that do happen around them at all, all the time. [00:54:00] So, yeah, it was, the research was definitely very, of the more rewarding aspects of it.And it's, it was, it's it's a really interesting story as well, just as a writer to, to get into with interesting characters. like Suge Knight and, like people like Matula Shakur, who was his, stepfather who's a kinda a character in the book to, get into them.So yeah, it was, I say ultimately very rewarding of a project to, to undertake.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and speaking of should Knight, he's been vocal lately in the media. He's resurfaced as a commentator on the trial of, Sean Puffy Combs. And I, I, think, Combs is, really a, the perfect example of just how corrupted hip hop later became.And obviously we're seeing a lot of that in the trial with his, and criminality, but all of that was on display. who he was as a person I thought was always visible. Well before the trial, this guy, was a, is a piece of shit. And anybody could see that. and but, anyway, so Suge Knight's come out and trying to, he's calling on other of the, of his contemporaries from, the early days of the nineties and telling people to come out and he's saying, look, they're not, they're not doing it.Because they're afraid of not, they're not afraid that they'll get hurt, but they're afraid that it might compromise their, wallets.VAN NGUYEN: Yeah, and I think it's because it's probably easy to forget now that, Suge Knight was probably the epitome of, the guy who saw hip hop as being its ability to achieve it, mobility and up to the, real 1% class through the entertainment industry. And as much is [00:56:00] critical of the entertainment, like the kind of the capitalist nature of it.Which I am, it's, I suppose it, it is, it's, you have to acknowledge as well that this. Era of, label owners of hip hop label owners. They were motivated as well to not be like the, guys like not for the industry to, to, change from the era of the sixties and, earlier when black talents did not get the enough of the pie that they deserved and that it, they weren't part of the class of like CEOs and, owners.so like that they were motivated by that as well. I think so. But yeah, sugar Knight was, certainly one of those guys and, but unfortunately his, for him, his, I think his, nature of his business practices ended up getting the better of him. And like he, he was, he was unable to transition into a person like Jay-Z who became obviously a highly mainstream figure, but.Yeah, I'm not even sure. I think like with, I think with Jay-Z and it's, sometimes it's, easy to forget that he was part of Tupac's, he was a contemporary of Tupac, because he seems so much more of the 21st century. But, I think that with people like him and obviously Dr.Dre, who, was obviously famously collaborator of Tupac I think I, I think for them probably those East Coast, west Coast Wars wa when Tupac and Biggie were killed was probably a, moment for them when they realized like, okay, we've, this has been good. Like the East Coast, west Good Wars was good for business there for a while, but we can't keep doing this.Like we can't, we just lost two of our most talented artists. if we keep going, this is just unsustainable. And I think that's when really in, in the wake of Tupac and Big's death, you do see that, that. [00:58:00] That That kind of as I, called them earlier, like this, billionaire class of hip hop mogul starts to, really develop.and they were a couple of the guys who were really savvy and, able to, take advantage of that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Eazy-E's legacy in hip hopSHEFFIELD: and one figure who I think also was enormously influenced. Mitchell in the early days that died very young as well. but not from gun violence was the Eazy-E And, he I, think in, I, he, you could say perhaps that, oh, he got sour grapes 'cause he got left out. But in some sense I think he did see where things were going. And, he talked about it in, in some of his, in his final work. you wanted to talk about ECE in, in, this context.VAN NGUYEN: Yeah, I say he was one of the guys who's probably well poised to, to become more powerful than He was even in what we consider like now, his heyday and, he's, obviously a very important figure in, the history of, hip hop. And again, he was another interesting character in the book.Book. He's not super central to the plot or anything, but it's, he, when you, look at that era and say there's these, all these stories of how, Suge Knight managed to get Dr. Dre out of his contract. And it's, all it's, all so dramatic and there's almost like a Shakespearean aspect to it, I think. But yeah, unfortunately, yeah, the Eazy-E was certainly one of the, real tragedies of hip hop to, to have lost him when, he was lost. he was a very, very, a very shrewd man, like a very savvy business operator. And I actually think that. Probably one of the, lasting influences he had on that, [01:00:00] on, on, Tupac and at least that generation was, it was easy.Who really popularized, I dunno if he, was the first one to say it, but I think he probably popularized it more than anyone was the idea of the, studio gangster, he called him. So this was during, when he was beefing with Dr. Dre and he dubbed Dre, a studio gangster just to call out his, actual credentials.And I think that really establishes this idea that if you wanna be a gangster rapper, your connections and your actions and, your, ethos and your life has to be legit. or else you're just like this fake. And that's. Probably a powerful thing to happened to Tupac or that Tupac heard, because Tupac was he was, he came from art school, like he was an actor.him, I think playing the role of, a gangster would've been no problem. And in the way we've probably seen guys like, Rick Ross do in the years after more shamelessly. But that wasn't the temperature of the mid nineties in, hip hop. And that, easy was one of the ones who set that temperature.And people liked Tupac, of course felt that they had to, had to be consumed by the culture. And I, Tupac wasn't from la he moved to LA during the, real height of when, Crips and Bloods were really s. Becoming known all across the world as exemplifying gang culture and gang violence.And said earlier, he was, he had this chameleon quality to him where he tended to absorb the characteristics of those around him. So think we're talking about easy in relation to this story that's probably in indirectly one of the real lasting legacies he had on the Tupac story. And really the story of the east coast, west coast wars and gangster rap in general where yeah, you, if you wanted to be a part of it, you, actually had to be legit or else they were gonna call you out as, some sort of fake,The meaning of 'thug life'SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I guess, to that end let's, there, [01:02:00] the, slogan or I guess the phrase that, that was very associated with Tupac the term thug life. it's, I think nowadays, at this long juncture, far removed, a lot of people have no idea that was actually an acronym. and that he was trying to have it mean something else than just what it meant on the surface. And I, there's a little bit of an echo perhaps in the slogan of Black Lives Matter. I think in that, it's a, it has a surface meaning, which is not correct. and so it, if you, but you have to know the context.And if you don't know the context, then the meaning is laws. Can you talk about that?VAN NGUYEN: Yeah, I think it feeds into what I was saying earlier about. Tupac being his what? icon being somewhat flattened. And I think that thug life is, a real part of that, where it's, he's obviously very associated with the, that expression. If you look at t-shirts, like so many Tupac t-shirts would have thug life written on them.But it, I think that it's become a very surface level idea just in terms of you live your life by what I guess we would consider to be thuggish, Or like you see those that internet mean that was happening for a while where someone would say something silly, confrontational.And the, a lot of the gangster rap music plays and tug life appears on the screen and these sunglasses appear on them and stuff like that. And I think that just exemplifies how, surface level has become. But Thug Life's a Tupac. I had a few different meanings, but one of its. Of its meanings.It was a manifesto that he developed I believe with his, stepbrother rem and his stepfather Matco and maybe Jamal Joseph as well. It's, some of the reports are a bit murky, but he, it was a, it was what he considered like a code of conduct for LA's gangs. So [01:04:00] I think at the time when, I think the, gang culture around South Central LA in particular was really eroding the social fabric for everyone.He saw this, code of conduct that he is written as something to alleviate that, those problems. And it, was, I think it was really heavily based on, in, in a, like a real politic where it was. Things like, it, it wasn't advocating the complete putting down of guns. 'cause I think Tupac probably acknowledged that wasn't gonna happen.But if you felt, if you, if you put a set of morals on it or a set of rules, it could alleviate some of the, worst aspects of it. and I put it together in, the book with the, Watts truce, which was a pro, which was probably a much more effective movement in terms of reducing the amount of gang violence because it was more effective because it was developed by former gang members who a lot more cachet in the area than Tupac was a bit of an outsider.But I think just by reading it and just by his, desires it, to, to, develop this code of conduct, I think it shows some something of his ideology at that time. And and yeah, I think he. He, evolved then he used it as a bit of a catchall term too. And I think that there was a bit of, I think, retaking back that word tug.And it's if you're going to continuously call me a tug, I'm gonna embrace that term and I'm going, I'm gonna change it. I'm gonna, it in the way I want to interpret it. So, yeah, I think if you're looking at that period of his life, kind of 92 ish, I think it really signifies his, thought process at that time.And that's why it was, I guess I couldn't really do a political history of the book without really trying to unpack what tug life meant. And again, just, for hopefully the purposes of maybe alleviating the, fact that it's become, if, not misunderstood, then certainly reduced to the lowest terms.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, [01:06:00] there's just a lot of, good stuff in the book here. I encourage everybody to check it out. people who want to keep up with you, Dean, what's your, recommendations for that.VAN NGUYEN: like I'm on all the, most of the, social medias you get on Instagram. I am, I do still have a Twitter account. I don't really, I'm trying not to use it less. I'm, I, like Blue Sky. It's, that's, I've migrated a little bit more over there. yeah, I'm still on Facebook, yeah, you can reach out to me on, those platforms and, and yeah, that's, probably the best.SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. All right. thanks for being here, Dean.VAN NGUYEN: Thank you the interesting conversation. 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  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 ContentAncient Greek Skepticism is surprisingly relevant in the social media ageInside the demon-haunted world of Christian fundamentalismAuthoritarian epistemology is as old as humanity itself 🔒The forgotten story of how the “religious left” birthed American superpowerIn the digital age, reactionary Catholicism is making a comebackAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:53 — Tupac’s continued global resonance09:14 — The origins of hip-hop and its commercialization11:35 — Tupac’s legacy of contradictions18:41 — The Black Panthers’ influence on Tupac’s mother23:50 — Masculinity and gender within hip-hop29:06 — Gender and sexuality in the Black Panther Party35:56 — Obama and Trump in rap39:12 — Former Panthers still have hope for the future despite Trump41:31 — Trump’s 2024 campaign reached out heavily to hip-hop artists46:22 — ‘Coolness’ as a non-political voter persuasion method50:22 — How Van Nguyen brought oral history into his book58:19 — Eazy-E, another political West Coast emcee 01:01:55 — The meanings of ‘thug life’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 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