Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

Episode SummaryLess than five years ago, studying online rumors and misinformation wasn’t a controversial job. It most definitely is now, however, thanks to a powerful group of reactionary politicians and activists who have realized that improving the quality of our political discourse has a negative effect on their electoral chances. We now live in a social media environment in which everything from harmless speculation to flagrant lying isn’t just permissible, it’s encouraged—especially on X, the badly disfigured website formerly known as Twitter.My guest in today’s episode, Renee DiResta, saw all of this happen in real time, not just to the public discourse, but to herself as well after she became the target of a coordinated smear campaign against the work that she and her colleagues at the Stanford Internet Observatory were doing to study and counteract internet falsehoods. That was simply intolerable for Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican congressman who argues that organizations seeking to improve information quality are really a “censorship industrial complex.”Under significant congressional and legal duress, SIO was largely dissolved in June, a significant victory for online propagandists. Beyond their success at effectively censoring a private organization they despised, Jordan and his allies have also intimidated other universities and government agencies that might dare to document and expose online falsehoods.Even if Jordan and his allies had not succeeded against SIO, however, it’s critical to understand that misinformation wouldn’t exist if people did not want to believe it, and that politicized falsehoods were common long before the internet became popular. Understanding the history of propaganda and why it’s effective is the focus of DiResta’s new book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, and it’s the focus of our discussion in this episode.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio 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 Content* Why misinformation works and what to do about it* Renee DiResta’s previous appearance on Theory of Change* How and why Republican elites are re-creating the 1980s “Satanic Panic”* Big Tobacco pioneered the tactics used by social media misinformation creators* Right-wingers depend on disinformation and deception because their beliefs cannot win otherwise* Why people with authoritarian political views think differently from others* How a Christian political blogger inadvertently documented his own radicalization* The economics of disinformation make it profitable and powerfulAudio Chapters0:00 — Introduction03:58 — How small groups of dedicated extremists leverage social media algorithms09:43 — “If you make it trend, you make it true”13:32 — False or misleading information can no longer be quarantined21:31 — Why social influencer culture has merged so well with right-wing media culture26:50 — America never had a '“shared reality” that we can return to30:05 — Reactionaries have figured out that information quality standards are harmful to their factual claims32:22 — Republicans have decided to completely boycott all information quality discussions40:04 — Douglas Mackey and what trolls do43:30 — How Elon Musk and Jim Jordan smeared anti-disinformation researchers51:10 — Conspiracy theories don't have to make sense because the goal is to create doubt53:40 — The desperate need for a “pro-reality” coalition of philanthropists and activists58:30 — Proctor and Gamble, one of the earliest victims of disinformation01:01:00 — The covid lab leak hypothesis and how content moderation can be excessive01:13:07 — JD Vance couch joke illustrates real differences between left and right political ecosystems01:19:26 — Why transparency is essential to information qualityAudio 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 and your career has upset a lot of people, I think that’s fair to say. And I guess maybe more your career more recently. So, for people who aren’t familiar with your story, why don’t you maybe just give a little overview?Renee DiResta: So yeah, I guess I’m trying to think of where to start. I spent the last five years until June of this year at the Stanford Internet Observatory. I was the technical research manager there. So [00:03:00] I studied what we call adversarial abuse online. So understanding the abuse of online information ecosystems different types of actors, different types of tactics and strategies, sometimes related to trust and safety, sometimes related to disinformation or influence operations, sometimes related to generative AI or new and emerging technologies.And We treated the internet as a holistic ecosystem. And so, our argument was that as new technologies and new actors and new entrants kind of came into the space you’d see kind of cascading effects across the whole of social media. A lot of the work that I did focused on propaganda and influence and influencers as a sort of linchpin in this particular media environment.And so I recently wrote a book about that.Matthew Sheffield: And you’ve got into all this based on your involvement in being in favor of vaccines.Renee DiResta: Yeah, yeah. I know I got into it by like fighting on the internet, I [00:04:00] guess, back in 2014 no, I was I had my first kid in 2013, my son and I was living in San Francisco.I’d moved out there about two years prior. And you have to do this thing in San Francisco where you put your kid on all these like preschool waiting lists. And not even like fancy preschool, just like any preschool, you’ve got to be on a waiting list. And so I was filling out these forms and I started trying to Google to figure out where the vaccine rates were because at the time there was a whooping cough outbreak in California.And there were all of these articles about how, at the Google daycare vaccination rates were lower than South Sudan’s verbatim. This was one of the headlines. And I thought, I, I don’t want to send my kid to school in that environment. And I want to send him to a place where I’m not risking him catching easily preventable diseases.This is not a crazy preference to have it turns out, but it was on the internet. And so I got really interested in, in that dynamic and how I felt like. My desire to keep my kid safe from preventable diseases [00:05:00] had been a accepted part of the social contract for decades. And all of a sudden I have a baby and I’m on Facebook and Facebook is constantly pushing me anti vaccine content and anti vaccine groups with hundreds of thousands of people in them.So I started joining some of the groups because I was very curious, like what happens in these groups? Why are people so, so compelled to be there. And it was very interesting because it was It was like, it was like a calling, right? They, they weren’t in there because they had some questions about vaccines.They were in there because they were absolutely convinced that vaccines caused autism, caused SIDS, caused allergies, and all of these other, lies, candidly, right? Things that we know not to be true, but they were really evangelists for this. And there was no, Counter evangelism, right? There were parents like me who quietly got our kids vaccinated, nothing happened, and we went on about our days.And then there were people who thought they had a bad experience or who had, distrust in the government, distrust in science. And they were out there constantly putting out content about [00:06:00] how evil vaccines were. And I just felt like there was a real asymmetry there. Fast forward, maybe. A couple months after I started looking at those daycare rates and lists and preschool and there was a measles outbreak at Disneyland.And I thought, Oh my God, measles is back, and measles is back in California in in, in 20, 2014. So that was where I started feeling like, okay we could take legislative steps to improve school vaccination rates and I wanted to be involved. And I met some other very dedicated, mostly women who did as well.And we started this organization called Vaccinate California. And it was really. The mission was this vaccine kind of advocacy, but the learnings were much more broadly applicable, right? It was, how do you grow an audience? How do you add target? How do you take a couple thousand dollars from like friends and family and, Put that to the best possible use to grow a following for your page.How do you get people to want to share your content? What [00:07:00] content is the kind of content you should produce? Like what is influential? What is appealing? And so it was this, kind of building the plane while you’re flying it sort of experience. I was like, Hey, everybody on Twitter is using bots.This is crazy. Do we need bots? All right, I guess we need bots, and and just having this experience and um, 2015 or so is when all this was going down. And we did get this law passed this, this kind of pro vaccine campaign to improve school vaccination rates. It did pass, but I was more struck again by what was possible.And by a feeling of I guess, alarm at some of the things that were possible, right. That you could add target incredibly granularly with absolutely no disclosure of who you were or where your money was coming from that you could run automated accounts to. Just to harass people, right? To kind of constantly barrage or post about them that none of this was in any way certainly wasn’t illegal, but it wasn’t even really like immoral.It was [00:08:00] just. A thing you did on the internet and there were other things around that time, right? Gamergate happened around the same time. Isis grew big on social media around the same time. And so, I just felt like, okay, here’s the future. Every, every campaign going forward is going to be just like this.And I remember talking about it. With people at the CDC, right? They asked us to come down and present at this conference, made a whole deck about what we had done. And, this pro vaccine mom group and was really struck by how like unimpressed they were by the whole thing, not. That we felt like we should be getting like kudos for what we had done, but that they didn’t see it as a battleground, that they didn’t see it as a source of influence, as a source of where public opinion was shaped, that they didn’t see groups with hundreds of thousands of people in them as a source of alarm.And the phrase that they said that I referenced in the book a bunch of times is these are just some people online, right? So there’s a complete. [00:09:00] Lack of foresight of what was about to happen because of his belief that institutional authority was enough to carry the day. And my sense that it was notMatthew Sheffield: well, and also that they did not understand that.A, I mean, I think we, we have to say that at the outset that while you were encountering all this content, anti vaccine content, that that’s not what the majority opinion was. The majority opinion was pro vaccine and and, and, and so, yeah, with these bots and all these other different tactics of, agreeing to share.Mutual links and whatnot. They’re able to make themselves seem much more numerous than they really are.Renee DiResta: Yep.“If you make it trend, you make it true”Matthew Sheffield: And, and then eventually then the algorithm kicks in and then that promotes the stuff also. And, and you have a phrase which you have used in the book and used over the years, which I like, which is that if you, if you make it trend, you make it true.So what does that mean? [00:10:00] What does that mean?Renee DiResta: So I, it was almost a um, you know, you essentially create reality, right? This is the thing that we’re all talking about. This is the thing that everybody believes. Majority illusion is what you’re referencing there, right? You make yourself look a lot bigger than you are.And algorithms come into play that help you do that. And in a way, it becomes it becomes something of a self fulfilling prophecy. So the, there’s a certain amount of activity and energy there. The thing gets, the content, whatever it is, gets engagement, the hashtag trends. There is so much effort that was being put in in the 2014 to 2016 or so timeframe into getting things trending because it was an incredible source of like attention capture.You were putting an idea out there into the world, and if you got it done with just enough people, It would be pushed out to still more people. The algorithm would kind of give you that lift and then other people would click in and would pay attention. And so there was a real um, means [00:11:00] of galvanizing people by calling attention to your cause and making them feel kind of compelled to join in.So one of the things that we saw, I’m trying to remember if I even referenced this part in the book, was the the ways in which you could like connect different factions on the internet. I have a graph of this that I show in a lot of talks where what you see is like the very long established anti vaccine communities in 2015, the people who’d been on their, their screaming about vaccines causing autism for years.They didn’t get a lot of pickup with that narrative. There were still enough people who were like, no, I don’t know. Like the researchers over here, this is what it says. And you see them pivot the frame of the argument after they lose a couple of couple of votes in the California Senate, I think it was.And you see them move from talking about the sort of health impacts, the sort of the things that we call misinformation, right? Things that are demonstrably false. You see them pivot instead to a frame about rights, about health, freedom, medical freedom. [00:12:00] And you see them they call it, Marrying the hashtags is the language that they use when they’re telling people on their side to do this, which is to tweet the hashtag for the bill, some of the vaccine hashtags, and then they say, tag in, you might remember this one TCO T top conservatives on Twitter or a hashtag to a, which is the second amendment people, for a long time before the first amendment became the be all end all on Twitter, it was actually the second amendment.That was the thing that, that you would see kind of conservative factions fighting over the days of the tea party. And so you saw the anti vaccine activists, again, these people who have this deeply held belief in the health lies, instead pivoting the conversation to focus instead on, okay, it doesn’t matter what the vaccines do, you shouldn’t have to take them.And that becomes the thing that actually enables them to really kind of grow this big tent. And you see the movement begin to expand as they start making this appeal to more sort of a, libertarian or tea party politics. That was that was [00:13:00] quite prominent on, on Twitter at the time. So essentially that is how they managed to grow the So the make a trend, make a true thing was just if you could get enough people paying attention to your hashtag, your rumor, your content, nobody’s going to see the counter movement, the counter fact check, the thing that’s going to come out after the trend is over.It’s the trend that’s going to capture attention, stick in people’s mind and become the thing that they that they think about as a, reality when they’re referencing the conversation later.False or misleading information can no longer be quarantinedMatthew Sheffield: Well, and the reason for that is this other idea of which you talk about, which is that media is additive.That when people think that, well, I, I can somehow stop bad views from being propagated on the internet. Like, that’s the idea. That’s not true. And, and it, and it never, and it never was. And like you, I mean, you can definitely lessen the impact because I mean, I think it is the case for instance, that Tucker Carlson, [00:14:00] once he was taken off Fox news, his influence has declined quite a bit.And Milo Yiannopoulos, another example now, now he’s reduced to saying that he’s he’s an ex gay Catholic activist. That’s, I saw that go by.Renee DiResta: Yeah, no, I definitely saw that one go by. There’s one thing that happens though, where Twitter, Steps in at some point also, because they realize that a lot of the efforts to make things trend are being driven by bots and things like this, right?By, by automated accounts. And so they come up with, at this point, rubrics for what they consider to be a low quality account is the term. And that has been, reframed now and the political, the sort of political polarized arguments about social media, but the low quality account Vision, that, that went into it was this idea that they wanted trends to be reflective of real people and real people’s opinions.And so you do see them trying to come in and filter out the the accounts that appear to be there, like [00:15:00] to spam or to participate in spamming trends and things like this. And so Twitter tries to correct for this for a while in the 2017 to 2019 timeframe, it’s unclear. What has happened since?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and, and, and I mean, and this, the idea of, how to adjust algorithms, I mean, that is kind of one of the perpetual problems of, of all social media is, and no, I feel like that the people who own these platforms and run them, they don’t want to admit that.Any choice, any, in, in algorithm, whether it’s, reverse chronological per, accounts mutuals interest or whatever, whatever their metric is. It is a choice and it is a choice to boost things. And it seems like a lot of people in tech, they don’t, they don’t want to think that they’re doing a choice.Renee DiResta: I [00:16:00] think now,Matthew Sheffield: now,Renee DiResta: now if you talk to people who work on social media platforms, I don’t think that that’s a controversial thing to say anymore. I think in 20 again, 2016, 2017 timeframe. There was this idea that there was such a thing as a neutral, right? That, that there was a Magical algorithmic, pure state of affairs.And and this led to some really interesting challenges for them because they ultimately were creating an environment where whoever was the best at. Intuiting what the algorithm wanted and creating content for it could essentially level up their views. So one of the things that happened was Facebook launches this feature called the watch tab. They do it to compete with YouTube and they don’t have the content creator base of YouTube.So there is a bunch of new content creators who begin to try, who [00:17:00] realize that Facebook is aggressively promoting the watch tab. So they’ve created an incentive and then the watch tab is going to surface certain types of content. So you see these accounts trying to figure out what the watch tab wants to recommend, what it’s, what it’s geared to recommend.And they evolve over time to creating these kinds of content where the headline, like the sort of video title is what she saw when she opened the door, right. Or you’ll never believe what he thought in that moment, these sorts of like clickbait clickbait titles. But it works and the watch tab is pushing these videos out.They’re all about like 13 to 15 minutes long, right? So these videos really require a lot of investment and the audience is sitting there like waiting for this payoff, is like, what happens when she opens the door? I don’t know. She hasn’t opened the door yet. And you just sit there and you wait and you wait and you watch and you watch.And so it’s, the algorithm thinks this is fantastic, right? It’s racking up watch minutes. People are staying on the platform. The creators are earning tons of [00:18:00] money there. This is being pushed out to literally millions of people, even if the pages only have about 10, 000 followers. And so you watch this entire ecosystem grow and it’s entirely like content produced solely to capture attention entirely to earn.The revenue share that, that the platform has just made possible. So it’s like the algorithm creates an incentive structure and then the content is created to fill it. And the influencers that are best at creating the content can profit from it and maximize both their attention, right? The attention, the clout that they’re going to get from new followers and also financially to profit from it.So unfortunately the the idea that there’s like some neutral. It’s just not exactly right. Even if you have reverse chronological, what you’re incentivizing is for people to post a whole lot. So they’re always at the top of the feed. So it’s just this idea that you’re always going to have actors responding to those incentives and this is just what we get on social media.It’s not a. It’s not a political thing at all. It’s just, it’s just creators [00:19:00] meeting the, the, the rules of the game. Right.Matthew Sheffield: The algorithms of who was boosted or what was not boosted like people eventually started.imbuing all kinds of decision, human decisions into algorithms also. Like, I see that all the time. People, they’re like, I’m, I’m shadow band or I’m this or that. And it’s like, and then you look at their. Posts and they’re just kind of boring, they’re just some links. And especially Twitter now, like they will penalize you if you’re not somebody that is regarded as a news source or something like that, whatever the term is they use, like you’re going to get penalized if you post a link in the post.And, but a lot of people, they don’t know how the algorithms work. And, and so like, they think that they’re being deliberately individually suppressed. And that’s just not true.Renee DiResta: It’s, it’s weirdly. Were they narcissistic in a way I would see I would occasionally, so some of it is genuine lack of understanding.I remember in 2018, [00:20:00] having conversations with people as the sort of shadow banning theories were emerging and asking folks, like, why do you think your shadow band? These were these accounts that had maybe a couple hundred followers, not very much engagement. They were not. Big, political power players or s**t posters or anything, just kind of ordinary people.And they would say like, well, my friends don’t see all of my posts. And that’s when you realize that there’s like a disconnect. They do not understand that algorithmic curation is the order of the day. And that whatever it is that you’re creating is competing with a whole lot of other, what other people are creating.And, something somewhere is stack ranking all of this and deciding what to show your friends. And so they interpret it as somehow being sort of a, a personal ding on them. And the part that I always found sort of striking was when you had the influencers who know better, right. Who do understand how this works.And the, the, they would use it as a as a monetization strategy as, as an audience [00:21:00] capture, sorry, not audience capture, but as a audience attention grab where they would say like, I, I am so suppressed. I am so suppressed. We, I only have 900, 000 followers. I remember after Elon took over Twitter, I thought, okay, maybe this is going to go away now, but it didn’t.Then it turned into, Elon, there’s still ghosts in the machine. There’s still legacy suppression that’s happening. You need to get to the bottom of it. And so it was completely inconceivable to them that like some of their content just wasn’t that great or some of their content just wasn’t, where the algorithmic tweaks had gone.Why social influencer culture has merged so well with right-wing media cultureRenee DiResta: So there’s an interesting dynamic that happens on social media, which is that people see influencers as being distinct from media, right? They’re they present as just them. They’re not attached to a branded outlet.Maybe they have a sub stack or something like that, but but they’re, they’re not seen as being part of a major media institution or brand. And so they’re seen as being more trustworthy, right? They’re just like me. They’re a person who is like me, who is out there sees the world the way I see it and what they have to say [00:22:00] resonates with me.So it’s a different model. And one of the things that the influencer has to do is they’re, they’re constantly working to grow that relationship with their fandom. And what you start to see happen on social media is that this idea that they are somehow being suppressed, that their truths are somehow being prevented from reaching people.It’s both a sort of an appeal for, for support, right? For support and validation from the audience. But it’s also, it also positions them as being somehow very, very important, right? So, I am so suppressed because I am so important. I am over the target. I am telling you what they don’t want you to know.So that, that presentation kind of makes them seem more interesting. It increases their mystique. It increases their their clout, particularly among audiences who don’t trust media, don’t trust institutions, don’t trust big tech. So it becomes in a sense it’s almost a, a marketing [00:23:00] ploy for influencers to say, you should follow me because I am so suppressed.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and, and it’s critical to note that this is also fitting into a much larger and longer lasting pattern that is existed on the political right. Since theRenee DiResta: idea that The mainstream media is biased against you and your truths. And so, here’s this here’s this alternative series of outlets.And I think, the influencer is just one step in that, in that same chain, but what’s always interesting to me about it is the the presentation of themselves as distinct from media, even though they have the. reach of media. They are presenting themselves as an authoritative source of either information or commentary.And so it’s, in the realm of the political influencer, especially it’s like media, but without the without the, the, the media brand, everything else is very much the same.Matthew Sheffield: It is. Yeah. And I mean, in a lot of ways, the talk radio is, is the model here that this is just. [00:24:00] A slightly different version of it.And, and that’s why I do think that, like when you look at the biggest podcast or biggest, YouTube channels and whatnot, like they are almost overwhelmingly right wing because that’s the audience has been sort of, that’s what they expect. They’re used to sitting there and listening to somebody talk to them for three hours.Where, whereas, on, on the left or center left, the things have to be a lot shorter. And they have to be conversations instead of monologues that are three hours long. But I mean, of course, but the other issue though, is that, I mean, there is an epistemic problem as well on the right wing in America.I mean, it is the case that, I mean, William F. Buckley Jr. His first book, God, a man at Yale was about. How these professors were mean because they didn’t believe in the resurrection. They were mean because they taught evolution and they didn’t take seriously the idea [00:25:00] that maybe the earth was recreated in 6, 000 years.Maybe that was why, why, why can’t we teach the controversy? We need to teach the controversy. Like to me, that’s kind of the original alternative fact is evolution. Is not true. Um, That was the wholeRenee DiResta: thing. Do you remember that was I remember it would have been gosh, sometime in the 2014, 2015 timeframe, there was this paper that made the rounds where Google was trying to figure out how to assess questions of factuality.Right. And I’m trying to remember what they called it. It had a name. It wasn’t like, Truth rank or something, maybe it was something maybe it was that actually but the media coverage of it, particularly on the right made exactly this point. Well, how old are they going to say the earth is, and that was like the big gotcha.Um, And you weren’tMatthew Sheffield: there, Renee. So how do you,Renee DiResta: how do you, how do you even know scientists, fossils, who even knows, right. But the it was an interesting, It is sort of first [00:26:00] glimpse into at the time people were saying like, Hey, as more and more information is, sort of proliferating on the internet, how do you return good information?And there was that Google knowledge, you started to see search results that returned, not just the list of results, but that had the answer kind of up there in the the, the sort of knowledge pain. And if you searched for age of the earth, it would give you the actual age of the earth.And that became a source of some controversy. So one of the first kind of harbingers of what was going to happen as a social media platforms or search results for that matter, search engines tried to try to curate accurate information as there was a realization that perhaps surfacing accurate information was a worthwhile endeavor.And now it sounds. Controversial to say that whereas 10 years ago it was seen as a, the normal evolution and helping, helping computers help you.Matthew Sheffield: ,America never had a “shared reality” that we can return toMatthew Sheffield: I think it’s unfortunate that there is a lot of discourse about, we, we don’t have a shared reality anymore.You don’t have, the [00:27:00] unfortunate problem is. We never had it. It’s just, it’s, it’s just like, for in astronomy, you can, a lot of times you can’t see planets because they don’t generate light or we can’t see neutron stars because they don’t generate light. Or very little. In essence.These, these alternative realities, they were always there. People who work in academia or work in journalism or work in knowledge fields, didn’t know that they were there. I mean, it is the case that when you look at Gallup polling data, that 40 percent of American adults say that God created humans in their present form and that they did not evolve.And only 33 percent say that humans evolved with God guiding the process. And then the smallest percentage, 22 percent says that humans evolved and God was not involved in that [00:28:00] process. There’s all kinds of things about that. You could illustrate that.I mean, these opinions have always been out there, anti reality was always there. It’s just. Now it affects the rest of us is the problem.Renee DiResta: That’s it. That’s an interesting point. I think the I remember reading the evolution creation debates on the internet because they were, that was like the original source of, debating and fighting, and you could find that stuff on the internet and there were the the flat earthers, but that always seemed like a joke until all of a sudden one day it didn’t.And yeah, the chemtrails the chemtrails groups. One thing I was struck by was when I joined some of those anti vaccine groups, the chemtrail stuff came next, the flat earth stuff, the 9 11 truth stuff. It was just this this entire yeah, conspiracy correlation matrix basically, that was just like, Oh, you like this.You might also like this and this and this and this and this. And so is this a interesting glimpse into how these The sort of Venn diagrams and those different belief [00:29:00] structures. But one thing I think that was distinct is that it was the ones that in that required a deep distrust in government to really continue.So I think that that was also different. I don’t think, you would see the evolution debate come up in the context of what should we put in the textbooks, right? This teach the controversy thing that you referenced. But it, it didn’t. It seems like that existed in a time when trust in government was still higher.Now you have, I think a lot more conspiracy theories that are really where the belief seems more plausible because people so deeply distrust government. And so that, that cycle has been happening. And when you speak about the impact it has, it does then interfere with governance and things like that in a distinctly different way.Then it maybe seemed like it did, two decades ago.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And at the same time, I mean, Margaret Thatcher had her famous saying what she said twice in the interview that there’s no such [00:30:00] thing as society. It’s we’re, we’re just a bunch of individuals. That’s all that we are.Reactionaries have figured out that information quality standards are harmful to their factual claimsMatthew Sheffield: And yeah, I mean, like, but you’re right. I think that it obviously has come. Has gotten more pronounced and this skepticism has become more of a problem. And, but it’s become a problem also in the, in the social media space, because. Trying to do anything to dial back falsehoods even flagrant ones, dangerous ones that are, will cause people to die.That’s controversial now. And it, and it wasn’t. And, and you yourself, We’re have experienced that, haven’t you?Renee DiResta: Well, I mean, it, it was a very effective, I think, kind of grievance campaign. I remember the, Donald Trump was It was in office and there was this, do you remember that form?They put up like a web form. Have you been censored on social media? Let us know. Yeah. And and then they, I think they got a, that was theMatthew Sheffield: fundraising boy. They got a [00:31:00] bunch ofRenee DiResta: dick pics. Yeah, exactly. dick pics and an email list. But the, because it wanted like screenshots of evidence, which I thought was almost like.Sweet in how it did not understand what was, I wasn’t gonna come.Matthew Sheffield: The post is deleted. You’re not gonna see it.Renee DiResta: But that, that kind of belief that really began to take hold that there was this partisan politically motivated effort to suppress conservatives, despite the abundance of research, to the contrary, and lack of evidence.It was almost like the lack of evidence was the evidence at some point, so much. Bye bye. Well, you can’t prove they’re not doing it. Well, here’s what we see. No, no, no, no. That, that research is biased. The wokes did it. Twitter did it. The old regime at Twitter did it. There was no universe in which that catechism was going to be untrue.Right. And so it simply took hold and then they just looked for evidence to support it. And then all of a sudden they looked for evidence to run vast congressional [00:32:00] investigations into it. And it, it has always been a, smoke and mirrors, no, they’re there, but that doesn’t matter at this point because you have political operatives who are willing to, Support with their base by prosecuting this grievance that their base sincerely believes in because they’ve heard for Yeah,Republicans have decided to completely boycott all information quality discussionsMatthew Sheffield: well, and, and the thing that, and I can say this, having been a, a former conservative activist, that one of the things that made me leave that world was because I did, I was kind of, I mean, I worked in the, in the liberal media bias world saying that all the media is out to get Republicans.And so, I, I started getting into this idea on social media. Well, are, are they biased against conservatives? And eventually I had the revolutionary and apparently subversive idea that, well, what if Republicans are just more wrong? What if our ideas are not as good?Like, if we believe things that [00:33:00] aren’t true, then maybe they shouldn’t be promoted. And I’ll tell you when I started saying that to people, they They told me to stop talking about that. And even now, like, I mean, you, so when we should get into more specifically the things that happened to you, but before the right wing targeted the Stanford observatory and you yourself you were trying to have dialogue with.People who were saying these things about, we’re being censored. The big tech is out to get us, et cetera. And you ask them, okay, well, so what kind of rubric do you want? How should we deal with this stuff? Obviously I assume you don’t think that. Telling people to buy bleach and drink it for to cure their toenail fungus or whatever.They will say they don’t agree with that stuff. But then when you ask them, okay, well, so what should we do? We never got a response.Renee DiResta: No, there’s never really a good answer for that. I mean, one of the things that [00:34:00] long before joining Stanford, starting in 2015, I started writing about recommendation engines, right?Because I thought Hey, the anti vaccine groups are not outside of the realm of acceptable political opinions. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be on Facebook. There is something really weird about a recommender system proactively pushing it to people. And then when those same accounts, like I said, I joined a couple of these groups with a, totally different new account that had no past history of like my actual interests or behavior.So at this point, clean slate account join those groups. Like I said, I got chemtrails, I got flat earth got nine 11 truther, but then I got pizza gate. Right. And then after I joined a couple of pizza gate groups, those groups sort of all morphed into QAnon. A lot of those groups became QAnon groups.And so QAnon was getting pushed to this account again, very, very, very early on. And I just thought like, We’re in this really weird world. It became pretty clear, pretty quickly that, that QAnon was not [00:35:00] just another conspiracy theory group, right? That QAnon came with some very specific calls to act that QAnon accounts, like, sorry, QAnon people adherence is the word I’m looking for committed acts of violence or did weird things in the real world.And you see Facebook classified as a dangerous org and begin to to, to boot it off the platform, but in the early days, that’s not happening. And I thought it’s, it’s weird when the nudge is coming to encourage people to join, as opposed to people proactively going and typing in the thing that they know they want to find and that they’re consciously going and looking for.Like that’s two different behaviors. You sort of push versus pull, we can call it. And I did think, and I do think that as platforms serve as curators and recommenders, running an entire. Essentially social connection machine that is orienting people around interests and helping them find new interests does come with a set [00:36:00] of, ethical requirements.And so I started writing about like, what might those be? Not even saying I had the answers, just saying like, is there, is there some framework, some rubric we can come up with by which we have that. In the phrase that eventually came to be associated with that, that idea was freedom of speech, not freedom of reach, right.That you weren’t owed a megaphone. You weren’t owed algorithmic amplification. There was no obligation for a platform to take your group and proactively push it up to more people, but that in the interest of free expression, it should stay up on the platform. And you could go do the legwork of, growing it yourself if you wanted to.So, that was the That was the idea, right? The question of like, how do you think curation should work? Like something is being up ranked or down ranked at any given time, whether that’s a feed ranking or a recommender system or even a trending algorithm. So what is the best way to do that? And, and I think that is still today the really interesting question about, [00:37:00] how to treat narratives on social media.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And it’s one that the right is not participating in at all. Not at all. And so, I mean, and that’s, and the reality is these decisions will be made whether they participate or not, like they have to be made. These are things that exist and these are businesses that have to be run and they will be made.So, and it’s, to me, I thought, It’s, that’s been the most consistent pattern in how reactionary people have dealt with you over the years is that they don’t actually talk to you in a serious way. It’s easier to say like, oh,Renee DiResta: it’s all censorship, that, that’s a very effective, it’s very effective buzzwords, very effective term that you can redefine, censor, it was a nice epithet you can toss at your opponent, but it no, it misses the key question.I think it’s worth pointing out by the way, that like every group at some point has [00:38:00] like felt that they have been censored or suppressed in some way. By a social media algorithm, right? It’s the right has made it the central grievance of a political platform, but you do see these allegations with regard to like social media is suppressing marginalized communities, right?That is the thing that that you hear on the left and have heard on the left for a very long time. Social media during the October 7th, the, the day sort of immediately after October 7th in Israel, there was an entire report that came out. Alleging that pro Palestinian content was being suppressed.Unfortunately, the methodology often involves asking people, Do you feel like you’ve been suppressed? And it’s, stupid. It’s a terrible, terrible mechanism for assessing these things. But but it, but it is, at least one way to. See where the pulse of the community is. People don’t trust social media platforms.They’re, just not unreasonable, right? They’ve done some, some, some pretty terrible things. You do see, the platforms as they [00:39:00] sit there trying to figure out what to up rank or down rank the loss of like the, the lack of understanding and the lack of trust come, come into play.Did you see God, it was yesterday. It was like libs of Tik TOK going on about how chat GPT was suppressing the Trump assassination because she was using a version that were the, that had been trained on material prior to the Trump assassination happening, right? And so it was such a ridiculous, like just this grievance, but oh my God, the engagement, the grievance gets.And again, okay. People on the internet, they believe stupid things, but then, then Ted Cruz Amplifies it sitting congressional regulator, Congress, Senator Ted Cruz is out there amplifying this stupid grievance based on a complete misunderstanding of the technology she’s using. And, and, and he sees it as a win.That’s why he’s doing it. And, and it’s like so [00:40:00] paralyzingly stupid actually, but you know, this is where we are.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Douglas Mackey and what trolls doMatthew Sheffield: Well, and there’s a guy that you, you talk about in the book that I think a lot of people he kind of fell off the radar because he got arrested the guy who whose name is Douglas Mackey.He went by Ricky Vaughn on the internet. on Twitter and he went on trial for creating a deception operation to tell black voters to not vote on election day. And in what was it? 2016. And yeah. And so he went on trial because that is a crime. And he. Got convicted of it and he got sentenced as well.So, but in the, in the course of the trial some of the other trolls and, and it’s fair to say these people are neo Nazis that they, that’s who they worked with and Mackie was working with Weave, who is a notorious neo Nazi hacker and anyway, but one of the other trolls involved with this who went by the name microchip he said something that I thought was, was It’s [00:41:00] very frank description of what it is that they’re doing.He said, my talent is to make things weird and strange. So there is controversy. And then they asked him, well, did you believe the things you said? And he said, no, and I didn’t care. And that’s, that’s the problem. Like, how can you have a shared reality with people who that’s their attitude? And I mean, you, you can get into that sort of toward the end, but I don’t know.It’s, it’s, it’s a question that more people should think about.Renee DiResta: You should write a book about it.It’s a, it’s a hard one. I get asked a lot of the time. In the, the stories that like the stories about me, right. The weird conspiracy theories that I’m like some, that, that the CIA placed me in my job at Stanford.Man, I’ve had some real surreal conversations, including with like print media fact checkers. I got a phone call one day that was like, Hey, we’re doing this. You’re a supporting character. [00:42:00] You’re tangentially mentioned, but Hey, I need to ask the, the person is saying that. The CIA got you your job at, at Stanford.And that seems a little bit crazy. I was like, it’s more than a little bit crazy. A little, little bit’s not quite it. It’s I didn’t even know that counts as defamatory because it sounds cool, but, but it’s f*****g not true. And and you, and you find yourself in these, like these situations where, I was like, I’m actually, I’m, I’m frankly floored.That I am being asked to prove that that is not true when, like, what, what did, what did you ask that guy? Did you ask him for some evidence? Did you ask him, like, what are you basing this on? Like, some online vibes, some shitposts from randos, and then you decide that, that this is enough for you to say the thing.I am the one who has to prove the negative, like it’s the weirdest, like the, the, I felt like, I was actually really irritated by that, to be honest, I was just like, what kind of information environment are we in where where I’m being asked [00:43:00] to deny the most stupid, spurious allegations and nobody is asking the people pushing them for the evidence.And that’s where I did start to feel like Over the last, year or so, like I’d sort of gone down this, this mirror world where, the allegation was was taken as fact and, the onus was on me to disprove it. And that’s just not a, it’s not a thing that, that you can do really.That’s unfortunately the problem. So,Matthew Sheffield: yeah.How Elon Musk and Jim Jordan smeared anti-disinformation researchersMatthew Sheffield: Well, and and that certainly snowballed eventually. So they, they. These bad faith actors went from ignoring your questions about moderation standards and epistemology and to starting to attack you and other people who study disinformation and misinformation.And you, you and others were figures in the Twitter files. Yeah. Elon Musk and his I guess now former friends mostly seems like [00:44:00] but what, what was the, I guess maybe do a little brief overview of that. AndRenee DiResta: yeah, so we had done a bunch of work yeah, public work. It was all over the internet in 2020 looking at.What we called misinformation at the time, but became pretty clear that it was like election rumors, right? It was people who were trying to de legitimize the election preemptively. And we had a very narrow scope. We were looking at things that, as like, Mackey’s things about vote on Wednesday, not on Tuesday kind of stuff.So we were looking for content that was trying to interfere in the process of voting or content that was trying to de legitimize voting. And so we did this very complicated comprehensive. Project over the course of about August to November of 2020, tracking these rumors as they emerged with a bunch of students working on the project, really very student driven.We connected with tech platforms every now and then to say things like, Hey, here’s a viral rumor. It seems to violate your policies, have at it, do whatever it is you’re going to do. We connected with state and local [00:45:00] election officials occasionally, mostly to say things like they would reach out sometimes they would we called it filing a ticket.They would sort of file a ticket. And they would ask about content that they saw that was wrong. Right. And so that was stuff like Hey, we’ve got this person, this account, it’s claiming to be a poll worker. We have no record that anybody with that name is a poll worker, but it’s saying a lot of stuff that’s just wrong.And we’re worried that it’s going to undermine confidence in the vote, like in that district. So that was the kind of thing that we would look at. And then we would send back a note sometimes saying like, here’s what you should do with this. Here’s what you should do with that. And the so that was the, the process that.That we went through with all these rumors. So, and then in 2021, we did the same kind of thing, but with vaccine rumors. And in that particular case, obviously it wasn’t state and local election officials. We would just track the most viral narratives related to the vaccine for that week. Published it PDFs, every PDF once a week on the website, completely public.Anybody could see them. And that was, and then we would send them to people who’d signed up for our mailing [00:46:00] list, and that included public health officials some folks in government, anybody who wanted to receive that briefing, which was just a repurposing of what was on the website. So those were our projects.And they were refashioned by the same people who tried to vote not to certify the election or tried to overturn the election. And some of the kind of right wing COVID influencers. As they were reframed as not academic research projects, but as part of a vast plot to suppress all of those narratives, to take down and delete all of those tweets, to silence conservative voices.And as this rumor about our work snowballed, it eventually reached the point where, somebody went on Tucker Carlson to say that we had actually Stolen the 2020 election, that this was how we had done it. We had suppressed all of the true facts about voter fraud and all the other things. And as a result, people hadn’t voted for Donald Trump.So it was just complete surreal nonsense. But again, [00:47:00] having rumors about you on the internet is an inconvenience. It’s an annoyance. You get death threats, people send you crazy emails. But what happened that was really troubling was that sitting members of Congress took up the cause and people who had subpoena power then used nothing more than, Online lies about our work to demand access to our emails.So the way that this connects to the Twitter files is one of these individuals, a right wing blogger who created this website that he called the foundation for freedom online. It was basically just him began to write these stories about us. And then he aggressively repeatedly over a period of almost two months, tried to get Matt tidy to pay attention to him.And eventually, in March of 2023, he connects with Tybee, who’s been doing several of these Twitter files, in a chat room in a, in a, sorry, in a Twitter spaces kind of voice chat. And he tells him, I have the keys to the kingdom. I’m going to tell you about that CIA [00:48:00] woman who works at Stanford who has FBI level access to Twitter’s internal systems.And now these are words that mean nothing. Like what the hell does FBI level access mean? And I never had access to any internal system at Twitter, but again, it doesn’t matter because he peaks Tybee’s interest, connects with him. And then all of a sudden, Jim Jordan is requesting that Tybee come and testify about the Twitter files.And rather than testifying about the things that are actually in the Twitter files, he and Michael Schellenberger, who’s the co witness, start to just regurgitate the claims about the mass suppression of conservative speech that this individual has written on his blog. So there’s no evidence that is actually offered, but in response to the allegation being made, Jim Jordan then demands all of our emails.And so all of a sudden, Matt Tybee and Michael Schellenberger say some stuff on Twitter and Jim Jordan gets to read my emails. And that’s really all it takes. And that was the part where I was like, wow, we are really I maybe rather naively [00:49:00] thought that, There was like more evidence required to kick off a massive congressional investigation, but that’s not how it works today.Matthew Sheffield: Well, and, and, and ironically, it was named by the done by the House Committee on Government Weaponization. That turned into nothing but weaponizing government. Yeah. IRenee DiResta: mean, the whole thing is I mean, honestly, it should be kind of depressing to anybody who you, when you, when you realize that it’s really just norms that are keeping the wheels on the bus.And that when you move into this environment where the end justifies the means that there is this, Very little in the way of, of, guardrails on this sort of stuff, except, basic decency and and or more and more Machiavellian terms, like a sense that this is going to come back and bite them, but it’s not, it’s not going to at all.Nothing is ever going to happen either to the people who lied or to the bloggers or to the Twitter files guys, or to the members of Congress who [00:50:00] weaponized the government to target the first amendment protected. Research of random academics. Nothing is going to happen to any of them. There will be no consequences.And that’s when you start to realize that there’s really very little that is we, we’ve, we’ve created a terrible system of incentives here. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And and what’s, what’s awful is. I think that even now after what happened, so I mean, we need to say that, after all the, the legal threats and there were other ones as well the Missouri versus Biden case and some of the other ones that targeted the Stanford Internet Observatory.I mean, the goal was to shutRenee DiResta: theMatthew Sheffield: program down and they succeeded.And yet I don’t, I feel like that generally speaking, people outside of the people who directly work in this area. I don’t think that there is any concern about [00:51:00] this problem at all, orRenee DiResta: this is where what I’ve tried to do, like, I’ll be fine.I’m not worried about, like, me. But,Conspiracy theories don’t have to make sense because the goal is to create doubtRenee DiResta: One of the things that one of the people that I spoke with when it all began to happen, when the first kind of congressional letters showed up were some of the climate scientists like Michael Mann, I referenced in the book who had been through this with his own sort of fight in the pre internet days of 2012.But again, when he had done research that was politically inexpedient, right, showing that that, the sort of hockey stick graphs. Around around climate change and kind of human human impacted climate change. And he wound up getting hauled in front of congressional hearings, having his email gone through, a whole bunch of different things happened to him.And one thing I was struck by was how familiar the playbook was. Right. And I read Naomi book, merchants of doubt. And she also goes into it with regard to [00:52:00] scientists who are trying to say, Hey, it looks like tobacco is really not great. It looks like it might cause cancer, and this sort of retaliation.And and, and what you see from the companies where they say, like, we just have to discredit the people who are saying this, right. We don’t have to offer, we don’t even have to bolster our facts. We just have to attack these people that that’s, what’s going to work, right. Smearing them is the most effective thing to do here.We just have to create doubt, a lack of confidence in what they’ve done and said. We have to turn them into enemies. And you see that model of this smear working very, very well whenever there is something that is politically inexpedient. And again, the people who were quote unquote investigating us were the people who were very angry that we had done this very comprehensive kind of, A research project tracking the big lie and the people who propagated the big lie were the ones who were mad at it.And once they had gavels, they retaliated. That’s how it works. The the problem is that playbook is very effective. It’s very [00:53:00] hard to respond to rumors and smear campaigns. Institutions are notoriously bad at it. And so the question then becomes like, which field gets attacked next? And that’s where, what I think like the focus shouldn’t be on us or SIO or, any one institution that’s experiencing this, it should be on how effective that playbook is.And the thing that we need to see is people doing more work on countering the effects of that playbook on pushing back on smears on fighting much more aggressively. When Congress comes calling in this way and that, that I think is the the, the key takeaway from like, from my cautionary tale.The desperate need for a “pro-reality” coalition of philanthropists and activistsMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. There’s just so much that needs to be done and, and there’s so much money that is being out there to promote falsehoods to the public. Because the issue is that for, reactionary media, reactionary foundations, organizations, they don’t engage in general interest.[00:54:00]Like public philanthropy. So in other words, they’re not out there, feeding the homeless from their foundation or, helping people register to vote or, various things like that. Or, funding cleanup projects or, or something, they’re, they’re not doing that.And so we’re, and so all of their money is focused on altering politics. Whereas, The people who are, the non reactionary majority, the philanthropists, they have to support all these other institutions, like the Red Cross or, all these things that are not political. And so the philanthropy is, is split, but it’s also missed.Like, they don’t understand that you have to actually create things that are In favor of reality and anti the, the, the, because like, basically what we’re, emergence of a, of an anti epistemologyRenee DiResta: and.Matthew Sheffield: And to me, the, the analogy that I use sometimes with people is HG [00:55:00] Wells his novel, the time machine.And at some point in the future, the humans in that area had speciated into two groups and there were the, the uh, Eloy that lived uh, um, during the daytime and, you know, they had solved all problems for themselves and scarcity and whatnot. But they were totally unaware that there was this other Group of post humans who lived at night and preyed on them.And like, I feel like there’s so many knowledge workers and institutions. They don’t realize that the, that, we’re living in an information economy where there are predators.Renee DiResta: It’s a good metaphor for it. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: And they’ve got to, they’ve got to wake up to that because everything that they do is actually under attack.If, if not now, it will be later. Everything has a liberal bias in this worldview and no matter who it is. Like, I mean, it started with. Then it went to journalism. [00:56:00] Then it went to, now it’s with the FBI is liberally biased and agency created by a far right Republican J Edgar Hoover and never run by anyone who was a Democrat.registered Democrat, but it’s liberally biased. It’s liberally biased. And police are that now the woke military, like everything is liberally biased. And like, until you realize there are people out there that want to completely tear down all institutions. then you’re, you’re not going to win. I don’t, I don’t know.It’s kind of depressing.Renee DiResta: I mean, that was the the one thing I wish I’d been more direct on in the book was, was actually that point, right? It’s the uh, the need to understand that that it, it, it comes for people and that. You don’t have to do anything wrong in order for it to happen. I think, I think there’s still a, you know, even like my parents, I was like, Oh, I got a congressional subpoena and [00:57:00] Stephen Miller sued me.And they’re like, what did you do? And I was like, no, that’s not how this works. Because, because they, they live in a time when. Or they, their, their model of politics is still this, obviously if you’re being investigated, like there’s some cause for it and, and, and I’ll confess also that I, I really did not realize how much things like lawsuits and everything else were just.Stuff that you could just file and that you could just, gum up a person’s life with meaningless requests and all these different procedural, all the procedural drama that went along with it. And, I, we found out that Stephen Miller had sued us when Breitbart tweeted it at us.And I remember seeing that and being like, is this even real? It don’t, doesn’t somebody show up to your, to your door with papers or something? And my, my Twitter sued, like, how does this work? But they were doing it because they were [00:58:00] fundraising off of it. Right. The the, the groups that were part and parcel to the lawsuit.And I thought, Oh, I get it now. Oh, that’s so interesting. I always thought that. The, the legal system was maybe biased in some ways around some types of cases, you read the stats about criminal prosecutions and things, but I’d never paid that close attention. It wasn’t really a thing that that I followed and and then all this started and I thought like, Oh boy, wow, there’s really it’s really a whole lot of interesting things about this that I had no idea about, and I guess I’m going to get an education pretty quickly.Proctor and Gamble, one of the earliest victims of disinformationMatthew Sheffield: Uh, yeah, well, but at the end of the book, you do talk about some things that have worked in the past. And I mean, and it is the case, I mean, unfortunately the legal system has been badly corrupted by politicized and ideological judges. But nonetheless like you talk about one instance that I, that is kind of entertaining about Procter and Gamble.Renee DiResta: Oh yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Conspiracy theory in the 80s against them why don’t you tell us about that?Renee DiResta: [00:59:00] Yeah, this was one of these satanic panic type things. There’s a allegation that their logo which was a man with sort of stars in his beard had six, six, sixes in the curly cues and was evidence of some sort of satanic involvement.And what’s interesting about Rumors, which is just these, unverified information. People feel very compelled to share it. It’s interesting. It’s salacious. And what you see is this rumor that they’re somehow connected to Satanism begins to take off. And the challenge for them is like how to respond to it.And this was, it’s actually not the most uplifting story because what you see them do is they try to put out. Fact checks, right? They try to explain where the artwork came from. They are looping in they loop in some prominent evangelicals of the time, trying to get them to be the messenger saying, no, this is, this is not real.It comes out that actually Was it I think it was Amway, right. That one of their competitors was behind this in some way was, was actually trying to promote, it was trying to, it [01:00:00] was sending out these, these rumors was like giving it to their membership, calling people and these sorts of things they wind up suing, they wind up suing the, the people who were spreading the rumors but ultimately they do eventually abandon the logo, which is the, the sort of depressing part of the story for me which is that it speaks to, if you don’t deny it, It’s, it doesn’t go away, right?The rumor continues to, to sort of ossify and spread. If you do deny it, people aren’t necessarily going to believe you. You try to bring in your various advocates who can speak on your behalf. You aggressively sue the people who you know, who, who it turns out are, are doing this to you. And we’ve actually seen that happen more, right?Some of the election rumors dominion, of course, one that that settlement from Fox news, I think trying to, I don’t remember. I think smart Maddox yet to be decided. But you have this this challenge of how do you respond? And yeah, I, I kind of wish they’d stuck with the logo, but I don’t know that that was the, one of these sort of canonical case studies and the challenge of responding to modern rumors.[01:01:00]The covid lab leak hypothesis and how content moderation can be excessiveMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and I mean, one of the things you do talk about also a little bit is understanding that These rumors and, falsehoods that are circulated in many cases, they are based on real beliefs that are not related or real concerns that are maybe even legitimate concerns and that trying to just immediately cut off those topics from discussion, that’s not, that’s not going to be effective either because, and I think probably the best example of that is the.Is the belief that the, the SARS CoV 2 virus, was created in a, in a weapons laboratory hypothesis, like it wasn’t like when I first heard that I was like, oh, that I don’t, I would love to see the evidence for that. Like, that was my reaction for it. Yeah,Renee DiResta: I didn’t, I didn’t think it was that outrageous a claim.Right. I so the first, the first. I wrote an [01:02:00] article about this. The bio weapon, right? That it was a bio weapon was part and parcel. Like these two things emerged almost simultaneously. And I wrote about the bio weapon allegation because China made bio weapons allegations about the U. S. Even as this was happening.So I was talking about it as this, like this sort of interesting great power propaganda battle that was that was unfolding. And what was interesting was that the Chinese To support their allegation, we’re not picking from American loons, right? They were grabbing these, like these American lunatics who were like upset about Fort Detrick.Those were the people that China was pointing to saying, look, some people on the internet, some Americans on the internet are saying that COVID is a bioweapon created by the United States. And that was where they went with it. And I thought it was very interesting that our. Kind of online conspiracy theorists were split between like who had created the bioweapon.This is, this is very common. I find in conspiracy theories today. like superposition, you’re [01:03:00] like waiting for the observable thing to like collapse reality down into one state, but you have these, these sort of two conflicting explanations growing simultaneously until all of a sudden everybody forgets about one.So we do move past the idea that the U S created it and we zero in then on the On the, that China created it. And what’s interesting though, is that the lab leak doesn’t require the bioweapon component. The lab leak is the accidental release. And that I was like, okay, yeah. So it’s in the realm of the plausible, but it gets caught up in social media moderation policy.And I think that there was a huge own goal in my opinion, because I think if you are making arguments. For what kind of content should be throttled or taken down right when you, when you go through the rubric of like how the world should be moderated, if you’re making an argument that something should be throttled or taken down, particularly taken down, there’s a massive backfire effect to [01:04:00] doing it.And so the only time I think it’s justified is if there’s some really clear material harm that comes from the information being out there or viral or promoted. And so I do think something like the false cures can be done. can rise, to that level at certain times, but the lab leak hypothesis, like it was really hard to, to find a thread in which it was overtly directly harmful in a way that a lot of the other COVID narratives were.And so, I felt like it, it undermined like legitimacy. In content moderation by being something of an overreach with no discernible justification. And I, that was my I think I write this in the book, right? I just thought it was one of these things, it’s not like the others, as you look at this very long list of policies and, and and rubrics.And for that one to be in there, I think it was like, Marginally grouped in there under the allegation that saying it was a lab leak [01:05:00] was racist. And even that, I was like, I don’t know. I’m pretty center left, like , I’m not seeing it. Like where’s the, where, where are we getting this from? So that, that one I thought wasWell, orMatthew Sheffield: I mean, yeah. Or they, it was an inability to understand it. Yes, you can use that in a racist way. But the idea itself is not implicitly racist it’s just not, and, and, and they did, and Twitter did the same kind of overreach with regard to Hunter Biden’s laptop. Now I should say that I personally was involved in the back end of that, along with other reporter friends of mine thatRenee DiResta: we wereMatthew Sheffield: all trying to get that, that data when they started talking about it.Rudy’s people wouldn’t give it to anyone. Really? That’sRenee DiResta: interesting. I heard that Fox, like hadn’t Fox turned it down? That was the story that I heard about that one.Matthew Sheffield: They did also. Yeah. They refused to run it. And and then when ran a story about it. [01:06:00] The evidence that they offered for it was nonsense.It was a reassembled screenshot of a, of a, a tweet. Like, that’s basically what it was. And like, they didn’t, in other words, there was no, there was no metadata that was provided. There was nothing, there was no source of information. Of anything. It was literally just screenshots of iMessage, which anyone can make those.Like that’s not proof of anything. And the fact that Rudy was vouching for it meant probably less than zero.Renee DiResta: We didn’t work on that. I mean, it’s funny because like what, like I said, the election integrity partnership, the work that we did was looking at. Things related to voting and things related to de legitimization.And that was out of scope on all of it. So my one comment on that, my one public comment on that was actually in a conversation with Barry, with Barry Weiss. When I said as the moderation decision was unfolding, I said, I think it’s, I think it’s real overreach here. I don’t think this is the right call.It’s [01:07:00] already out there. It’s a New York Post. Article at this point, it’s not the hacked materials policy by all means, the nonconsensual nudes, like moderate those away, like a hundred percent. That is not a thing that nobody opts into that by being the child of a presidential candidate. That was, I think completely the right call was to, to remove the nudes as they begin to, to, to make their way out.But the article itself, I said, okay, this is really an overreach. What Facebook did was they temporarily throttled it. While they tried to get some corroboration of what it was, and then they let it, they let it go. Right. And that is, I think, a reasonable call compared to to where Twitter went with it.But I mean, these are the, what you see in ironically the Twitter files about this is you see the people in Twitter trying to make this decision with incomplete information. And they’re, they’re not out there saying like, man, we really need to suppress this because it will help Biden or we really need to suppress this because like, F Donald Trump, you just see them trying to, trying to make this call in a, very sort [01:08:00] of human way.So the whole thing, I thought the Twitter files, the one thing that I thought was really funny about it was the way it tied into the Twitter files was So nothing to do with us again, nothing. They decided that like Aspen Institute had held this kind of threat casting, what if there is another hack and leak in the 2020 election thinking about the hack and leak that had happened in 2016, right?The Clinton emails on the The Podesta emails and the DNC, DNC’s emails. So they were like, okay, so this is, one of the scenarios they come up with is that there is some hack and leak related to Hunter Biden and Burisma. And that was the scenario that they come up with. So this then comes to figure into the, the sort of conspiracy theory universe is like, Oh, they were pre bunking it.They knew this was going to happen. And the FBI in cahoots with Aspen in cahoots with Twitter tried to. Tried to get them to do this. And that was the that was the [01:09:00] narrative that they, that they ran with. And I thought, I wasn’t at that round table, but that, that tabletop exercise, but like scenario planning is, it’s a pretty common thing, right.Most political groups, Game out various scenarios. It was just sort of weird to me that that that became the, that there was like this, they had to come up with some cause to justify Twitter’s moderation decision instead of just reading what Twitter itself said in the moment, which is like people trying to figure out what to do and really not knowing.So come up with a whole conspiracy theory about it.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And. And, and, and I guess we, we, we should say that, if it, if they had just let it go the way, not done anything to it, that it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but like now there’s this giant mythology built around it that, the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed.And that is the reason that Joe Biden won in 2020. And it’s like, No one voted for Hunter Biden. [01:10:00] And like the idea of, presidential relatives who are screw ups, like that’s Super common. Well, that’s just, that is a thing in and of itself. You’re not voting for the relatives, but yeah, it just, so it’s again, like these are not, they’re not good faith arguments that we’re, that they’re making here.And I think we should point that out even as we do criticize Twitter for doing the wrong thing.Renee DiResta: That’s a good point. And I I don’t know what, this is one of these things where Maybe, there’s been bad faith politics before, but as I was going through, like, historical research and stuff, trying to figure out how do people respond to rumors?How do they respond to smears? That question of, like, what do you do with the bad faith attacks is one that I don’t think I’ve seen a whole lot of Like everybody is very good at documenting that they are bad faith, documenting the rumor, documenting who spreads it and how and all that other stuff.But that response [01:11:00] piece is what is still missing that sort of calm strategy. Like, how do you deal with this? Cause I know I feel when I get asked about. These, these crazy, Twitter files, b******t claims about the CIA placing me in my job. I’m like, is it even worth explaining the grain of truth underlying the fact that I once worked there 20 years ago?Or, because it, it feels so pointless when. I wonder sometimes if the appropriate responses, that’s bad faith b******t. And I’m just not going to deal with it again. If you want to read about it, go read it on the internet. I actually really don’t know at this point what the what the appropriate response strategy is.I know people think that, that, that we should know. I know we tell election officials and public health officials and things like respond quickly, get the facts out there, but that. That doesn’t necessarily. Diminish or respond to the bad faith attack. It’s simply putting out alternate information and hoping that people find it compelling.So. [01:12:00]Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, no, it is a, it’s a problem. And I mean, it’s honestly, I, I feel like the solution part, even though you do talk a little bit about it in the book that that’s probably its own. Yeah,Renee DiResta: I think so too.Matthew Sheffield: ProbablyRenee DiResta: that’s the next book I’ll go reach out to all the people who’ve been smeared and no, I think about remember the book, so you’ve been publicly shamed.That’s sort of like, gosh, when did that come out? That was that was when, remember, I think it was Justine Sacco’s her name, right? She made that AIDS joke on the plane, got off the plane and the entire world had been as Justine landed yet. That was one where I think it gets at this question of what do you do when there’s a mass attention mob, right?That’s sort of online mobbing. But that question of how do you respond to bad faith attacks? I think is of the, one of the main ones for our politics right now. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: It is. Yeah. And yeah, getting people to realize that Alex Jones was right about one thing. There is an [01:13:00] information war and only one side has been fighting it though.JD Vance couch joke illustrates real differences between left and right political ecosystemsRenee DiResta: And so, yeah, anyway, but we, uh. we started a whole conversation about Kamala and the coconuts on the couch. I know we’re like coming up on the, on the hour here, but the sort of, I, I’ve been. No. Really entertained. I have to say by, by watching that whole the the sort of instantaneous vibe shift, the JD Vance is weird as the message, not even, we’re going to go through his policies and fight them point by point, no, just like the whole thing is weird, that’s it just diminish it, brush it off, ridicule it.Maybe that’s the Maybe that’s the answer. I’ve been watching again, not because of any particular interest in, the candidacy as such, but the sort of meta question of the, the mechanics of the messaging in the race, I think are really interesting.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and yeah, the couch rumor I think is it has been illustrative of how different that each side [01:14:00] of the spectrum handles things that are jokes or memes that, on the right, they believe them.If there’s, I mean, gosh, there’s. Just so many examples of that. I mean, there was never any evidence that Barack Obama was born. Nobody ever, they didn’t even, like, I never even heard anybody talk to Kenyans, administrative, they didn’t even bother to provide evidence for it. And yet, They believed it.And, and then like the thing with JD Vance and, and his alleged proclivities for intercourse, intersectional in course, intercourse that, people on the, on the political left, they knew it wasn’t true and they said it wasn’t true, but they were just like, But we’re, we’re going to, but we’re, it’s fun and we’re going to talk about it because it fits within a larger point and this guy is a very strange individual and and like that it is, it is a flipping of the script that has just been [01:15:00] enraging because, I mean, and I think Jesse waters the, the Fox host.And actually, I guess I’ll play the, let me see if I can get the clip here so I can roll it in the show here. So yeah, like Jesse Waters, the Fox News Channel host, he was, he was outraged, almost like on the verge of tears, frankly on his program this week as we’re recording here, I’m going to roll it.Jesse Watters: They’re accusing J. D. Vance. Of having sex with a couch, not on a couch, with a couch.NoticeDemocrats: they Who’s that? And nowJesse Watters: they’re calling him weird.Democrats: I don’t think Kamala Harris is going to pick anyone as weird and creepy as J. D. Vance. Frankly, J. D.Renee DiResta: Vance. Just dumb Vance is pretty weird.Jesse Watters: It’s not just a, a, a, a weird style that he brings.It’s that this leads to weird policies. They’re just [01:16:00] weird.Democrats: Donald Trump and his weirdo running mate. More extreme, more weird, more erratic. The agenda, the way they talk. people, the way they address people, it is bizarre. And so it’s weird.Renee DiResta: It is weird.Jesse Watters: Democrats made up a story about JD Vance having sex with a couch and called him weird 150 times this weekend.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. So, and it’s, it’s funny because Not only is, is he mad that people on the left copied the Fox News business model in a parody. Like, that is literally what Fox News has done for 30 years, is traffic in things they know to be false but also present them as true. Like, you, in his montage there, he didn’t present any Democrat who said that J.D. Vance had sex with a couch. [01:17:00] Nobody said that. And so, yeah, yeah. And then, and then he, and he lied though. He said, Democrats came up with this, that they’re the ones who said JD Vance had sex with the couch. And that wasn’t true. Like he’s calling people liars. And he can’t even get his basic facts straight.Like to me, this is, you couldn’t get a better illustration of the information economies of both sides of the aisle.Renee DiResta: I was surprised that that they went for it. I was actually curious to see how he was going to respond per like our chat about how do you respond to smears and bad faith attacks and things like this?It’s not, it’s not quite the same as a bad faith attack. It’s like when you’re memed, right? It’s slightly different. process. But the but he said nothing. And that was interesting to me because that provided an opportunity for John Oliver to say, well, he didn’t deny it. Right. But then if he had denied it, then that would have been, you’re kind of damned if you do damned if you don’t.So I thought, okay, well, he’s going [01:18:00] to, I was actually waiting for him to get in on the joke. Right. That, that, to to post something sort of funny or like make himself part of it. So I’m like Ikea catalog picture or whatever, but that’s not what happened. And I thought this is really interesting.Cause it’s I, I don’t know. Generally speaking, feel like a lot of the right wing influencers are generally better at sort of flipping the script and making the meme work in their favor. But this time that wasn’t the direction it went. So it’s been interesting to see how the, how the different sides are acting in this, around this kind of stuff this time.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, it has. And I mean, and I think it also, it is illustrative also that, with, with Joe Biden out of the race and the much younger Kamala Harris in the race, that it’s. It has energized a lot of younger people who are politically left that are just like, they didn’t want to make memes for Joe Biden because.He wouldn’t understand them. And neither would his advisors. Like, even if they had made him [01:19:00] that Biden, people wouldn’t have really picked him up or in an effective way. I don’t know. So it’s definitely been kind of a, a funny break from the traditional disinformation beat. Yeah, IRenee DiResta: know. It’s the generational shift, I guess, in the, how that how that’s used, how, a younger flavor of institutionalist, if you will, is, is going to, to pivot it.So I guess we’ll see.Transparency is integral to information qualityMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, all right. So I guess uh, we’re getting to the end here. Just to go back to solutions here. There’s ultimately, I think the solutions have to be broader and more education oriented, rather than technology oriented, because these are not technology problems. These are epistemic problems. One of the things is probably going to have to be essential and you do talk about it quite a bit is, is transparency that, you know, transparency has to be done at both by the social media companies, but also by the [01:20:00] governments that people need to know what’s going on. And ultimately that’s is the source of a lot of these informational problems is that when there’s no one providing information.Then people who are making s**t up, they’re the one, they’re the only ones that are there. So they’re going to get believed in some sense, just regardless of quality.Renee DiResta: This was the interesting thing for me as the smear campaigns were starting with us and my stuff was the.Canonical comms response is like, Oh, you don’t answer. You don’t say anything. You, you wait for the news cycle to move on. I don’t think that that works in this information environment anymore. I think that the, the, that, that narrative battleground is constantly going, it’s constantly happening.And if you’re not contributing to the directly as yourself, honestly you’re, you’re missing an opportunity to [01:21:00] authentically communicate your side very directly. And, and this is where I, I think that the more top down model of institutional comms, whether it’s in, COVID or elections or, attacks or any of it, any, any of the different Things that, that I talk about in the book the idea that you kind of wait patiently for mainstream media to reach out and you give a quote, and then that is how truth is established and narratives are formed.It’s just a very old way of thinking about it.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah all right, well, we could probably do this for a lot longer, but I’m sure this is not a Joe Rogan podcast. I’m not,Renee DiResta: I’m not not going to subject everybody to three hours. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.So, but so for people who want to uh, Keep up with your stuff. What’s your recommendation?Renee DiResta: Yeah. So I am on Threads, Blue Sky and Mastodon. I have a newsletter now. I only post occasionally when I think something interesting has happened, like JD Vance and his couch. But yeah those are the, the ways [01:22:00] to, to stay in touch.Matthew Sheffield: Okay. Cool. And the book is Invisible Rulers. Oh man, I don’t have the chyron the people, I’m trying to read it off your shoulder here. Why don’t you tell us the name?Renee DiResta: Yeah.  Matthew Sheffield: Say the name of the book again so everybody will get it.Renee DiResta: It’s “Invisible Rulers. The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.”Matthew Sheffield: Okay. Well, thanks for being here again!Renee DiResta: Thanks for having me.Matthew Sheffield: All right. So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for discussion and you can always get more if you go to theory of change that show.We have the full video, audio and transcripts of all the programs and I appreciate everybody who is a paid subscribing member. You get a few bonuses now and then, and I really appreciate your support. And if you’re not able to support financially, please do give us a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever else .That’s much appreciated. 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 SummaryBy necessity, monitoring and debunking disinformation has become a much bigger part of journalism and academia in recent years, but oftentimes the important work that people are doing on these matters is missing the larger context.It is certainly worth reporting the truth when politicians, businesses, and activists lie about things. But what the public should also know is why this disinformation is being created. Almost always, it’s for political or religious reasons. And they are usually right wing reasons. Unfortunately, this is a truth that many traditionally trained journalists and academics are still loathe to admit, nine years into Donald Trump’s deceit-filled political career.One person who isn't afraid of telling the larger context of disinformation is my guest on today's episode, Samuel Spitale. He's the author of a very informative book called How to Win the War on Truth: An Illustrated Guide to How Mistruths Are Sold, Why They Stick, and How to Reclaim Reality.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* Documentary filmmaker Jen Senko on how Fox News corrupted her father’s brain* Big Tobacco pioneered the tactics used by social media misinformation creators* Right-wingers depend on disinformation and deception because their beliefs cannot win otherwise* Authoritarians think differently from others because they think truth derives from authority rather than reality* Why America’s political polarization is ultimately an epistemic problem* The economics of disinformation make it profitable and powerfulAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:20 — The influence of marketing and PR08:19 — Edward Bernays: The father of propaganda and public relations12:21 — Marketing's hidden agendas16:14 — The power of fear in media22:03 — Fast thinking vs. slow thinking25:36 — The Overton window and societal shifts30:37 — The critical myth of right-wing populism34:36 — Manufactured crises and moral panics39:19 — Censorship through noise42:16 — The danger of illusory truths52:36 — The role of values over beliefs01:01:39 — Promoting truth and critical thinkingAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.Matthew Sheffield: [00:02:00] And joining me now is Samuel Spitale. Welcome to Theory of Change.Samuel Spitale: Hi, thank you for having me.Matthew Sheffield: So your book is a book about epistemology, but it is essentially a graphic novel in a lot of ways. So how, why did you decide to choose that as a format?It makes it. More interesting.Samuel Spitale: So yeah, when I pitched the book, I kind of pitched it as two different options.It could be. Fully illustrated like a graphic novel. Or it could be more spot illustrated with just illustrations here and there. I knew I wanted a critical thinking learning tool that was a visual throughout the book and I knew I wanted a ton of charts and graphs and, other visual representations of data to show to illustrate a lot of the points.And so, Fortunately, the publisher and the agent both thought that fully illustrated was the way to go. It would be the most accessible to the widest possible audience. And the other benefit is that it could add some levity and humor. To otherwise dismal economic theory and,And humor helps the medicine go down, I guess.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, it, it definitely does keep it lighter in that regard. Yeah. All the, the cartoons. Yeah. So, so you're. What, what's your, your background in all this? Why, why did you, how did you get interested in these topics?Samuel Spitale: Sure. So my background is I went to LSU, Louisiana state university in the manship school of mass communication.And so my degrees are in advertising and media management. And then after college, I went to work for Lucasfilm and a kind of tangential space. In product development. But the older I got, the more my journalism roots and my writing roots kind of took hold. So I moved to LA to focus on storytelling and.And around 2015, a lot of my writing kind of shifted more to real world, topics. And as I guess [00:04:00] the land, the political landscape and cultural landscape begin to shift. I found myself writing more and more about real world issues and. Seeing how many people believe things that were verifiably untrue my own family and friends included that I, I kinda became fascinated with, how, how do we penetrate these barriers of belief with, public at large, but you know, people in, my own family and friends and people in my bubble as well.And so. I kind of went on this quest of figuring out all of all of the things that contribute to us being misinformed. And, my own background in media literacy and journalism obviously played a huge role. But I have an interest in psychology and sociology, which I read a ton of.And so I feel like, those all helped paint a a picture of, all of the areas that we need to be informed or educated about in order to see how we're often sold things that aren't true. And so, this became the book and yeah, hopefully it works as a critical thinking learning tool.And a primer in a lot of these areas that, the average person's just not versed in.Matthew Sheffield: Mm hmm.The influence of marketing and PRMatthew Sheffield: Well, and, and one of those concepts that you discuss in the book length in multiple sections is the idea that No one wants to believe that marketing and PR affect them. And they don't, they think, well, I'm skeptical of the media.And so therefore, I'm not susceptible to messages from others. And that's just not true of anybody.Samuel Spitale: No, completely. And I even used to think that in, in college, like, Because even in school, we were taught that advertising and journalism or journalism, but like, advertising and public relations and marketing.[00:06:00] Were taught to think of it in a very kind of narrow way, a very obvious way, like a movie trailer, or a billboard for, for whatever, for fast food, or, and those are very obvious examples of advertising. And we may or may not, be influenced by those clearly how do we find out a new movies coming out that we might want to see without advertising?Oh, look, there's a trailer, there's a movie poster. That looks like something I'd be interested in. Whether we admit that, it's the advertising part that influenced us, or if the advertising was just an information delivery system you could debate, but what I find more fascinating the older I get is how, All of these forms of, communication have kind of been manipulated for bad.And so, marketing isn't just, a new line of shoes or a new clothing store. It's, it's getting us to believe incorrectly that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Or it's, uh, it's all of these ways, I guess, political strategists and corporations have used these things in an underhanded way.Like, I mean, today I probably feel like the biggest one is global warming. Many people still don't believe in climate change or the global warming is manmade. And that's because. The oil and gas industry has basically utilized the forms of mass communication to convince us that it's still a debate or the science isn't settled.And so all of those ideas, the anti climate science messaging has all originated with the oil and gas lobby. And, it's no coincidence. They were the first ones to discover that global warming was happening and they were causing it. So, they kind of had to get in front of it. And so tracing the history of these messages or these things that we believe is always very revealing because, like [00:08:00] vaccines and autism or whatever it is.Anything that's been debunked that people think may be an equally valid point, you can usually trace the inception where that idea came from, who sold it, And who stood to benefit from us believing the nonsense.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Edward Bernays: The father of propaganda and public relationsMatthew Sheffield: Well, and one of the people who really got all that started is something that you do talk about quite a bit that I think most people have never heard of a guy named Edward Bernays. Who was he?Samuel Spitale: Yep. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. And I've always found Freud fascinating. So Freud was kind of the, the grandfather of psychoanalysis who believed that humans subconscious desires and motivations kind of drove them and explained everything about them. And Bernays basically took his insights.Into psychology and applied them to marketing and advertising or public relations. And so he used these, kind of emotional manipulation quite successfully to get Americans to buy into things that we had not before. And, the most famous example of Bernays is getting women to smoke cigarettes because women didn't used to smoke.But the cigarette companies, wanted to start selling to the other 50 percent of the population. So what Bernays did was kind of cash in on the women's rights movement and tied cigarettes to being torches of freedom. And so he had all these feminists smoke in like Easter parade. And it was a huge success and women started smoking cigarettes and then, suddenly lung cancer was an equal opportunity offender.But Bernays, he, he did a lot. He got us to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, which we didn't do. He got architects to install bookshelves into new homes so that the people would buy more [00:10:00] books cause that wasn't something that they did prior, but the publishing industry hired him and yeah, there's just no shortage of products that he, got us to consume to increase sales, but he convinced us, kind of otherwise the hairnet and as another great example, like cafeteria workers didn't use to wear hair nets.And so Bernays convinced health officials that it would be more sanitary. to wear hairnets not for sanitary reasons, but because the hairnet industry was losing sales. in the 1920s, I believe, when women were getting their hair cut into bobs. So they had less hair. So nobody was buying hair nets anymore.So yeah, it had nothing to do with being sanitary. It was all to sell more hair nets.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, and And it's important to note also that he was around before Adolf Hitler as well, and Hitler was, and Goebbels were interested in those techniques as well, and they put those into effect as well.You want to talk about that?Samuel Spitale: Yeah, I mean, they were so successful. Hitler or Goebbels, one of them had his book Propaganda, like, on their shelf, and they definitely used his techniques, the emotional manipulation. In riling people up to smear the Jews and to sell people on, the third Reich and the Nazi regime and their propaganda was so successful that propaganda basically became a bad name, bad word.It became so soiled after World War Two that Bernays and, everyone else in the industry changed the name from propaganda to public relations. very much. So they basically just renamed it, or, but it was essentially still the same. And so, it, the, the principles of propaganda live on in all of its offshoots, public relations marketing, branding publicity all of those things are still propaganda.They're all trying to sell us something. And whether that something is an idea or a belief or a pair [00:12:00] of sneakers, it's kind of all the same a political candidate foreign policy, whatever it is that's you know part of the part of looking at mass communications with a wider lens is Looking at the non physical things that can be sold through the use of propaganda.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and you even, I mean, you talk about the, the Tour de France.Marketing's hidden agendasMatthew Sheffield: I think most people don't know why that even exists. You want to just go over that real quick? I think that's an interesting little thing.Samuel Spitale: Yeah, it was a publicity stunt. It was, I think the guy's name was Henri de Grange was like a newspaperman, and so he conceived the Tour de France as a way to sell more newspapers to cover it.And then he eventually put his competitor out of business, but the Tour de France, has continued and now it probably operates more as, tourism for the country of France more than anything else. And, but yeah, so many things were conceived as marketing or advertising or publicity.The coffee break was one of those that I didn't know of until I was researching the book. But basically when the, I think was it the Roosevelt administration that passed legislation that instilled a 15 minute break in the workday after so many hours, and so coffee, the coffee manufacturers got together and decided to christen it a coffee break as opposed to a tea break or a soda break so that people would turn to coffee for caffeine.And hence we still today call it a coffee break. And that was an advertising initiative.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and, and yeah, and food has been a big yeah, food companies have been a big users of that, I think in large part, because I mean, their products are perishable, so they have to sell more of them.And people have to buy them more frequently. And and you, you talk about. I mean, just like the idea that people think bottled water is good. Like, I thought that was a great example. A lot of people don't realize that bottled water is in many cases worse for you. Or theSamuel Spitale: same, or it's just tap water that's been bottled.Or the same,Matthew Sheffield: yeah.Samuel Spitale: The yeah, the main [00:14:00] difference is, is that tap water has to go through has to pass certain standards and is regulated, whereas bottled water is not. So, and then, so we're often made to think that tap water may not be safe and examples like Flint, Michigan, become very salient in our minds and kind of reinforce that idea, even if, it's a very rare example.And so yeah bottled water I think now outsells soda which means a lot of plastic that is thrown into the ocean and is not recycled.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah And then on top of that Yeah And then on top of that also, a lot of these bottles are You know, filled with B they're made of BPA plastics and you're getting, you are getting microplastics in your blood from your water.And because you have that belief. So in some ways it could be worse for you. And obviously, everybody has different water where they live. So I'm not going to say that it's better everywhere, but. Yeah. And but you also talk about Chilean sea bass. Like, I think that's something that's one I had not heard of.That's, and it's kind of funny. Well, you want to talk about that?Samuel Spitale: Yeah, sure. So yeah, the there was a fish called tooth fish that had a very bad name. And they wanted to sell more of it. So they basically rebranded it as Chilean sea bass, even though. It's usually not fished out of the sea. It's not a bass and it doesn't come from Chile.I think everything about it is misleading.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. It's common.Samuel Spitale: Yeah. And and actually something, I don't know, I don't think it made it into the book and I may have put it in the audio book if I had room, but one of the reasons it took off is because I think it was mentioned in Jurassic park. Chilean sea bass is used or eaten or something I read or heard.IMatthew Sheffield: vaguely recall it because they have a restaurant in there. Yeah,Samuel Spitale: right. And so I, yeah, I don't remember how it's used, but apparently that coincided with a huge boom in Chilean sea bass on restaurant menus. And it was in more in demand, which is interesting. Yeah. Interesting. I don't know if [00:16:00] haven't researched it to see if.If it was just randomly put in the film or if, it was paid to put in the film or somebody did it on purpose to try to sell more sea bass, either would, neither would surprise me.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.The power of fear in mediaMatthew Sheffield: Well, and some, and obviously politics is, is one area where marketing and propaganda are heavily used.And there was a recent episode in one episode there was a recent moment where I thought it was interesting that the propaganda about bottled water and right wing propaganda came together at a conference put on by the Turning Point USA group. And there was a commentator who works for them named Alex Clark.She was pitching, A water, bottled water company called Freedom 2. 0. And I'm actually going to play the clip just so you can see it. I don't know if you, if you got a chance to see it yet, it's absolutely hilarious. Water can make aAlex Clark: statement. What if it could symbolize your commitment to values like freedom, individuality, and self reliance?Freedom to owe water isn't just about what's inside the bottle. It's about the message It sends with every sip with labels like this water isn't free, but your speech is it's not just refreshing It's rebellious and it's unapologetic to drink this in public. Can you freaking believe it? But that's where we are It's a reminder that even the most ordinary acts like Taking a sip of water can be infused with meaning and purpose by choosing to drink freedom 2 0 You're not just choosing a brand you're choosing to stand up for what you believe in try freedom 2 0 and tag me in your instagram story For repost hold on drink break Wow Wow, it's like allSamuel Spitale: yeah, it's like all ofbernay's I mean, it's not even subtextual. It is just, yeah, right. Yeah. Making all of these claims that have nothing to do with water whatsoever.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And it's funny for those who are listening that. Just wanted [00:18:00] to note for you guys that when she, when she says drink break at the end there, she actually does not drink.So, yeah. Yeah. And but, but, but, and it, it's relevant to point that out though, because I, I think people who have more reactionary political opinions, they don't understand that their viewpoints are actually almost. Like they are fed to them almost entirely. The things that they believe are not true.The things that they. Want or, or generally because of fear. And you do talk about that, the idea of using fear as a, as a, as a marketing tool as well, and that that's something that people should be aware of in the media that they look at.Samuel Spitale: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like when I'm asked what's one of the best ways to not be deceived or to recognize questionable social media posts or information is.notice when media messages appeal to your negative emotions and fear is probably at the top of the list, fear, anger. So anytime a politician or, a partisan media outlet is trying to invoke fear or anger in you, you are more than likely being manipulated. So if a politician is running on solutions to problems, for instance, so like let's use immigration as an example, if a politician is running on immigration reform and solutions to the immigration problem, then they're usually Appealing to our positive emotions and solving that problem.We need to do this. We need to do this. We need to do this but if they're only running on Fear of immigration fear of immigrants taking our jobs fear of immigrants bringing crime without proposing solutions Then they're just trying to Cash in on the problem and [00:20:00] manipulate us. So one of the best things we can do when it comes to politicians and political advertising is notice who is running on concrete policy solutions to solve our problems and who is just trying to cash in on the fear or anger over the problem.And. Right wing media is probably one of the worst defenders for fear mongering and making us hate someone because it works because fear and anger and hate trump all other emotions. So when propagandists appeal to fear, anger and hate, they're doing it very manipulatively. Because they know that if we're fearing criminals are fearing immigrants being criminals or taking our job, like those emotions will override critical thinking.And you, you see it so often these days, Fox news is one of the worst offenders too. Because. Their so called news is very fear laden. It directs anger at an adversary. It makes you fearful of people who are not like you, which means, immigrants or gay people or black people or Jewish people or whatever it is.Directing anger at an adversary. stirring up hate or resentment. All of these are red flags that you're being manipulated. They're all out of Hitler and Goebbels playbook. So be aware of when, talking heads on partisan TV or directing your fear or anger or hate at someone they're usually trying to manipulate you real journalists don't need to resort to emotional manipulation, Walter Cronkite, Edward R.Murrow, these guys were monotone and stoic and delivered information. So whenever strong, negative emotions become part of a newscaster's delivery, They're probably up to no good. [00:22:00]Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And I, yeah, I think that's right.Fast thinking vs. slow thinkingMatthew Sheffield: And one of the other kind of tools that you advise the reader about is the idea of distinguishing between fast thinking and slow thinking and that each of them has their place.In our lives, our daily lives. But if we have, if we're engaging only in fast thinking that that's not going to be helpful so what is the distinction there between fast and slow? If you could, if you'reSamuel Spitale: sure. So yeah, fast thinking and slow thinking comes from Daniel Kahneman who was a behavioral economist Nobel prize winner.And he discovered that the brain kind of operates and with two systems and ones fast think what I call fast thinking, which he did to fast thinking and slow thinking. So fast thinking is very intuitive. It's reactionary. It's emotional. It's you see a, see a red light and it means slam on the brakes.You don't have to think, it's automatic. It's an instinctual intuitive. Or you hear a rustling in the woods and think it could be a bear. So, you look for a bear. It's, I like to think of fast and slow is like Lisa Simpson, Homer Simpson. So, you, Homer Simpson is very fast thinking, like he sees doughnuts and he immediately starts drooling, he's using, he's kind of ruled by his emotions.He's not pausing to think critically about anything. He's just jumping right on in. Whereas Lisa Simpson is very reflective and considerate and she stops to analyze and. think about things more critically. And that's slow thinking, slow thinking takes time. We often don't have time to think critically about everything.We rely on shortcuts in our mental system that so we don't have to think, it makes life easier. Like the red light mean slamming on the brakes. So, but the problem with fast thinking is that, advertisers and political strategists, they're very aware of this and that's why they appeal to those negative emotions because the negative emotions Trump positive emotions, they [00:24:00] Trump critical thinking.And as long as you can, kind of appeal to our fight or flight response, which is. When you're intuitively fearing for your life, like, like the bear in the woods or a snake in the grass if you can make people afraid or angry or whatever then they don't stop to engage in critical thinking or slow thinking.And so belief, so when we, we buy into beliefs, that's usually fast thinking because beliefs circumvent thinking a belief isn't a belief is almost the opposite of thinking sometimes.Matthew Sheffield: And so it's a shortcut is basically what it's shortcut.Samuel Spitale: And if you could sell someone on a belief, then it doesn't matter what facts are.And that's often what we see happening because if that belief is then tied to anger, resentment. Hate, fear, whatever, then it makes it more, makes it stronger and more resistance, more resistant to all the facts like, in vaccines and autism is a great one. If you're, it's, it's so easy to be concerned for your kids.And if you could do something as simple as not vaccinating them, then it makes you feel like you have a little control over your life. And so the fear that a vaccine could have a damaging effect, is very powerful. Even if statistics and data and research says the opposite, that feeling is going to trump that.And so that's the danger with misinformation that feeds on those negative feelings. Easy to manipulate people in that way. I mean, that's what Hitler and Goebbels did, stirred up the negative feelings in people. They stopped thinking and they just, subscribe to those.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.The Overton window and societal shiftsMatthew Sheffield: And and, and sort of expanded to the societal concept or scale, there's this idea of what's commonly referred to as the Overton window, and I think that that's, that I think is understanding that concept a really important way of understanding why American politics is so different.[00:26:00] from other industrialized countries in terms of health care in terms of other social welfare spending and regulation of large businesses things like that What do you think?Samuel Spitale: Oh great So I guess for the overton window for people that aren't familiar with that term It describes basically the range of ideas in a society there that are acceptable at any given time so You know, like, during, Hitler and Goebbels time, fascism became a very acceptable idea.And that idea was not acceptable in the years after world war two, but we, see that it's slowly becoming an acceptable idea again, which is very scary. And I think a lot of these right wing extremist views that were previously unacceptable have been promoted and normalized in a way where the Overton window is kind of reversing and we're seeing that with.Overturning Roe v. Wade the in vitro fertilization putting Christianity like in schools, the Christian nationalism movement, all of these things have been slowly moving the Overton window backwards. And so. We're seeing a lot of a lot of things kind of regress and it's kind of scary.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and, and part of that also is the idea that. The, the pretense of balance that they demand, like that's very important to controlling how the Overton window moves. Because if you can say that every discussion has to include all, Two sides of a story then that means that discussions about Civil rights activists have to include people who are in the KKK It means that discussions about hate crimes need to include neo nazis.And we have to make sure that they're not censored, right?Samuel Spitale: Pretense, right pretense balancing I think is what they call it right and it's that global [00:28:00] warming you have a scientist on there discussing global warming. And so you threw in You Someone who you know can hold the alternate view even though there really isn't an alternate view you know makes for good television, but it does not make for a good society and so Yeah so yeah, no the overton window, we we kind of have this naive notion that you know what the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice and that Things get better with time and more equal, more free more democratic more equality, but that's not always the case.And we're really witnessing a backsliding of all of this the last 10 years. , we've seen it with the rise of populist demagogues all over the country, all over the country, all over the world. Like we just saw it with the elections and, uh, in Europe the last week.The back, the backsliding, so it's, it's a real threat and it means that I guess, the average voter, the average person can't just be disengaged and lazy because you always have to be fighting for things that improve the world or make it better. Because if you don't, then, the bad actors are going to do what they can to, hoard power and wealth.I project, I just watched the John Oliver thing earlier today. The project 2025 has bit on that and project 2025 is seriously scary. Uh, talk about democratic backsliding. It is. a unapologetic plan to dismantle democratic norms and give an elite, group of people more power and reverse the rights of, women, minorities, gaysum,Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, consumers and employees.Yeah,Samuel Spitale: everyone. It's taking power. It's very anti democratic. And so they do not want everyone to be equal. So I often think of and even, you think of politics this way, but, look at most arguments or debates or [00:30:00] policy discussions as does whatever the solution or the, the policy offered, does it give power?more power to people who already have it in the hands of a few, or does it try to make society more equal and more democratic or protect people that don't have many rights already? And a lot of the things being proposed and discussed these days are taking power away from the little people and from people that barely have any power and putting it in the hands of Yeah,The critical myth of right-wing populismMatthew Sheffield: well, and one way of doing that is that they have pushed the idea that They are populists, actually that you, you constantly see Donald Trump supporters refer to him as, he's, he's the populist president.He's the people's president. He represents the people. And what it is, though, it's a substitution. It is what you call in the book an illusory truth because basically they, they have taken, the, the original meaning of populism, which is Pushing for ideas that benefit the many against uh, you know, encroachment from wealthy people.And invert and change it from that to saying that populism, no, that's actually about. Whether you believe things that are not scientific and that you have you know If you think evolution is not true Or you think that the bible is literally true or whatever it is You have these beliefs that are unscientific and you know are unprovable and or at the very best and at worst are well, they're pretty easily disproven If you have these untrue beliefs And you want to hold on to them.That is what populism is in their minds. And so they push that to their, to the audience and they really have embraced that. It seems like,Samuel Spitale: yeah, there, yeah. I feel like the the part of populism that they've really [00:32:00] embraced is, manipulating the masses through. Through emotions, more demagoguery than yeah, populism, but you know, the appealing to the common people, but using lies and distortions and negative emotions to do so.And so because it really is the only people that are going to be rewarded with another Trump presidency, or it will be just like the first Trump presidency, only the rich and powerful, but you have to manipulate the little people in the masses in order to do that. Yeah. Because if you were to, campaign or like, oh, I'm rich and powerful and I want to give all my rich and powerful friends more money and power and screw everybody else, like nobody's gonna vote for that.So you have to lie and manipulate and how do you lie and manipulate people to vote against policies and individuals? That are not in for them And that's by lying and misleading and I feel like I've been watching that for years, but now it is just so distilledMatthew Sheffield: andSamuel Spitale: And that's probably one of the more infuriating, parts of it all is that The people that would elect Trump and vote for Trump and support him are the people that will be hurt most by his policies.And so they're, middle America, red States, they have a right to be angry. But none of the solutions that would help, help them or the economic system or their areas. are right wing policies. And that's probably the most infuriating part. Right wing policies typically only benefit the rich and powerful.Matthew Sheffield: And, and it's also that, they, they will, try to get people to blow up the importance of concerns that they might have, which, let's say they're, they might be relevant to some people. So like, if you're, a high school [00:34:00] cisgender girl, you are directly impacted to some degree, perhaps on whether transgender girls are allowed to participate in your sport, but the percentage of people that for whom that is a concern.Valid and real concern is almost zero because you, the, the percentage of people who are trans in America is about 0. 01%. And, and then, youSamuel Spitale: know, Extremely small, and the trans, extremely small, and the percentage of that that is interested in playing sports is even more miniscule. And it's right.Manufactured crises and moral panicsSamuel Spitale: It's, it's like all of the, the book banning the critical race theory, the EDI, it's all of those attacks are very planned and very orchestrated. And they all involve manipulating people and getting to believe things that are untrue for political power. And Chris Rufo is like such an instigator in chief there.It amazes me how. You have these basically, trolls on social media that can create a moral panic around a non issue and use it to wield power in a way that strips rights away from people that are Takes power away from people who already don't have much power. And removes their voice and And they have been extremely successful with it that it's scary and that's the real cancel culture going on is not um You know, it's silencing voices that have struggled to have a voice for a very long time Especially, gay and lesbian transgender minorities It's a backlash to the rights and the social awareness Of that, the demographics lack of rights.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, exactly. And it's, I mean, [00:36:00] and the reality is that even if, if every trend, trans woman or girl was playing sports and if they won all the matches, like That's not going to happen, number one, and it doesn't happen. And there's a reason that you only see specific one or two individuals who are paraded constantly in right wing media, because there aren't any other ones who are winning.They never talk about that. So, but, but let's say even if that were happening, these are children's games. That You're, you're, you're going to penalize people's daily lives based on being upset about children's games. Like it's, it is so absurd. And, and they do this with everything, like telling people that that they should be concerned about about immigrants taking their jobs when in fact the jobs left because.The companies that, that the right wing promoted outsource the jobs. They're not there to be taken in theSamuel Spitale: country or they pay so little Americans can't afford to do those jobs like crop picking. Yeah. And that's, the, the, the immigrant one is a great example because never do those politicians that claim that Ever blame or hold the companies accountable for hiring the immigrants or the day labor You know like if they were serious about solving that problem Then they would make those companies pay livable wages for the crop pickers, but we rely on that immigrant labor because it's so cheap and so but you know all of these examples are all manufactured crises that Basically a morally bankrupt political party has to create in order to move the needle because their policies do not work for the American people and they can't campaign honestly on them.And so it's all [00:38:00] manipulation tactics. So once you, can interpret things as a power play that the powerful will do whatever it takes to maintain power, then all of the bad acting is explained. Because if you don't have facts on your side, if you don't have equality or democracy or any of those things on your side, then you constantly have to create BS basically to anger people, make them fearful to exploit, and I say this as a registered independent, like it's not like, I'm from a very conservative red state.And it's it's, it's such a shame how so many cultural myths and distortions from, from right wing politics continue to work against the common people's best interest. Because we're still in the South, when I go home, it's still, the misbelief of welfare Queens.And the poverty class still believes that minorities mooching on the welfare system is enough of a reason to, dismantle social service programs when they're the ones who would benefit off of from them. And yeah, we just, we so often have the wrong arguments and the wrong discussions because of the, the bad actors making sure we're talking about the wrong things.Censorship through noiseMatthew Sheffield: yeah, well, and also it's the idea of of what Steve Bannon has called flooding the zone with s**t. Yeah, and basically putting out so much, so many falsehoods, so many things that people just They just either give up paying attention at all, or they just say, well, I don't know what truth is anymore.So I'll just believe whatever feels good.Samuel Spitale: Yeah. Political scientists call that censorship through noise. If you can flood the zone with enough noise. Then basically you're censoring, [00:40:00] the truth tellers and the, the you're censoring the facts. And so we're, we, we witnessed that all the time with, Fox news championing stories that are non existent and, right wing media, yeah, there's just so much of it.And it does, it blurs the line, it blurs the it blurs the facts because if all you're getting are the constant lies about this and that, election fraud is one, the 2020 election is one of the biggest ones right now if that's all you're getting, then, you don't know what to believe, it's it becomes an illusory truth if you hear the BS often enough, it Then it becomes top of mind and you assume, because that knowledge is readily available, even though it's not knowledge.That you assume it must be true. Like the welfare queen is another example. We've heard of welfare queens for so long. We assume that must be true. And it really never was. Welfare fraud is extremely rare. Just like voter fraud. Voter fraud is basically non existent. But because the right mentions it so often, we think it's a thing.It's not a thing. And what drives me the most when I watch the news and I see. People, you'll notice that the, the the leaders on the right, the political strategists and the talking heads on cable news will often say, Oh, this percentage of Americans think don't have faith in our elections or believe the election was whatever.They'll use that quote a lot to basically speak a lie because they can't say they know it's not true to say That the election was fraudulent or there was voter fraud. So if they convince their base that it exists, then they could then quote the majority of the base who think that and present that as if it's an issue.And it's a way to mislead without lying which drives me crazy. Like I just want one of the anchors to call them out [00:42:00] and say yes But 85 percent of your demo believes that only because you keep telling them that and that's not true So why not?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, and we know that they know it's not true because of the Dominion lawsuit that they Explicitly said behind doors.The danger of illusory truthsMatthew Sheffield: We think this is nonsense these things that trump is saying but we're going to keep saying anyway, because our viewers want to be lied to I mean that's That is the danger of society right now is the the idea of illusory truth that people they they want to be lied to and it's It's a problem completely.Samuel Spitale: You know, it reminds me of a quote that I think benjamin carter had in a book He wrote about fascism You said that basically Nazi Germany happened because a majority of its citizens deeply believed things that were verifiably untrue. And we're witnessing that like right now.And it's not just that the common people believe things that are untrue. It's that, there's a group of powerful people and their leaders that knowingly lied to them and refused to correct them. And that opportunism is dangerous. And so there's no accountability and they know that because they don't, in the old days you only had the three big, networks.And so, Nixon had to face accountability because all of the news media was holding him accountable. But we don't have that anymore. No one ever has to go on unfriendly media and be held accountable. They now choose to only go onto media that will help them continue to lie. And that is a huge problem for an informed electorate.Matthew Sheffield: It is. And and I guess the way that that happens is. I mean, it goes to a more basic [00:44:00] general human problem, which is that the person that we should be the most skeptical of is ourselves. And that, as Socrates it was famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but the problem is most people don't want to examine.Samuel Spitale: It's alsoMatthew Sheffield: scary to examine.Samuel Spitale: It is. And, our psychology basically, does not work. In favor of examining, like our brain is very resistant to changing our mind and admitting that we've been duped or misled. And that's why so often they call the, Trump's following a cult is because once you're in a cult, you cease to think critically and you just believe everything.Because if you. If you start to question one thing, then it opens the door for you to question everything. And so, our constitution basically, wants to, we, we want to save face. We don't want to admit we're wrong. And we sure as hell don't want to admit that we've been duped and suckered.And so, it's, it's going to be very hard to deprogram these people, if that ever happens. Something dramatic or drastic is going to have to happen. Like I, I do often wonder, if, if on January 6th, if Mike Pence say would have been hung or if someone, if someone of note would have died or been harmed.If that would have changed the conversation, like, that would have made it way harder to deny and to rewrite history. And what's scary is that it may take something like that, turn the tide of all of this. Because, to a large degree, there has been zero accountability for all the lies of the last eight or 10 years for the right.Yeah, forMatthew Sheffield: the [00:46:00] primary lighters. Yeah,Samuel Spitale: The primary, right. But, even, I mean, but even with Fox News, they're still around, they're still lying. So even the dominion settlement, has not made them change their stripes. And there has not been any accountability in high office, the Republican party has failed to impeach Trump at every opportunity, they have, there's just, there's a still a huge lack of accountability and it's just a shame that, it, we may have to have a replay of the 1960s before the tide changes, like, I mean, look at JFK had to die.Martin Luther King had like there, there was a lot of civil strife and a lot of The hate had to go somewhere and the hate did lots of people died before it come Well peopleMatthew Sheffield: had yeah people had to see that it was actually real and dangerous And the same thing with world war ii. I mean like that, right?Before so the World War two in the depression, those two things are what put fascism at bay in the United States for, 80 years, basically. And because people saw what happens when you believe things that are lies.Samuel Spitale: I actually just watched that Netflix, the new Netflix, docu series of Hitler and the Hitler's rights to power and the Nuremberg trials or whatever.And it was like six episodes or something. And what's interesting is, I mean, there are a lot of parallels obviously. But what's interesting is that, Hitler just kept getting emboldened. Like people would just bend over, bend over and, and it, it just made him worse.Like every time he was not held accountable. Either by his own party or the public or other countries like we're just caving. Then he just kept seeing what he could get away with and we've been watching that play out with trump and you know kind of the entire republican party. And well, andMatthew Sheffield: that's yeah And that, sorry, and that is the thing about, about, about authoritarianism.Authoritarianism requires [00:48:00] conservatism to ascent. It cannot win without it, because there aren't enough authoritarians out there with these viewpoints. They cannot win democratic elections. But if they can get, if they can steal the identity of conservatism and make conservatives think that they are at such a risk of, like this whole idea, and it's very common in sort of right wing post libertarian spaces, like Christopher Rufus, who you mentioned, like, they, they, they tell people that the woke people, they're different from the liberals who you knew before.They're, they're so much worse. They're so much more evil. They're so much more violent. They're so much more, and none of that's true. But, but what it does, the reason they say those things, and the reason that Fox, so Fox is constantly using phrases, trying to say that Democrats are communist, Democrats are, are fascist, Democrats are, Antifa, killers, zombies, Black Lives Matter, wants to blow up the cities.They, they, they use that fear as a way to create assent from conservatives. So that they can justify their authoritarian power seizures, that if you feel like the BLM Antifa super soldiers are going to murder you every time you go downtown, to deposit a check or something or go, go to lunch then.That will justify them saying, Well, then this is why we have to send the police and militarize our cities. And we need to build these camps for for unauthorized immigrants. And I mean, that's what this is about is building that assent from conservatives and conservatives need to wake up to that and understand you are being manipulated.Samuel Spitale: Yeah, absolutely. It's that the whole rejectionist voting or positive polarization, as long as you can. Smear the other side or smear your opponent or get people to hate your opponent. You don't have to s stand for anything yourselves, or [00:50:00] you don't have to reveal, you don't haveMatthew Sheffield: to offer anything.Yeah, don't have to offerSamuel Spitale: anything. You don't have to reveal what you're really up to like, and Yeah, as long as you can, direct your anger and an imaginary boogeyman. And that's right, what we're seeing, I, I always when I look at the social media posts with stuff, like the examples you gave, it's like count the ad hominem attacks,Matthew Sheffield: like,Samuel Spitale: like, you, you're on the wrong side of an issue.If you have to use six adjectives to describe how bad someone is without actually saying what they've done, like, and it's just all fear mongering, there's no truth to it. It's. Stats and data are not on their side. Just maligning people for, stirring the hate again.The appeal to negative emotions. Um, but yeah, there are so many boogeyman that the right use that most of the right actually can't even define what they are if they had to, you had to, you had the question of what is woke. What is Antifa? They probably, they definitely would have an intelligent answer, but they probably wouldn't be able to answer all.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and, and it is interesting that some of these, epistemic problems, like they existed, In the, the worldwide left when the USSR was around, out there pitching an authoritarian form of communism. And you did have people who, who really did actually had.Put it into their heads that the USSR was a humane And positive, entity that was out there for peace anti imperialist You know all this stuff and none of that was true and so That stuff kind of got burned out on the on the american left with the collapse of the soviet union But none of that nothing like that has happened with the right in the united states for them to understand that the stuff doesn't work For them.Yeah,YouSamuel Spitale: Right. And it's, yeah, I just, yeah, I don't know what, what, what it'll take [00:52:00] to to to change and deprogram such a large swath of the American public.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, it's a, it's a serious thing to be concerned about. And, but I mean, you do, at the end of the book talk about some, in the conclusions.And one of them that I think has a lot of merit is the idea of getting, getting people to excuse me, I gotta say that again. But at, but in the end of the book, you do get into some of ideas about, the methods or ideas that could be useful to counteract some of these ideas. And obviously.Good education system is obviously going to be pivotal to that.The role of values over beliefsMatthew Sheffield: Um, but another one is getting people to understand that, to think about that values are better than beliefs and that beliefs are things that can change and that there's nothing wrong with them changing. As long as you understand what it is that you want, like you should want values rather than beliefs,Samuel Spitale: right?Absolutely. Values psychologist Adam Grant, argues this and, our values are our core principles, whether that's fairness or altruism or honesty or integrity. And, we should be basing our identity on our values and those kind of principles as opposed to, our tribal loyalty or our belief.Because our beliefs can very often be wrong, but, if you value, life, for instance, if you're pro life and you really value life, then, what are the policies that prove that? And, restricting healthcare or abortion access isn't really one of those policies. Like, and, if you're pro life, Then that means you should be, you should support then universal health care or free childcare or a strong social safety net.That would encourage, people to have more Children. It would be that's the number.Matthew Sheffield: That's the number one [00:54:00] reason they don't because they can't afford to. Right. That is the number one reason.Samuel Spitale: And it's just so, like I, the pro life or pro choice debate is to me one of the most infuriating because when you What I'd like to say is, okay, you want to make abortion illegal.How does that solve the problem of abortion? Because regardless of it's legal or illegal, abortion statistics are virtually the same across countries that are legal or illegal. So you're not stopping abortions. You're just making it unsafe and dangerous. And, we know what would, what would lead to fewer abortions, birth control, free contraceptives.A strong social safety net, a stronger less inequality. So thatMatthew Sheffield: sex education,Samuel Spitale: sex education, poverty stricken, having a chance at a better life because the majority of babies that are aborted or in the poverty class, and like the free economics guys point out that. When you restrict abortion access, then the poor who won't be able to have an underground abortion as easily as the middle class and the upper class, then they'll have more babies and those babies will be trapped in intergenerational poverty.So the parents will earn less money and the on and those children will grow up unwanted and unloved, which means they'll have more psychiatric disorders. And they'll turn to crime if they're in a poverty, poverty stricken area. So more unwanted children means more crime, more societal damage down the line.And so, again, our values, do we, if we value life, then what are we going to do to protect life? And and it's, but it's, it's not really what it's about. Pro life is just a marketing slogan, it's branding,Matthew Sheffield: For controlling women.Samuel Spitale: For controlling women, and that's what it's always about.Yeah. I just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Well, and another example, though, about, just to go back to the values [00:56:00] of why people should think about that is that when went back when there was the controversy of. Whether there should be same sex marriage The most common talking point against it was to say that you will destroy the institution of marriage If you allow people of the same sex to get married and So that hasn't happened Yeah, it it and and the intervening years have proven that that's not the case at all and in fact that if you Want to support families and you want to help society be more stable Then you should allow more people to get married.It's good for society if you just you say YouSamuel Spitale: know, it's right and which that argument always struck me as just ludicrous But it also infuriated me when I would hear them talk on the news and you'd have two people arguing why no one ever said, well, Canada did it years ago. How has it destroyed the sanctity of marriage in Canada?Like, like I, the questions I would want to say. To put them on the spot. No one ever says but right. It had been legal in many countries and, it didn't change anything.With gay couple getting married in no way will affect anyone else. Period. Like, does your marriage affect anyone else?Like, yeah, it's just so ludicrous. But it's an excuse for hate because. So many things are power and hate and yeah,Matthew Sheffield: but you, you, you did highlight another thing that I think is also important. And that is so authoritarianism requires the, the tacit endorsement or sometimes endorsement of in tacit or, or explicit the endorsement of conservatives.But it also requires people who are in the center to left to give them undue respect and to do what you were saying, to not actually force them to say what they want and to not, and to never make them actually come [00:58:00] confront things that they don't think about. That doesn't happen. Like when you, when you go on, look at these news shows on cable TV or, the Sunday political shows.The debates that they have are not debates. They're not, they basically are, somebody gets to state their opinion and then someone, and then the host says, okay, now let's hear someone else's opinion.Samuel Spitale: Now you read yourMatthew Sheffield: point preSamuel Spitale: prepared. Yeah. It's yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Samuel Spitale: Drives me crazy. That it's probably my, I mean, when I watch CNN, that's probably my biggest complaint is that, you have the two political pundits.Each basically just, reading their talking points pre approved by their party. And it's like, I don't need to hear either of those. We know it like, like again, if I, if I was the journalist having the panel, I would only have the experts, like if we're debating climate policy or something, like, why do you give a s**t what either political party's doing?You only need the climate scientists there. Like, your job is to relate information to the viewer. And the political pundits are not relaying information. They're just giving you their opinions and, creating the pretense of balance when one may be lying through their teeth and the other one's just, creating excuses for their incompetence.Yeah, I just, the, the entire that idea of just letting, two sides debate and spread lies drives me crazy. Because they don't andMatthew Sheffield: the fact that, yeah, and, and like they don't so George Conway, the, the former Republican legal activist, he, he's a CNN commentator and he won recently called out one of the people that he was talking to you, he said, you're, you're just flat out lying.That is a lie, what you just said, and the, the anchor who was there in that discussion and we'll, we'll play the clip for the audience so they can hear it. But. The anchor was angry at him for saying something that everyone knew was correct. That this [01:00:00] guy who was there was, was lying and that he wasn't acting in good faith.But, and, but, so that's part of why the authoritarianism is metastasizing so much is that the people who try to cloak it in sort of reasonable terms Are never confronted about it and the people and so as a result the people who share those views They never are confronted by them either. And so they have this this you know these these alternative facts as his now ex wife Kellyanne Conway famously said or what you call in the book, the, these illusory truths, that cutting, cutting taxes increases revenue or that transgender people are coming after cisgender people.Like none of these things are true, but in, unless you make the proponents confront reality, then they're just going to continue spreading lies and people will continue to believe it because. They don't see it like in the right wing media as you said, you know They never are they're not interested at all in fair and balanced presentation.They're not interested in debates They don't ever book anyone who disagrees with them on their programs And then at the same time they demand that the all the other shows book them So so it's a completely completely one sided presentation of, of, of, of, of discussion and it's got to, it's got to stop.Yeah,Samuel Spitale: it's a bit, it's a propaganda outlet. Like it's telling people what to believe and what to think. And not giving them the tools or information to think for themselves.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, exactly all right.Promoting truth and educationMatthew Sheffield: Well, so this has been a good discussion So for people who want to check out the book and keep up with you.What's your recommendations for them?Samuel Spitale: Yeah, yeah So the book is called How to Win the War on Truth: An Illustrated Guide to How Mistruths Are Sold, Why They Stick, and How to Reclaim Reality. And my website is samuelcspitale.com and I actually just started an educational [01:02:00] YouTube channel that is at How to Win the War on Truth, where I basically take a different topic and kind of, debunk the misinformation and clarify things. So, yeah, hit me up on any of those and check out the book. Matthew Sheffield: SAll right, sAll right, sounds good. Thanks for being here.Samuel Spitale: Thanks for having me.Matthew Sheffield: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And of course, you can always get more episodes. If you go to theoryofchange.show, you can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes of this program.So thank you very much and I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryIt's just over three months before Election Day and President Joe Biden is behind his Republican opponent, Donald Trump, in most public opinion polls. One of the biggest reasons this is happening is that Biden seems to be getting much less than the 85 percent support from Black Americans that Democrats typically do. Just how much less support is difficult to say, however, because most polls don’t have enough African-American respondents to draw meaningful conclusions. But there have been some that have. In a survey conducted last month by Suffolk University in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, only 56 percent of Black registered voters picked Biden.There is also a generational divide to the discontent. In April, the Pew Research Center found that 84% of Black registered voters ages 50 and up said they’d vote for Biden if the election were held today, while only 68 percent who were 49 and younger said the same.In a May national survey conducted by the University of Chicago, 23 percent of black adults between 18 and 40 said they would vote for Trump. 33% picked Biden, while 25 percent said they’d vote for “someone else.”Undoubtedly, much of the problem that Biden seems to be facing stems from his advanced age. He is the oldest person to ever hold the office of president, and Americans of all races and parties have expressed concerns about this for many years.But almost certainly, there are some other factors in the mix. After ignoring Black voters for decades, the Republican party has been putting forward black entertainers who like Trump. And there are more than a handful who do, most prominently Amber Rose, who spoke at the Republican National Convention on July 15.There’s also the question of whether Trump’s macho personality and sexist treatment of women might be making him appealing to men who have marinated in pop culture products that frequently degrade and insult women.We’ll see how things shake out in November whether Trump gets a higher percentage of the Black vote than a typical Republican, but he can still succeed by getting enough African-Americans to stay home instead of voting for Biden. In the meantime, I wanted to bring in my friend Jamilah Lemieux to discuss all this. She is a podcaster at Slate and a writer who has published extensively on Black culture and politics, including a recent piece at Vanity Fair on misogyny and hip-hop. Besides at her Substack, you can find her on Instagram and Twitter.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. Cover photo: Model Amber Rose speaks at the Republican National Convention in praise of Donald Trump. July 15, 2024. Image via screenshot.Flux is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* Doja Cat and the lies we tell ourselves about sex and race* How Black churches and independent media have energized African-Americans against right-wing extremism* Republicans seem to have no idea why most Black people don’t like them 🔒* How far-right Northern Republicans remade the party in the image of Confederate Christianity* Many Black Americans don’t like Democrats, but they loathe Republicans even more, how long can this last?* Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, and toxic gravitation🔒* The attacks on Claudine Gay were part of the right wing’s 60-year war on education and racial equalityAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction04:41 — Trump’s outreach to black men07:14 — Donald Trump and hip-hop11:01 — Amber Rose at the RNC15:40 — Is there a connection between misogyny in hip-hop and Trump support?19:47 — Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake and the dilemma of female rap fans27:38 — Black Americans and the Christian Right29:33 — Joe Biden seems to be partnering less with Black celebrities than Donald Trump33:26 — Comparing Kamala Harris and Barack Obama36:43 — Democrats haven’t realized that their voters want positive motivation45:56 — Kamala Harris as the potential Democratic nominee51:29 — Concluding thoughts and future outlookAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.Matthew Sheffield: There’s been so much happening in the political world lately, and one of the things is Joe Biden’s favorability among Black Americans. It’s lower at this point in time than past Democratic presidential candidates. Do you think that Trump’s going to improve his numbers significantly from 2020 among Black people?Jamilah Lemieux: I don’t know if Trump is going to improve his numbers with Black people significantly, but I do expect it. I expect that they’ll improve this time around.The GOP has been making a big push for Black men since the last [00:05:00] election. Once the DNC really started embracing Black women, talking about listening to Black women, trust Black women are this important voter block I think the RNC saw an opportunity to speak to Black men. And I think there were Black men who were turned off by the Democrats focusing on Black women specifically, even though we are worthy of that attention and have earned that attention as such a tremendously loyal voting block Black men are not far behind us, but they are behind us. But I’ve seen a lot of. Right wing propaganda making its way around online hip-hop spaces and being promoted by Black male influencers.I, see them spreading pro-Trump ideology on Twitter. And I don’t doubt that some of these guys are getting checks. They’re being paid by, by PACs, by whomever [00:06:00] to promote. Republican ideas to Black audiences, particularly, Black audiences that aren’t super educated.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And another way that they’re making some of this marketing approach also I think is, using religion and using that as a tool. Because I mean, a lot of Black Americans are the most religious and most Christian demographic with lots of fundamentalist viewpoints, right? That’s got to be effective for some people.Jamilah Lemieux: Yes, but interestingly enough, Black women are far more religious than Black men. But Black women have historically been able to vote their interests as opposed to just voting with their Bibles. So, I am curious to see how many religious Black men are converted by these attempts to court them.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, of course, I mean, it’s something that they’ve done for a little [00:07:00] while, prominently with Ben Carson and his idiocy. Man, yeah, he because I mean, he’s been riding that gravy train for decades of, trying to be the pious guy that needs your money.Rappers and Trump’s influenceMatthew Sheffield: And then of course, they’re also, the Republicans are also making a lot of Outreach using entertainers who are Black.Yeah. Using entertainers who are Black, particularly. Rappers. And I mean, there’s, like nobody who’s really currently that big in hip hop is out there, shilling for Trump but still, some of the, past ones are you want to like, like the, I, for people don’t know, like, for instance, Trump did an appearance in New Jersey a little while ago with some rappers That I don’t it didn’t get as much attention as it should have, I think, because it was really revealing.Jamilah Lemieux: I think it’s because the rappers were just not that well known. I [00:08:00] think if people knew who these guys were. I don’t remember their names. Like, I don’t even know who does. I didn’t know who those guys were prior to that event.Matthew Sheffield: They’re guys who are, basically live in the New York area. And one guy calls himself Sheff G. He apparently has millions of YouTube views and Spotify streams, but he also is the central figure in a gang case that the Brooklyn district attorney started prosecuting. And he has been sentenced for weapons possession.And then the other rapper who was there with Trump is this other guy who goes by Sleepy Hollow. He’s got lots of Spotify fans and he’s also in the gang case as well. And Trump was out there, he had them on stage and introduced them to everybody. And it’s very bizarre seeing Republicans trying to have it both ways. Don’t you think?Jamilah Lemieux: Absolutely.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. [00:09:00] Oh, you’re looking something up.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. I was just thinking about Trump pardoning Kodak Black and Little Wayne and why that might be part of the reason that these rappers are willing to be around him. There have been rappers in Trump’s orbit for a very long time. I mean, once upon a time Trump might have popped up in a rap video, like a lot of rappers were impressed by his wealth, by his alleged business acumen and his lifestyle, right? So, like Trump was name dropped in a whole lot of rap records, I think of songs by Wu-Tang that mentioned him.But like. More recently, I think of little Wayne and Kodak Black who received presidential pardons on President Trump’s last day in office both related to gun charges. And I suspect that some of the rappers who are willing to be in his orbit now are looking for something similar to happen for them or perhaps [00:10:00] for some of their friends.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have to think so. And I mean, that is apparently how Kanye West got to know Trump initially when he was the president. That he, when he was married to Kim Kardashian, that she was involved in trying to get some pardons for various people. And so, she reached out to the Trump White House, and he tagged along.And that was when Kanye decided he loved Trump and loved Republicans. Not too, many years after saying George Bush doesn’t care about Black people. And, but yeah, but even like, he’s another example of the religious fundamentalism stuff, like, I mean, that guy’s religious viewpoints are.Completely nuts. He, he thinks he’s a prophet. He talks to Jesus daily. I’ve got a continuous stream of conversation with God in his brain.Amber Rose at the RNCMatthew Sheffield: And then Trump’s also been making some other [00:11:00] overtures, not just with Black men, but also with Amber Rose, who you have interviewed in the past. You want to talk about her for people who don’t know who she is, maybe give us a little intro first.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah, Amber Rose is a model, socialite, and influencer who came to notoriety because she was once Kanye West’s girlfriend. And she made a name for herself outside of that. She briefly got involved with some pro women’s activism champing against slut shaming, being outspoken about abortion rights and reproductive justice.But I think that And Amber, who identifies as mixed race and could be considered White passing, I don’t think that appealing to her was an attempt to get Black women. I think getting Amber Rose was about getting Black men. I think it was about her being an object of desirability for Black men and the GOP thinking that Black men are [00:12:00] so dull witted, that a pretty woman can charm them into changing their vote or casting a vote when they wouldn’t have.Cast one in the first place.Matthew Sheffield: And so, she gave a speech at the Republican national convention last night. And here’s a little piece from it where she’s getting cheered on from the stage.Amber Rose: I realized Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, White, gay, or straight, it’s all love.And that’s when it hit me. These are my people. This is where I belong.Matthew Sheffield: And there it is. So, yeah, and she, did [00:13:00] typical kind of Black Republican tropes in her speech a lot. But I mean, what was your reaction when you heard that she was speaking there besides the fact that you think they are Black men, like, like, I mean, you had talked to her before, like you have spoken to her years ago.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. I think Amber is the grifter. This makes me call into question everything I believe that she stood for in the past with regard to women’s rights. I think she’s found a hustle. I think that was the hustle for her in the past. Now she’s onto a new hustle that pays a little bit better.I don’t think Amber Rose would have ever stood on a stage the size of the Republican National Convention had she not been there. She would never have a platform like this if she wasn’t doing what she’s doing by attaching herself to MAGA.She’s an attention seeker. She’s been good at keeping herself in the public eye for all these years without having a discernible talent. [00:14:00] She doesn’t do that much modeling at this point. Like, it’s not like you see her on the runway or in a print magazine anywhere. She’s kind of famous for being famous, sort of like the Kardashians, but she doesn’t have skims or a Kylie beauty, you know what I mean?So what was she going to sell? She’s selling herself.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And she tried to be a rapper but it was, So completely a nonevent that I think a lot of people don’t even remember that it happened. And I never listened to it, and I don’t know anybody who has except maybe for journalistic purposes.So yeah, like and that’s, buttressing your point, people didn’t like what she was doing necessarily, because she wasn’t really doing anything. And she wasn’t, getting model contracts for whatever reason. And so, the Republicans will always welcome a person who is going to sell out to them.Jamilah Lemieux: [00:15:00] Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: And at the same time though, it just, it seems so completely insincere. I mean, Matt Walsh, the extremist Christian commentator over at the Daily Wire, he got angry that she was allowed to speak there. He says on Twitter, he made a tweet that said: “The RNC gives a prime time speaking slot to a pro-abortion feminist and self-proclaimed slut with a face tattoo whose only claim to fame is having sex with a rapper. Truly an embarrassment. Not a single voter will be mobilized by this person.”Is he right on that last point?Jamilah Lemieux: I think he is. I think he is.Is there a connection between misogyny in hip-hop and Trump support?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, okay. So, and it’s still up in the air as we’re recording but there are some rumors that 50 Cent, he may make an appearance at the convention as well.On Monday when Trump came out to bask in the applause he came out to one of 50s [00:16:00] songs, one of his more famous ones. Like, I mean, but he’s always been kind of a Republican over the years. Right.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. 50 is very conservative and would fit right in with the Republican party.Matthew Sheffield: Well, and, I mean, and, like, as you were to go back to what you were saying about, Trump, he was named check quite a bit, especially in the mid-2010s by a lot of rappers and maybe, and obviously that’s probably in conjunction with the apprentice.I’m sure that’s related to it as well. But this is something that you have been writing about recently, this idea of, the, I mean, just the inherent sexism in so much of rap music, then like there’s some affinity with Trump and his macho and well, he’s an adjudicated rapist, we can say that and his, the way that he treats women and abuses them.I mean, that’s [00:17:00] probably another point of affinity. But yeah,Jamilah Lemieux: I think that misogyny is really what connects Black men and White men through hip hop, like, I think that White men who didn’t grow up in the inner city around gangs, around street violence can’t necessarily relate to that part of the music.But they can relate to hating women, right? They can relate to thinking of women as b*****s and hoes. Same as, middle class Black guys who didn’t grow up around street violence or who are, somewhat insulated from that connect with hip hop because of the misogyny, because of the way it’s structured.Speaks about women and to women. And I think that Trump’s treatment of women appeals to, a lot of men, Black, White, and otherwise, to feel disenfranchised by feminism, who blamed the gains that women have made in society for their own [00:18:00] shortcomings. Who would like to see us get, quote unquote, back to a time where women knew their place.His sexism is certainly a selling point.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And to your point, like the trans racial appeal. With the misogyny and sexism, I mean, like that, was the original stick of Eminem, the, biggest well, at least I guess for a while, the biggest White rapper. He was a guy who didn’t have any of those impoverished experiences, so he couldn’t really talk about that, but the thing he did talk about was how he was going to kill and murder various women in his life.Especially his mom. And I mean, I remember when I, and I was a Republican when he came out, but I was like, holy s**t. I cannot believe people are listening to this stuff. It’s awful. And, but yeah, like I think that, that type of stuff, it did. implant in a lot of men’s minds. Unfortunately, that it made them, it groomed them for somebody like Trump to come [00:19:00] in the political world.Jamilah Lemieux: I think what’s interesting about Eminem is that he at one point was one of the few rappers who had the courage to call Trump out and he just really, he released a new album last week and I haven’t heard anything about anti Trump lyrics. I’ve heard. Awful things he said about women, including women who’ve been victims of domestic violence, but nothing about him coming after Trump, which I find to be very interesting, particularly in this moment in history.What happened to that courage? What happened to that part of him that felt that was something he needed to speak out against. He’s just doubling down on the same old misogyny and violence towards women. He’s, stood for his whole career, basically.Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake and the rise of women rappersMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and it’s like, and I mean, and, you wrote a piece recently for Vanity Fair where, you talk about, your perspective on all this stuff and on hip hop as a female [00:20:00] fan and how they don’t really care about it, but there was kind of a little bit of an exception sort of recently with Kendrick Lamar.You want to kind of unwrap that for people who weren’t following that?Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. Kendrick Lamar and Drake have been embroiled in a very public rap beef after years of taking shots at each other, it exploded down into about six diss tracks between the two of them. And on Kendrick’s end, he’s accused Drake of being a misogynist.He called him a misogynist. He said, I don’t think you like women. He’s accused him of not liking Black women specifically. And he’s accused him of having inappropriate relationships with women. with girls, with underage girls, so, in response, Drake has claimed that Kendrick abuses his wife. So, it’s really kind of [00:21:00] fascinating and women have often been at the center of hip hop beefs, like Jay Z and Nas, their beef begins because Jay Z has a with the mother of Nas’s child.But like this time around, we’re seeing women and girls be defended. That’s something that mainstream hip hop music, by men has not done right. If there’s one single record Tupac’s keep your head up, which is, dedicated to Black women and talks about how they’re mistreated within the community.But other than that, rap is never telling you to treat women better or saying that there’s anything wrong with treating women poorly. So, it’s been interesting to hear these two guys say, essentially it’s not cool to take advantage of underage girls. It’s not cool to abuse your wife.It’s not cool to hate women, but you know, women are just fodder for this beef between them, right? Because if Drake and [00:22:00] Kendrick didn’t have an issue with each other, Kendrick would have known about Drake being in the underage girls and he never would have said anything about it, right? He’d have just kept it to himself if he thought he was a cool guy.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And you wrote about your own kind of perspective on that as a Black woman fan of hip-hop. And I mean, like, that’s how much of a discussion have you had about that just continual disrespect that women have been receiving in the genre with other women? Like, how does that feel for you guys?Jamilah Lemieux: I mean, it’s a conversation I’ve been having since I was 11 or 12 years old. The first article I ever had published when I was 16 was called misogyny and hip hop, and it talked about Eminem, who is so, still than a relatively new artist and has talked about the ways that other men in hip hop have historically spoken about women.It’s incredibly hurtful. It’s [00:23:00] one of the most popular genres of music on the planet. And in the article, I attempted to list every accusation of violence against women. Against the rapper that I could find. There were a lot of them that I remembered and knew. There are a lot of them that I discovered during my research, and there were a few that I remembered after the article was published.Like, oh, I forgot about this. Oh, I forgot about that because there’s so many of them. Right? And so I think it’s important to recognize that the violence against women that can be heard in hip hop records doesn’t just stay on wax, it’s not just for entertainment. It’s reflected in how these men treat women and, their day to day lives, right?Like we’re getting all these stories about Puffy since the spate of lawsuits against him late last year, including six rape allegations instances of Putting his hands on women. There’s a video that circulated of him [00:24:00] beating his former girlfriend, Cassie, and stomping her out.Hip hop has the violence against women pro problem, and that’s not to say that other genres of music don’t have artists that are violent towards women, but they’re not generally singing about it. Right. And so like, it’s not as central to the culture as violence against women is central to hip hop culture.Matthew Sheffield: Well, and like you wrote about, having to kind of switch off part of your brain to listen to the song. And I mean, that’s an awful thing to have to do. The whole point of music is to experience it with all of yourself, if you really want to get into it, right?But you can’t do that. We’ve had this—I raised this point with you in a text, but like, is it, there’s maybe some possibility, do you think that the fact that there have been a lot more female performers coming out and really topping the charts lately that.Maybe [00:25:00] it has woken people up to some degree to be like, Oh, well, maybe we can not be anti female all the time and stand up for women being mistreated once in a while. I don’t know. I mean, what did you think?Jamilah Lemieux: No, I haven’t seen the rise of women rappers have that sort of impact on hip hop yet.I haven’t seen it. challenge male rappers to speak differently about women or think differently about them. They’re making the same music they’ve been making for the past 30 years. Women are objects to be used and discarded. Um, I’d like to think that as women rappers continue to dominate.Matthew Sheffield: They absolutely have like, I mean, they are just kicking the men’s asses.Jamilah Lemieux: Some of them are, but I think there’s still a long way to go. I think what really has to happen and I’ve been waiting for this my whole life and I’m hoping that maybe Gen Z can take this [00:26:00] up because my generation wasn’t able to do it and Gen X certainly didn’t do it. But I think it’s going to take some pushback from the listeners.I think the women who are, 50 percent of the hip hop buying audience, if not more, are going to have to say, we’re no longer listening to records that dehumanize us. We’re not interested in records that make light of violence against us. And we’re not interested in rappers who, participate in actual acts of violence against women.Right. So. In the past couple of years, there was the case of Tory Lanez and Megan Thee Stallion. Tory Lanez is a rapper and singer from Toronto who shot Megan Thee Stallion, who’s a superstar rapper, in the foot in 2020. And his story Star Rose after this, he had more fans. There are people that are, dedicated [00:27:00] to conspiracy theories that he didn’t actually shoot her, that she lied that this is some sort of—Matthew Sheffield: —It was all fake.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah, this is all fake, and so like that to me says a lot about where we, very much still are, and that we have a really long way to go. Relates to making hip hop a safer space for women, because Megan is beautiful, rich, famous, talented, right? And still was able to fall victim to the sort of campaign of harassment that accompanied being shot by a man. That says a lot about the listening audience.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, no, it does and not good things, unfortunately.Black Americans and the Christian RightMatthew Sheffield: But just kind of going back maybe to the bigger picture on my podcast, I have talked with historians and political theorists and whatnot. And, like the emerging consensus among a lot of, people is that, yeah, that, in the past, the, American reactionary who control the Republican party, [00:28:00] they were more religiously organized and racially organized, in their earlier years.But now that as the percentage of people who are Hispanic or Asian or Black has, is a lot higher among younger generations, and they’re also not religious They’re having to use sexism as a, as kind of their sort of glue to hold the coalition together in a lot of ways. And, and I think he really, Trump is, he is the perfect embodiment of that, I think in so many ways.But I mean, what do you think about, do you think JD Vance is relevant in that context as well? What do you think?Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. I mean, he’s notoriously sexist. He opposes abortion, even in the Cape. In case of rape and incest, there was a very deliberate decision made with that selection of a VP, this was not something that was done to court women who might be on the [00:29:00] fence about Trump. This was a call to men.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, I think so. And yeah, and like, then all these laws that have been passed subsequently, regarding abortion and have made clear that these are not pro life laws. These are laws about controlling women and about controlling girls and, and like, that’s what the actual point is more than anything else.Oh, I said it too good, huh? Okay. Well, yeah, okay.Joe Biden seems to be partnering less with Black celebrities than Donald TrumpMatthew Sheffield: but, at the same time, though, while all these movements are going on toward, the Republican Party among at least, and we’ll, see how it ends up being, but there is a paradox that, there are a lot of Black celebrities out there who do not like Trump and are, would love to speak out against him, but they need somebody to, help them because they’re not super political.They know they’re not writers or whatever, so [00:30:00] like they need help having the right words to say about it. Cause not everybody’s a political junkie out there because they’re busy and they got stuff going on. You’re not, everybody can be. Taraji Henson calling out Project 2025 at the BET award.But I, the Biden campaign has been really lackluster in this regard. I feel like, what do you think?Jamilah Lemieux: I do think the Biden campaign has failed to effectively engage Black influencers of all sorts, meaning people who are strictly online influencers. Celebrities, athletes, entertainers, but I will say this something my mom points out often is that like, it’s not the celebrities don’t play a part in political life in this country because they do like we’ve obviously elected to celebrity presidents at this point we’ve elected celebrities governors, both Republican.But when it comes to Black people in particular. Celebrities are often looked at to be [00:31:00] spokespeople for the race in a way that I think is somewhat unfair, like they don’t necessarily have the credentials of a Mark Lamont Hill, right, or Joanne Reed, but they’re given these platforms because they’re famous.But, I do think that the Biden campaign, should have made some inroads with some of those folks. I mean, I think the Biden campaign should have tried to build a relationship with Taylor Swift, and I don’t know if they attempted that and were just shut down, but it just seems that there are a lot of spaces in which people could be surrogates for the party.And they’re just not being invited, to participate in any meaningful way.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. And like, and I think that’s something, for people who are extremely pro Biden and, they want him to stay on the ticket, come hill or high water, I think that they, don’t understand White that when people are talking about replacing him, it’s not just about, whatever perception, what people might have of [00:32:00] Biden himself and how he conducts himself.But it’s also the people that he hires and just the, antiquated style of doing things, like they think that showing up and, doing unveiling I don’t know, some manufacturing plant or whatever, like that’s. a campaign a bit, and they’ve checked the box and they don’t have to do anything.And then meanwhile, Trump’s going on all the, a zillion podcasts and hanging out with Amber Rose or whatever, like that’s, those are the sorts of things that, or going to WWE events or UFC, like Biden doesn’t do. Any equivalent of that. He’s nowhere to be seen in any of these adjacent events.And the reality is that, that when you look at the polls, that the people who are the least engaged and the least informed, They’re going for Trump because the Biden people have nothing to say to them. And that’s, a real problem.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. I mean, I think this is a long time failure of the Democratic [00:33:00] party post Obama to reach voters where they are.I think about the spaces that Hillary Clinton wasn’t in that she should have been in, I think about how Kamala Harris could be used as a surrogate in ways that she just simply is not, and when she does, she shows up and shows out. Right. But we’re not, I think she should have been at the BET awards.Matthew Sheffield: That’s a good point. That’s a good point. Yeah.Comparing Kamala Harris and Barack ObamaMatthew Sheffield: And like, and, speaking of her though, I think that the, the, there, the way that they’ve used her or rather not used her is just been ridiculous. I mean, she, you can say maybe she’s not the most charismatic person in the world, but who is.necessarily, right? She’s good enough. And they don’t, they’re not putting her out there in a lot of places. And then at the same time that, people will turn around and be like, Oh, well, people don’t like her. And it’s like, well, they never actually heard her say anything. Do you think that’s my [00:34:00] thought onJamilah Lemieux: it?It’s really interesting, The Obama elections were such a case study in branding, like how a well branded product can basically sell itself, they were pioneers in social media marketing when it came to Obama, just the graphics and the image, and we were, given this look at Barack as somebody very cool.And I would imagine that Obama probably hasn’t been the coolest dude in the room his whole life, I think that’s something that came to him a little bit later in his story, but we, meet him is this very cool debonair down earth guy who can talk to basketball players who can talk to families.I think about how his wife was rebranded, the makeover that she got. Once she got into the White House, she started wearing the high end and low end dresses, like one day she’s in Proenza and the next day she’s wearing like 150 dress from White House, Black [00:35:00] market, and everybody’s talking about it and Kamala, I think needed that too.And I understand that she’s an elected official and is to be taken with a level of seriousness. The. Perhaps the first lady is not, but I think that we needed a repackaged Kamala, one who was a little bit more relatable. One who was cool, charmer and cooler. Excuse me, more charming and cooler.And I hate to say that because when we’re talking about, the fate of the world, essentially or the nation, we shouldn’t be talking about charisma. But we do know that and who’s cool, but we know that does, impacts how people vote in elections. I mean, Trump for his supporters is cool, he’s somebody that they’d want to have a drink with.He’s somebody. Who they aspire to be like, and the Democrats haven’t sold us somebody aspirational in a long time.Matthew Sheffield: [00:36:00] Yeah, no, that’s a great point. Yeah. Like, I mean, they admire Trump for having sex with Stormy Daniels. I think a lot of them, even though he continues to lie about it. But yeah, like they think that’s, that’s an admiral thing that he did and they love that, he’s had all kinds of affairs and whatnot.Yeah, like for, and, and apparently some of the women feel that way about him as well, like there’s I mean, there, so there’s some of these notorious pictures of, Trump supporting women at his rallies, having signs that say he can grab my pussy things like that. You’ve seen those, right?Yeah. And so like, I mean, yeah, like, but Democrats, they didn’t, I don’t think they learned anything from Obama. Oh, wait, I really don’t think they did or not very much.Democrats haven’t realized that their voters want positive motivationMatthew Sheffield: and it’s a real shame because, like, I think in a lot of ways they haven’t understood that the Democratic electorate.To your point about, inspiring and whatnot. Like the Democratic electorate is fundamentally different than the [00:37:00] Republican electorate. The Republican electorate is motivated by negative things. Like, they think that the world is ending, they think that everybody’s going to be gay any minute now, they think that they’re not, and then the next day they’re going to be, everybody’s going to be trans.And. No one, everyone hates America and is smoking weed. Like that’s, what they think. They really believe this stuff. And everybody’s going to be an atheist, Black Lives Matter, Antifa activists by the end of it. And they’re going to burn down their house. Like. That’s what the Republican electorate thinks about America.They hate America. They hate their fellow Americans. And, but the Democratic electorate, the people who vote Democratic, they want something better. They want to have a better life for themselves and their family and their community. And they want to see it. And they want somebody to talk about, how they’re going to get there and what they’re going to do for them and how they can help.That’s, that to me was what Obama [00:38:00] 08 was. But yeah, ever since then, and even like he didn’t really do that even as much in 2012, like it was, an anomaly in democratic politics and certainly that’s not what the message was in 2016 or 2020. And doesn’t appear to be that now. What did you think?Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. I mean, the Obama 08 campaign was inspiring, it made you believe that a better world was possible and the Democrats have not sold us that since then, like the last two elections have basically been about, like, Trump is so awful, we must defeat Trump. Defeat Trump at all costs, but it doesn’t seem like the Democratic party is willing to pay the costs necessary to actively defeat Trump.Like I think about Joe Biden suspending his campaign as the day after Trump was shot, like when that could have been an opportunity to, perhaps post a [00:39:00] message, trying to unify the nation, right, condemning what happened, but also talking about the fact that, this is somebody who stoked political violence himself.This is somebody who, inspired his followers to launch an insurrection. I mean,Matthew Sheffield: Or he could just run positive ads, being like, Hey, I’m Joe Biden. I got these five things I want to do. That’s it.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. I mean, I just, there was no reason to, there was no reason to go silent, like to give this man a moment of silence as if he died, I just think was just really short sighted and, just another reminder of how the Republicans, they commit to a bit, like if Joe Biden had been shot at, Trump would have had a commercial the next day about how Joe Biden had the worst assassination attempt of any president.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, or like his son, Don Junior, he promoted a meme after Paul Pelosi, [00:40:00] Nancy Pelosi’s husband got attacked. He was like, he posted a, he reposted a picture of somebody had posted some White men’s underwear and a hamburger. And he was like, Oh, I got my, Paul Pelosi costume ready now.That was hilarious. Like they mocked her, the assault on, her husband and, in the mainstream and the mainstream media did not, they, they did not call that out and like, but at the same time, I feel like that a lot of Democrats in the leadership class or the donor class. They think that the mainstream media, that they can somehow bully the mainstream media into becoming a democratic or progressive media, and that’s not going to happen, and they’ve been trying this for, 30 years or more, and it’s not going to work.They should just make their own stuff. Like, I mean, the right wing media now at this point, I’m going to actually tally up the numbers, but like, if you add up all the various podcasts [00:41:00] and video websites and whatnot, like the right wing advocacy media. Is probably two or three times larger, maybe even more than everybody in left wing media put together.Jamilah Lemieux: Absolutely.Matthew Sheffield: And especially in terms of like podcasts that target younger, like younger people, like Gen Alpha, Gen Z. The right wing oligarchs, they’re funding things, talking that are ostensibly about dating, quote unquote. But really what they are is just, telling young boys that, I mean, Andrew Tate, great example, telling young boys that women need to be put in their place. They shouldn’t have rights and they exist to serve men. And if they don’t hear any other message on YouTube about that, what do you, expect them to believe?Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah, I mean, the Democrats suck at propaganda. [00:42:00] Like, like the right wing has been piling their followers on with so much propaganda, so much information, so much that’s designed to compel them to vote for somebody like Donald Trump and the, Left just seems unwilling or unable to do that.I mean, just the lack of strong left leaning publications at this point, that are willing to call themselves left leaning. I mean, there’s something inherently cowardly about the democratic party and I’ve struggled to understand just why that is for many years, but you know, they’re just afraid to say things with their chest, like they just don’t, they seem.To believe that by being civil towards the enemy and not treating them as the enemy that somehow. Things will just work out. We got to play nice. We got to play fair We got to play above board, but [00:43:00] these people aren’t playing nice or fair at all,Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, and it’s also like I think that they think that people will just figure it out themselves And you know because like it is I mean it is the case that the more Educated you are like people who have you know, like you know The more educated you are, the least, less likely you are to like Donald Trump in general.But so, but the problem is I think Democrats, they just, they forgot. That most Americans never graduated from college ever. Like that was never the majority of Americans and, and in the process they, like this is how they lost the, this is how they lost the White vote for themselves in some ways that, like Bill Clinton, I think he either got pretty close, like.He got pretty close to the percentage that Bush got in 1992. Like, but [00:44:00] the, non college educated White vote was, has gradually, slipped to be, pretty overwhelmingly majority Republican, even though that wasn’t how it started out. And we’re seeing similar trends happening with.Non educated non college Hispanics. And we’re seeing some of that with although interestingly enough, not with Black Americans, the Black Americans who are gravitating toward the Republican party is the college educated ones. What do you think is, what do you think is going on with that anomaly?Is this just, Approximate, proximity to Whiteness, or what do you think?Jamilah Lemieux: I think it’s the proximity to Whiteness. I think it’s the result of a lot of effort by the GOP to compel these voters and these are largely Black male voters, not Black women.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, I guess I haven’t, I don’t think that the Pew research did a breakdown on.Education and sex. So, I think that might be right. Yeah. And I mean, but [00:45:00] it’s a challenge though, because like, I think that to a large degree, Democrats kind of, they fantasize about the perfect message, like singular message. And they don’t realize you have to have a lot of messages and you have to have a lot of channels to reach people, like, like the Biden campaign has been very big on TV ad spending, but a lot of people don’t watch TV and a lot of people can skip the commercials and, if you, can reach people many other ways and you should.But yeah, they, it’s like they, their operative class, I mean, like Biden’s consultants, his top advisors are almost as old as he is. And so they kind of lost touch in a lot of ways, I feel like.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah, I definitely think Biden’s advisors are very out of touch.Matthew Sheffield: Well, okay.Kamala Harris as the potential Democratic nomineeMatthew Sheffield: So now just to go back to Kamala Harris.[00:46:00] Um, there is some talk, I guess some of that’s muted now, given the, Trump shooting situation, but you know, maybe it’s going to come back we’ll see, but about getting Biden to resign either as the president or resign his candidacy in favor of Kamala Harris and having her, Take the top of the ticket.Not just because she can significantly in part because people know who she is, who’s already been vetted, and also that legally speaking, she can use all that money that people donated to Biden Harris for president. So, I mean, what, have you been thinking about that? Do you think people would go for that?Because she does. better than Biden does in polls, like between like two or three, four, it’s sometimes better than, him.Jamilah Lemieux: Kamala polls better than Biden, but I honestly don’t believe that. The necessary amount of people to defeat [00:47:00] Donald Trump would be willing to vote for a Black woman. I just, I find that completely unfathomable, maybe folks could surprise me, maybe a lot of, people who don’t generally vote would come out who would be inspired by that.But I just think that this nation hates Black women so much so that the idea of putting a Black woman at the top of a ticket just seems like a terrible risk to me, considering the stakes. But I also, there’s a matter of the timing. I mean, it’s July, the elections in November, Biden to step down should have.It started, six months ago, a year ago, right? Like the idea that at this point, everybody would just pivot and embrace Kamala and she would, have to stop what she’s doing and become a presidential candidate. I just think that’s really unrealistic. And I think what’s also worth noting is that like a lot of the calls for Biden’s to step down said [00:48:00] nothing about who should step up.Right? So there are plenty of people saying it shouldn’t be him and floating other names, like, which I think says a lot about what this nation thinks of Black women, because obviously, really there would be one option if he were to step down. It would be her, but a lot of people, wanted to talk about this governor, this, other Democrat.,Matthew Sheffield: I think also that Kamala Harris is getting in addition to some of the racial She’s getting a lot of the very same critiques that were lodged against Hillary Clinton.She, has a cackle or she’s not she’s not personable enough. she doesn’t smile more and things like that. But I mean, on the other hand, I mean, did you think that Barack Obama was going to win in 2008?Jamilah Lemieux: No.No,I was shocked. I mean, I campaigned for him. I was at a watch party.I was very excited about his candidacy, but no, I didn’t trust [00:49:00] White people to do the right thing. I never do. And usually that lack of trust has served me well, but that one singular time I was wrong and look at what the country has been doing ever since then.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, that’s a fair point. Well, and I mean, at the same time, I guess there is, there also is an additional little controversy that to some degree, the, Biden, the pro Biden people are, trying to sort of wrap themselves in Black women to say that Black women, you should do what Black women say and keep him on the ticket which seems a little bit Patronizing maybe that is that if that’s the right word, but especially when you, when he’s got.When the most likely person to take his place is also a Black woman. And I’m, sure that Black women would like to vote for her if she were to do that. I don’t know. It just seems a little weird to me and kind of tin eared. have you looked at that at all? That [00:50:00] messaging? Have you seen that?What messaging specifically? Cause you said a few things. that I’ve seen memes of people pushing up there, listen to Black women and keep Biden on the ticket at the top. I mean, it’s a little absurd saying that about an old White guy, I think.Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah. But I mean, I do think it speaks to, What the base of the party desires, which is to have Joe Biden on the ticket and Black women represent the base of the party, it depends which Black women you’re talking to.I think these are largely older Black women, baby boomers maybe just some gen Xers who feel passionate about keeping Biden on the ticket. But I also think that Black women are not willing to, vote. May feel the same way as I do that putting a Black woman against Donald Trump just feels like so much of a risk, I mean, Joe Biden was identified because he was supposed to be the guy that could beat [00:51:00] Trump.And he was the first time around, he was a certain kind of old school Democrat. That would appeal to enough White folks. He wasn’t going to scare them with his progressive or radical views or by being a Black woman. And so, on one hand, I don’t necessarily like Black women being the face of let’s keep Joe Biden in the race, but I understand the very pragmatic reasons why Black women want to keep Joe Biden in the race.Concluding thoughts and future outlookMatthew Sheffield: then I have to ask you, do you think he, He can pull it off. What do you think?Jamilah Lemieux: It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look good. I think it’s possible. I think it’s going to really be a fight to the very end. It’ll be a close race. But I know that Biden has upset a lot of people with his handling of the situation in Gaza, and they’re going to be people who feel they can’t hold their nose and cast a vote for him again, that they did it the first time they [00:52:00] won’t be doing it again. There are people who do believe that the undoing of this country needs to just happen, that we’re running from it and that basically everything just needs to burn down.And I think a lot of people are willing to let things burn down. I am not one of them. I will be casting a vote for Joe Biden or from whoever’s the top of the democratic ticket. Who I expect to be Joe Biden at this point inspire enthusiasm, when we just look at his mental acuity at this point and how he does an interview, he did an interview with Complex, which is, a hip-hop lifestyle website, and it was just so cringeworthy and so uncomfortable.Joe Biden should be on the porch with a blanket in his lap at this point, but instead he’s running for the highest office in the land again. And we desperately need him to win. It’s a, really awful position that we’re all in.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and I think, a lot of it is that there’s [00:53:00] kind of this sort of cult of credentials among a lot of Democrats, and like you, you saw that with the, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, people were like: ‘Oh, she’s going to live forever. We’re going to help her celebrate. She doesn’t have to retire. She can keep going.’ And well, she couldn’t, and she died. And Trump got to appoint, her replacement and she should have quit. She should have retired. Joe Biden should have retired after 2022, I think. The election is where the Democrats did well.He could have been like, yep. All right. See, I did a good job for you guys. Take it away, next generation, hash it out in the primary, do what you want to do. I’ll be there for you. But not in the White House or whatever. But he didn’t do that. And Nancy Pelosi, she clung to power for a long time, but at least she did finally pass the torch over to Hakeem Jeffries, who actually seems to be doing a fantastic job from what I can see, but like there’s this, idea, and like [00:54:00] in the legal world in the constitutional law professors, like they built this religion of the judge, this cult of the constitutional law. And believing that all judges are impartial, and they love precedent, and they always put away their personal opinions in all cases. And then meanwhile, the Federalist Society was building a giant conveyor belt full of religious nut job judges and shoving them as much as possible.And nobody paid attention to them in the left wing legal establishment. And like, I found this woman who it, who teaches con law at USC. She was like looking at the Roberts court rulings and all these horrible things they’ve been doing. And she was like, I just. I just don’t understand it anymore. Like I was making my syllabus for this year, and I started crying because nothing makes sense in what I w what I thought was real. And it’s like, [00:55:00] that’s because you had a religion. It wasn’t real. You invented this. Like. There’s no such thing as judicial objectivity, and you never read a lick of critical theory or legal realism.Like, if you had bothered to look at that stuff, you wouldn’t have been so naive. But like, they’re just, they just keep getting surprised, mugged by reality over and over again, and they don’t learn anything. It seems like nobody gets fired. I don’t know. That’s my I’m going off on a rant there.But what do you think of that?Jamilah Lemieux: No, I think you’re correct. Like, I think again, on the left, there’s in this idea of civility and assuming the best of people and that everybody just wants what’s right for America. We just may not have the same vision for it, but like, no, these people want to do tremendous harm to our ways of life.They want to oppress and incarcerate people and they should be taken seriously as a threat that they are, but [00:56:00] that’s just not how Democrats are all.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And maybe, I mean, honestly, maybe some of it is that this is mostly Nicely dressed White people who are calling the shots.Is that what it is? I maybe yeah. All right. Well, I think let’s maybe wrap up. You are working on a book that I want to make sure we give a plug for. Why don’t you tell my audience about that.Jamilah Lemieux: I am working on a book about single Black motherhood. It does not come out until next year. So, you’ve got plenty of time to get ready for it.Matthew Sheffield: Okay. And we’ll do a separate episode about your book when you get ready, when you get ready to have it on pre order, but yeah. It’s been a great conversation for people who want to keep up with your stuff. Jamila, what should they do? What’s your advice?Jamilah Lemieux: You can still find me on Twitter at Jamila Lemieux and I’m also on Instagram at Jamila Lemieux. [00:57:00]Matthew Sheffield: And then of course, you’re a podcast cohost over on Slate as well. Do you want to give a plug for that?Jamilah Lemieux: Yes, I am a cohost of the parenting podcast, “Care and Feeding.” We air twice a week. I’m also a contributor to the Care and Feeding parenting advice column every Friday on Slate.Matthew Sheffield: All right. Sounds good. I hope people check that out. All right. Well, thanks for being here and I loved having you.Jamilah Lemieux: Thank you for having me. 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 SummaryThe “Sexual Revolution” started more than 60 years ago, but in a lot of ways, having complete control over your own choices when it comes to dating, sex, and family is only just now becoming a reality for many people. That’s particularly true for women since far-right Republicans have continuously rejected the idea that abortion and birth control should be legal.But the radical right’s refusal to accept bodily autonomy isn’t the only thing that’s stood in the way of women’s ability to make their own choices. Despite some advances, it is also the case that businesses and society as a whole have not fully accepted the idea that women’s bodies are not communal possessions, subject to public comment or disapproval. The constant pressure from other people that girls and women face also filters inward, my guest on today’s episode argues, making for yet another external pressure that prevents women from full autonomy.Realizing how this happens and how to overcome it is the topic of Suzannah Weiss’s new book, Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject, which is out now in bookstores and online.Weiss is a writer and sexologist based in Los Angeles. As a sex educator certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, she has taught courses and given talks on topics including consent, orgasms, childbirth, non-monogamy, and neurodiversity. She is regularly quoted as an expert in publications like Cosmopolitan and Men's Health as resident sexologist for Biird and also works as a sex/love coach, birth doula, and sexual assault counselor. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. Cover photo: Diego RosaFlux is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* Why MAGA is morphing beyond a political identity into a sexual fetish* More women acknowledging bisexual identities as social tolerance has increased* The ‘world’s oldest profession’ is attaining new relevance in the internet age* How a closeted Christian writer inadvertently documented his descent into right-wing extremism* A former porn star is helping straight men understand intimacy and themselves* Newspaper classified ads invented social media and blind dating* Fitness has always been political, even if you didn’t realize itAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:36 — Suzannah’s career as a sex writer07:32 — Early experiences of sexual objectification15:03 — Commercialization of feminism17:46 — Eating disorders and objectification21:33 — The self-pleasure gap between men and women23:46 — How new age movements also perpetuate sexism28:30 — How social movements can be both exploitative and empowering of women simultaneously34:55 — Hugh Hefner's legacy39:20 — Body neutrality vs. body positivity40:45 — Male body positivity and societal expectations46:51 — The politics of pubic hair49:30 — Sex work as personal liberation and a societal forceAudio 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 the title of the book is “Subjectified,” and then the subtitle is “Becoming a Sexual Subject,” and it is something you go back to in literally every single chapter, and you do that with good reason. But what do you mean by becoming a sexual subject first?Suzannah Weiss: By subject, I mean the opposite of objects. So the book is about how women can go beyond their own objectification and having their own sexuality. And so I play with the concepts of subject and object, both in the traditional sense of objectification of women and in the sort of literary sense of who [00:03:00] gets to be in the subject and object roles of sentences.And so each chapter is a verb and talks about how women can be the subjects of that verb when they are normally the objects. So for instance, women are often taught To be the objects of desire or the objects of the gaze or the objects of romantic interest. And so the goal of the book is to talk about how women can be the subjects of all of those things, how they can focus on their own desires, how they can focus on what they're looking at.How they can focus on what their interests and goals are, not just in sex, but in life. And I also talk about how “Subjectified,” the title is a little bit ironic because it's in the passive voice. So women, when I talk about subjectifying women, are the objects. But I go into that in some of the later chapters, how women can be objects and [00:04:00] subjects.And sometimes being an object is what you desire. And if that is your desire, it's also okay to be an object.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And I mean, and it is definitely you, definitely deal with the idea of sexual objectification quite a bit. So for people who haven't read A lot of feminist literature. what, does the term objectification mean for, people who are not familiarSuzannah Weiss: objectification of women means seeing women as being there to fulfill other people's desires. Usually men's desires rather than their own.So objectification can mean sexualized media images, advertising that focuses on disembodied women's like boobs or other body parts. It can mean in the way we talk about sex as if it's something for that's just for sex. women's duty to their partners, or that it is women's duty to look good to their [00:05:00] partners, especially if they are men.It is basically the idea that women are there for men's pleasure. And as I discuss in the book, I also talk about how this shows up even in feminist movements, even in movements like Body positivity focusing on how all kinds of women can be sexually arousing to look at or In even discussions about consent that tend to focus on women's ability to say yes or no to men's desires rather than having their ownMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, and we'll definitely get into that as we go along here.Suzannah's career as a sex writerMatthew Sheffield: so and you you're writing this book from your experience as a sex writer. So maybe let's just give it a little overview of, your, your career, like when did you start doing that? And why did you start doing it? And like, what are some of the maybe if you have any stories that you think are worth sharing from that experience as well.Suzannah Weiss: Yeah. So this book [00:06:00] is very first person. Every chapter talks about my journey with some element of sexual empowerment, and it's based on my nine year career as a sex and relationship writer. having adventures such as going to clothing optional resorts, going to sex parties, going to a women's masturbation workshop.And the common theme, not always, but is seeing how women are still objectified in settings meant to empower them. And probably one of the experiences that inspired the book the most was my experience at a clothing optional resort that was saying they were there to empower women. And yet women were, there were just pictures of naked women everywhere.There was a double standard in terms of like, women are. expected to hook up with other women, but God forbid men [00:07:00] hook up with other men. And there, there was just this male gaze, which is a concept I talk about a lot, this assumption that women should be catering to this stereotypical heterosexual male gaze, or that gaze is in objective perspective, that particular taste for looking at naked women, for instance.So, yeah, there were many experiences like that shaped this book.Matthew Sheffield: Huh. Yeah. Yeah, and we'll definitely get into that further.Early experiences of sexual objectificationMatthew Sheffield: And I guess, early, the early parts of the book, you are talking about how, you know, you became aware of yourself as, sexual object by society from a very young age.And, it's something that a lot of women unfortunately do have that realization when they're young girls. There was a friend of mine who's a writer and podcaster named Jamilah Lemieux, and she had a [00:08:00] Twitter thread where she just asked her followers, how old were you when adult men started coming for you. And it was really disturbing.Suzannah Weiss: Yeah. Matthew Sheffield: And there were a lot of women who were like, yeah, well, I was eight. I was, nine, I was 11. And not every woman has that experience, some of the women that I know didn't really have that, have to deal with that when they were younger, but it is an aspect of sexualization that it isn't talked about as much as it should be.You talked about your own experience with that as well, becoming aware of your body as seen through others, right?Suzannah Weiss: Yes. The way I describe that experience [00:09:00] is it's as if my eyes left their sockets and stood in outer space looking at me instead of looking at the rest of the world.They call this, psychologists call this objectified body consciousness, where you are of your body as an object. And you look at your face almost if it's a, as if it's a mask, you lose a sense of connection to the sensations and perceptions that your body is experiencing. And you feel you focus instead on what, how other people are experiencing you.And that's how I felt. For me, it was probably around 12 or 13 when I noticed little things like one man telling me I look developed and some guys talking about looking down girls shirts in school. It was this very weird experience of thinking the world is in my eyes. And then suddenly I'm inside other people's eyes, and they are sizing me [00:10:00] up, and it's my duty to look or perform a certain way for them.It takes you out of your body, this experience.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, I think, to some degree, there's it's, it might, it's too easy to think, though, that these types of, Expectations and treatment of, girls and women is something that's some sort of modern affectation. But it's really not the case at all.I mean, there's, this is really a long, history of this in human society and, kind of seeing women as the object of, men's sexuality, not, and not having your own. I mean, like for instance, in the Bible the Hebrew Bible, there's prohibitions on male. homosexual acts, but there are no prohibitions on female homosexual acts because that's not even considered a possibility that women would want to do. That, that's my favorite example of it. And also maybe who knows [00:11:00] why. SoSuzannah Weiss: what you're saying is God is okay with lesbians.Matthew Sheffield: Yes, basically that's what it seems like. And it does fit that, and it does kind of fit that, that that experience that you're talking about. So, but also part of that, same age development that you were talking about in this, in the beginning part of the book later on, you also add in the idea of getting your own period and that's something that also is.Can be a very traumatizing experience for a lot of women. And you talked about your own experience with that. Do you want to talk go into that here a bit, if you could?Suzannah Weiss: I'm actually working on my second book now, which deals a lot with that. So I didn't Go deep, so deep into that and subjectified that I talk about how women we learn from a young age to expect pain throughout our lives and menstruation is one way in which we learn that and it is very tied to reproduction and this idea that you [00:12:00] have a destiny as a mother.And that is another thing that can be jarring when you are 9, 10, 11 years old to first learn about that. And like, what? I'm like a baby making machine? And you, it's another way that you kind of learn that you exist for other people. Not that having a period makes that true, but that the way in which it's talked about is often In terms of a sacrifice or in terms of pain that women have to go through in order to bring forth the next generation.And it feels, and there's also very little context given to it. Like it is unsettling to learn about your vagina bleeding. If you are not told like this is perfectly normal, it's okay. Like it shouldn't be painful if you're not given that context. Yeah. And the book goes into how that's another way in which women learn that their bodies exist for other people.[00:13:00] This idea that it's their destiny to be mothers.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, and well, and it also. I mean, I think in a lot of states and localities, it is also the case that many parents or schools do not give girls any sort of instruction about this. And I, mean, I personally, have known a number of women that were like, yeah, I, when I got my period, nobody had told me anything.They, I had been told generically at some point that would happen to me, but nothing at all about what that meant. Or what I was supposed to do or anything like that. And it's, it is kind of, it's really, it is incredible. I think that's such a, very basic and personal thing that a lot of people, I, I've never told anything about I mean, you, talk about that to some degree, right?Suzannah Weiss: Yeah. My first [00:14:00] exposure to the idea of periods was when I was like, Almost 11, I was at sleepaway camp and we were playing Mad Libs. And there was one, like, suggestion that we had to fill out was a bad day. And someone yelled, the day before your period! And I was like, what's that? And they were like, it's when your thing bleeds and you grow hair there.And so I imagine that, like, you were rushed to the hospital and you were bleeding, and then you came out and you suddenly had pubic hair. And then it was very depressing to learn that supposedly happened every month, because I still thought of it as this medical emergency, and there was just no context.Yeah, and I also talk about how like, now there's all these ideas about women being moon goddesses and menstruation connecting you to your feminine intuition, which felt just as shitty for me to learn about, like, because it's the [00:15:00] stereotype. Projected onto our bodies.Commercialization of feminismMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and, you really do talk about that concept quite a lot of how feminism has kind of been commercialized in a lot of different ways.And that's a, it is a thing that you talk about in many different facets, but I guess maybe probably most prominently is in a lot of these commercials now that you see that are there, they, claim to be about body positivity, but. They really don't define what that means, but then it's also sexualized at the same time.And, and like, and I think for, when right wing people see commercials that are, showing women who are not, skinny or showing all different kinds of body types that, or, heights or whatever, or breast sizes that, they get angry at that. And they think of it as an example of leftism run amok, but that's really not what this is.It is [00:16:00] companies trying to commercialize a social movement that is left wing and in some ways kind of. strip it of its essential message, right?Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, I mean, I, don't even have an issue with a variety of bodies being shown in advertising. I think that's a good thing, but that's not what I look to for inspiration about my self esteem because it is often about catering to the male gaze and showing that All kinds of women can be sexualized and can be in the same sexualized ads and the same beauty pageants and the same things that are problematic to begin with.So I don't have an issue with plus size models, obviously, but I am skeptical of any company being the source of women's empowerment because their primary goal is to sell you a product always.Matthew Sheffield: [00:17:00] Yeah, and yeah, and to not actually really engage with the message. It's like the content is there only because it's something that women are thinking about.It's not that they actually care about it or even understand what the message fully is. Because like, yeah, if you, actually truly believe in body positivity, then you would understand that having a non sexualized view of a woman's body, like. that's okay, too. Like, you can just show women, you don't have to show women in their underwear in your ad.You can just have them walking down the street or doing whatever. But, like there it's it really is trying to sort of wrap a commercialized product. Yeah, placement around it. So, andEating disorders and objectificationMatthew Sheffield: all of these are messages, though, that yeah, that the, all kinds of different industries are constantly bombarding women and girls, especially teen girls with, and it really has a negative impact on a lot of people having to.[00:18:00]See these messages that are very, contradictory in many cases and both, somewhat empowering, but also a very objectifying as well. And I mean, you yourself it's a theme that you developed. Persistently is your own experience with a eating disorder that you developed with in, in after being sexualized by other people.But you want to talk about your experience with that?Suzannah Weiss: Yes, that was something I experienced when I was in high school and I did not realize what my motives were behind it. After a lot of therapy and also studying gender studies in college. Thank you. I made connections between my own eating disorder and the objectification of women.And I personally think that to have all these jarring experiences around growing breasts, around menstruation, around things that require a certain amount of fat on your body, [00:19:00] having less fat on my body was a way to protect myself. It was a way to become less fat. objectifiable and to retain my subjecthood in the only way I knew how because nobody had taught me that a woman can be sexual and still be a subject.I thought the only way to remain a subject was to de sexualize myself so that then I could be free and I could live my own life and I wouldn't be an object for men as opposed to a woman. I can be an object of desire and also have my own desires and those are important and no one taught me that so my only like mode of protection was an eating disorder. So I went to a residential treatment center the summer between high school and college for my eating disorder. And I definitely improved over the course of that time, just having a lot of support.I'm very thankful for that, but it was really an experience I [00:20:00] had when I got out that I feel healed me. And it was an experience. A lot of people would say is degrading to women that I hooked up with Complete stranger on a beach, on a family vacation. And he, I don't know how much detail to like, it was all aboutMatthew Sheffield: itSuzannah Weiss: was all about my pleasure and I felt really empowered by it.And I realized that there was a way to be a sexual being without being a mere object and that I have been lied to and that sexuality was something beautiful and empowering for women. And that I think was what it took. To actually get me out of my eating disorder was to see my body as something that was here to feel and to experience pleasure and not just to [00:21:00] please men and not just to be used and not just to be taken advantage of.And that was how I got into my field of study and I had more empowering experiences in college that show me like, why is there this amazing thing about having a quote unquote woman's body that nobody told me people just told me that it having a woman's body was dangerous and vulnerable and I want people to hear a different message.The self-pleasure gap between men and womenMatthew Sheffield: and, you do talk about it also in the context of, masturbation as well, that is, it is something that is, that boys learn much younger, generally speaking, than girls. And to some degree, it's not even a lot of women, even as adults, they, really don't have a lot of familiarity with their own body in that way.And you have a whole chapter on, on that subject. So you, want [00:22:00] to like what, how did, do you, Maybe talk about sort of your watching in your career of seeing other women have to have those realizations that maybe you had at a younger age than some of them.Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, well, since we learned that women's sexuality exists for men, we don't often talk about female masturbation as if it's normal.And. The book analyzes a few media examples. The one that comes to mind is American Pie, where these men are spying on this woman masturbating, and it's all like she's doing it for the male gaze. Like, there's literally men spying on her. She doesn't even know that, but she masturbates in a way, as if she knows.She does, like, a little, she sensually undresses, and, like, plays with her. Perfect breasts and like acts as if she's putting on a show. And I think [00:23:00] I've noticed that in my own mind sometimes, even when I have masturbated, I've been like, what noise should I make? What face should I make? Cause women's sexuality is made out to be this performance rather than something experienced from the inside.I think it's important for women to have a sexuality outside of that. And I often advise women who are self conscious in the bedroom, not to think about how sexy they are, or that could be a part of it, but to actually focus on their partner and what is turning them on, what, is turning the woman on, not how much she is turning someone else on.How new age movements also perpetuate sexismMatthew Sheffield: And I guess within this context, yeah, like the relationship sex context, you do talk about your experience with, um, that is something movement that's kind of calls itself orgasmic [00:24:00] meditation and, you describe it as a world of gender essentialism masquerading as progressive ism. What did you mean by that?Suzannah Weiss: There's a lot now. That you can find online about orgasmic meditation. They were very corrupt in a number of ways. If you're interested, you can look at the Netflix documentary, orgasm, Inc, but it was basically this sex cult that taught people this practice that was supposed to change your life.where a man strokes the upper left quadrant of a woman's clitoris for 13 minutes and they're in a nest of pillows and there's a stopwatch and the man is in charge of setting the timer and, grounding the woman and like pressing on her legs to be like, it's okay. Like, all right, I'm the man. I gotcha.And there's this whole theory, this whole philosophy behind it, which they didn't really invent about the masculine and the [00:25:00] feminine as these spiritual energies and the feminine is wild and irrational and emotional. And the masculine is, steady and fierce and strong and like a rock. And it, is the same gender roles, really the same Western gender roles that we have been hearing for a long time.Men need to tame their woman. Women can't think. Men need to provide logic. And I see this all the time in the New Age community, not in the exact same way, but as the divine masculine and divine feminine. And it actually doesn't have much to do, they, often draw from Tantra, but it doesn't actually have much to do with the original Tantric texts.It's more about appropriating them to fit Western gender roles.Matthew Sheffield: And it's, and it is why I think you do see you have seen a fair amount of crossover [00:26:00] between people who are into, I don't know, they'll say alternative living as so they might call it that also get into Q and not because, they kind of in some ways have some of the same concepts including the sexism.Yeah. Like the idea of masculine energy or feminine, like it's ludicrous. Like there's no such thing as that. And if you believe that, then you don't, you haven't known enough people to know that there are plenty of women who have the characteristics that you might think are masculine or vice versa.But yeah, and like, and that, that is why, and like this whole embracing of. Things that are, I mean, just like spices or whatever, and thinking that they're magical, like that's exactly what Alex Jones does also, like there's no there, there is, it is a, what, it's like a, it's conspiracism that is being sold to you rather than I would say, I mean, what do you think?[00:27:00]Suzannah Weiss: It's really interesting that these new age hippies. And I know a lot of them, like, there's, you would think like they're these free spirits and there's a lot of overlap between that community and right wing politics. And yeah, Some I've heard there. Oh, there's a sex educator named erica smith She talks about how a lot of it actually seems to draw from purity culture.Like they talk about how when you have sex with someone their energy gets on you and you have to do rituals and cleanses to get rid of that energy Which is a form of slut shaming Like stick to the facts at least like, okay, maybe they'll, maybe you'll have a negative experience. Okay. Maybe you'll get an STI, like at least stick to the facts if you're going to have that conversation and don't add this.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, because I mean, it is functionally no different than, some of the, mosaic [00:28:00] law prescriptions about sexuality and things like that., I mean, trying to get sex advice from, ancient books when people didn't know anything about sex. Didn't even know that sperm and egg existed.Like you're going to, that's what you're going to turn to for a sex advice. Please don't, please do not. And yeah, so, and then, you also do just to go back to the, kind of the commercial. Commercialization stuff like this.How social movements can be both exploitative and empowering of women simultaneouslyMatthew Sheffield: and maybe it's not, this is less commercialized, but there, for a few years ago, there was this, idea of free the nipple, which was which was kind of a movement to legalize women going topless in public spaces and they did have some success and you were there.As they were moving along in some ways, you want to talk about your what you've learned from all that?Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, I mean, I think that was generally a good thing. I think [00:29:00] for me As a college student being privy to that it was confusing and I did see that Co opted a lot like I see i've seen a few sexy like in men's magazines sexy photos of women that are like You This celebrity frees the nipple.She frees the nipple and it's just women posing seductively like they always have. It's just like body positivity. It got co opted for commercial reasons. And I, had to do some of my own work. Cause I was triggered by free the nipple and like I shouldn't have an issue just with women wanting to be topless, but I had myself had internalized a lot of the male gaze that made me see that all as objectifying.When if a woman like wants to go topless on a beach, like that's not necessarily objectifying. But the main point that I make throughout the chapter is that there is no way of dressing that is objectifying or [00:30:00] subjectifying or empowering or disempowering. Okay. It's really about being in your body and doing, I hate to say doing it for yourself because that's such a cliche and you're never really doing it just for yourself, but being in your body and making choices based on what brings you happiness.And other than that, you can do whatever you want, but it's really just about owning your sexuality and being an object only if that is actually what is appealing to you.Matthew Sheffield: So, addressing for yourself in the moment for how you feel rather than trying to layer too many other things on top of it, if you can help it, I guess, right? Yeah, well, and, so, and you did, I mean, you did talk about the, yeah, like that it was there, there was also a tension with that [00:31:00] movement because this was also the time when, there were the, these Shows, things like Girls Gone Wild and, The Man Show where they were, just blatantly, putting women's breasts on television and whatnot.And so like, that was obviously part of your sort of, Conflict, I guess, right? We're trying to figure out how to square that in some way, or I don't know. What would you say?Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, my initial reaction was just how is this empowering? Isn't this what we're trying to get away from? Like, can't, aren't we just fighting for women's right not to be like seen as objects and not to have our breasts front and center.And I know that is part of the intent behind the movement is to normalize it and not have to have the breasts be sexualized. There have been some critiques of the fact that for instance, the free, the nipple merchandise was just like shirts and other items with these, perky pink nipples, like this sort of normalized [00:32:00] white, thin.A lot of the protests that you see, it is, and there are some people who did not fit that. Like, I saw one trans person who posted photos of their nipples to, as they transitioned to show how it, how there's a double standard. I believe that I'm trying to remember who it was. I can't really remember, but there have been some participants in that movement who were not just like thin white women showing off their boobs, but a lot of it did seem to be that, and I think that's why it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.Matthew Sheffield: Well, and then I guess on that similar subject, you also do talk about your going to clothing optional results and, having to kind of adjust what you thought about that as well. Do you want to talk about that experience as well?Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, I actually went back to another one recently. I don't know if I should name names, but a lot of these resorts, [00:33:00] there are a few different clothing optional or top optional resorts that, are there for women to be free and express their sexuality, but they are often more about men's sexuality and more about men paying for access to boobs.That was my latest experience. I went to I won't name names. I don't need to, but went to a resort that was top optional. And it was just so many male eyes staring at my boobs the whole time and like not even making eye contact with me and like following me around. And one dude just like looked at me and goes like, looks down at my boobs and goes, are you my favorite?Like these environments. And I think people, and then there was another resort that was saying, we're making over this resort to appeal to women. And the way that they did that was to make. put a little drawing at the bottom of the pool of a woman's naked body and have these female silhouettes in the rooms on the [00:34:00] walls.And it's very interesting that we continue to conflate female sexual empowerment with female sexual display. It's almost like our bodies and the sight of our bodies stand in for our own bodies. Desires and thoughts and feelings. Like people can't conceptualize women having sexual desires and thoughts and feelings still.Yeah, I could go on, but there were a lot of experiences at those resorts that were like, and even just the aesthetics, there are often these films or these, screens with like little porn films happening. And it's always like two women giving a guy a b******b or. To women hooking up or it's never really seems to be for women.Hugh Hefner's legacyMatthew Sheffield: and you talk about it in the context of, Hugh Hefner and Playboy [00:35:00] as well. That cause, and, I mean, he's, as a person is people have a lot of conflicting thoughts about him because in some ways he did make it easier to, For women to have, to be, have a sexual empowerment to some degree, but that's clearly not what his business was.as you noted.Suzannah Weiss: I don't have mixed feelings about him. I think he was,Matthew Sheffield: probably, I mean, he personally was no, but I'm saying like, in other words, having allowing women to not have to be, I guess by to some degree, mainstreaming nudity in some fashion, he personally, obviously was a creep and a terrible person.I'm not gonna, I don't mean to say that. I mean, in the sense that the movement that, he became the figurehead for it was. better than him as a person, if I'm making any sense. Hopefully. Yeah,Suzannah Weiss: I think what I'm talking about with regard [00:36:00] to what I'm seeing at clothing optional resorts and other settings is a vestige of his form of sexual empowerment.That's all about He had this quote that was like, it's women's beauty that make the world makes the world go around. If men didn't objectify women in a positive sense, then we wouldn't have civilization. Like he says all these things that are naturalizing the objectification of women and making it seem like it is totally natural and fun for women to be objects. And if you actually look at the accounts of women who worked at the Playboy Mansion, you hear a different story that it really was not about the women. And even some feminists have said things about I remember reading an article in Refinery29 when Hugh Hefner died saying, he normalized women expressing their sexuality, which I found really interesting.Cause again, we're [00:37:00] conflate conflating their sexuality with their sexiness as if a woman being sexy is a woman expressing her sexuality. And I think those two things are really different because a woman being sexy is For some women, if maybe they have an exhibitionist side, like maybe that is part of their sexuality, but overall it is mainly for men's sexuality to stand there and look pretty.That's not really a representation of women's desire.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, obviously, I mean, and you do talk about porn just generally in that context as well, that it's, yeah, I mean, porn generally has also started out in the same way that, I mean, Hefner himself was, that it was entirely about porn. About men's desires and, but now you are seeing the the emergence of women who are trying to make porn for women and the female gaze and, and you talk about that as [00:38:00] well.Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, I don't love the idea of a female gaze because I don't think any one gender has a gaze. Or any gender has one gaze. Like I think it would be more beneficial to depict a variety of gazes and not label any of that male or female. But yeah, I really liked the work of certain feminist porn directors.Like, Erica Lust, like Inka Winter at 4Play Films. There are people doing good work with regard to showing a variety of Yeah, female desires and queer desires and just things that fall outside the mainstream male gaze.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, and it's and it I mean, it's still I guess I mean it is increasing a category that porn websites are finally realizing that oh a lot of our Viewers are female.So maybe we should try to find things that are appealing to them in [00:39:00] one way or another. And then like, that is, it is a thing that the industry itself is trying to grapple with and also obviously trying to, grapple with, well, how do we include trans people or non binary people as well into that mix?And it's, I don't, it's, going to be, it seems like it's a process. It's not. Not something that's said, right?Body neutrality vs. body positivityMatthew Sheffield: You talk about the concept of trying to having people develop body neutrality in addition to body positivity. So what, do you mean by body neutrality?Suzannah Weiss: body neutrality is a form of body acceptance that is not focused on liking the way you look as one body neutrality advocate summer in and inputs it she's like loving your body is not about liking the way you look it's about appreciating your body as the vessel that you go through life in and appreciating it for what it feels and what it can do and if you think you're sexy that's also great but that's the [00:40:00] bonus the Most important thing is to be in your body, not looking in from the outside and have a sense of appreciation for your body that is not about your looks.And I think that can be a way out of objectification for women to focus on their body in terms of what it can do, what it can feel, and just existing in it rather than focusing on your ability to appeal to other people's eyes. I think there is room for both, but I personally found that very liberating in a world that just focuses.on teaching women to love themselves because of how they look.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Male body positivity and societal expectationsMatthew Sheffield: And you also do talk about kind of, the flip side of all of this, which is that a lot of modern society doesn't have a concept of male body positivity either. And so, that [00:41:00] there's, I mean, and it's a contrast to a lot of the ancient world where there were all kinds of sculptures of, male bodies that, a beautiful male body.Like that's not something that is generally speaking, put into movies too often, like if male nudity is in a movie, it's a joke. It's not something that is a positive thing. And, that has an effect on both men and women. And you talk about how that when women are watching porn, that, for them, a lot of women, they like watching gay porn.And that's, I think that might be a bit of a revelation to, to a lot of people that a lot of women like gay porn. You want to talk about that?Suzannah Weiss: Yes, this was. A fun chapter, it focused on the phenomenon of dick pics and reactions to it online. And I remember in like 2015, 2016, there was this outcry against dick pics, and it focused often [00:42:00] on how ugly dicks supposedly are and how women aren't visual and how no one wants to see that as opposed to focusing on the fact that men are sending dick pics without consent, which is A different conversation because what really is so aversive about dick pics is it comes from this place of entitlement of like I haven't met you I have no idea who you are what you're looking for but I want to show you my dick so I'm going to do it like that is what's problematic about it but instead it reproduced this Modern idea that men love to look at women and women don't like to look at men and women don't like to look in general and that men don't want to look at men.There's also this homophobic undertone. And Yeah, I think that deprives a lot of people of their ability to have their desires validated. This idea, and I, there's all these pop culture [00:43:00] quotes that I brought in, like from Seinfeld, Elaine saying the female body is a work of art. The male body is like a Ferrari.Was it? It's like for getting around, but it's not for being looked at. Jason Mraz telling Cosmo, like, When women are naked, they look like soft, gorgeous angels. And when men are naked, we look like hairy trolls and ogres. I think that just sets the bar very low for what we expect from men. if, women aren't visual and no one wants to look at men, then like that just leads men to not be considerate about.Whether their partner might enjoy looking at them. And I think there is a huge double standard in terms of women being expected to show up to a date, hair done, makeup done, like being a great object of desire. And men being expected to do nothing. And that is not very fulfilling, like for a woman who is dating men to [00:44:00] just have this dynamic where she is catering to his eyes and her eyes do not seem to matter because supposedly she just cares about feelings and financial support.And tough luck if you want to enjoy what you are looking at.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and it sends the message and it sends a bad message to both sexes as well, because, it's saying that men are, being healthy or being, good looking or clean, like, those are not. Valuable things for you as a man that, the only thing you should care about is, money.And that's telling women that also, that a man's wallet is what matters more about him than, anything else. And, or his, emotional availability or whatever it is, like you, you are dehumanizing the other sex if you can't. See every aspect of them. And, and it also limits your ability to probably limit your ability to have a full relationship with someone, because if you can't, if you're only seeing them, [00:45:00] primarily through two different ways, then that's really not who they are, like they are a full person just as you are as well.Suzannah Weiss: Yes, it probably makes men feel bad about themselves to be talked about that way. And it also probably it kind of conflates male sexuality with darkness. That was the ultimate conclusion the chapter came to was that the reason people have this disgust reaction to dick pics and to dicks in general is because of the way in which male sexuality Is often seen as predatory and not for no reason because many men are predatory with their sexuality but to we need to Redefine men's sexuality and see it as something that can be healing and uplifting and connective and not just predatory Or disgusting and I think that's the root of the issue.I think our views of dicks reflects our views of men's [00:46:00] sexuality as inherently dark and I think that the bar should be higher and that should not, while that exists, that should not be our expectation because there is much greater potential for what men and women and everyone can be.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and especially during a time of increasing economic inequality that if men are only valuable because of their money, but then it's also much harder for men to get money or women, just generally people to get money because it's all going to the top.Well, then you're basically, you're, you are writing off an entire economic strata of people and saying, man, you're not valuable at all. If you don't have a lot of money and like, that's really damaging to, a lot of men and especially younger men when, they're just getting started.It's yeah. So I thought that was a important. I'm important thing to say.The politics of pubic hairMatthew Sheffield: Um, so, but also in this kind of in the dick pic category, you also do have a chapter about pubic hair as well. [00:47:00] So why don't you get into that? If you could, please.Suzannah Weiss: That chapter was a struggle to write because I initially, it initially was written around the same theme of.like oppression being packaged as empowerment. And you see this again with commercialization, with razor companies, with lasering studios, saying, Like, we're going to make shaving easy for you. We're going to make it cheaper. Like, we're going to make it, we're going to just laser it off. So you never have to shave again, freedom, as opposed to actually challenging why women are expected to be hairless in the first place.And I also talk about how women, a lot of women say they shave for themselves or do certain beauty things for themselves. And that is an idea I'm a bit skeptical of because where the male gay is not on us, where we not in the culture we're in. Would you want to do it in the first place? Are we ever really doing anything just for ourselves?[00:48:00]And right before I got this book deal, I spent a summer experimenting with my own pubic hair. And I realized that I actually did like to remove it, like, in part for myself. And I was like, Oh crap, this ruins my whole argument. And it doesn't really though, because there is this issue with commercialization.That's true. There is. This expectation that women be hairless no matter what and just find, that there's this illusion of options. Like there's so many ways to remove your hair when actually you lack the option to keep it without facing social ridicule. And at the same time, there are people who enjoy.Body hair removal and other forms of body modification. And it doesn't have to be just for yourself. If you enjoy it, like that was the ultimate conclusion I came to. Like you don't need to make every fashion or beauty [00:49:00] or styling choice be a political statement or be politically correct. If you get pleasure out of something, even if that pleasure is in being an object and being looked at, like that's okay.Cause you know, if. One silver lining of patriarchy is that some aspects of it give you pleasure, then take that because it's not giving us great things all the time. So if you can find something good in it, take it.Sex work as personal liberation and societal forceMatthew Sheffield: and you also do kind of have that perspective with sex work as well because, and it's in sex work is a thing that I think is it's becoming a lot more mainstream than, it has been in the modern American society for quite a while, at least not since the old west when it was pretty mainstream and.But like, obviously, as everybody says, the, it's the, oldest profession is certainly is one of the oldest ones. And but it's, complicated in terms [00:50:00] of, how to feel about it and, whether people, whether it is empowering or disempowering and. There's more than one way to think about it, right?Suzannah Weiss: Yeah. Like similar to what I said about dick pics, it, really depends largely on the context and it depends on, I just think we should set the bar higher for what sex work looks like and the reason why people think of sex work as oppressive. is that they don't realize there that there is a way to enjoy sex work and sex in a way that is desired and consensual and mutually respectful.And I think that part of, I think that The more we say sex work is always exploitation, the more we encourage a world where it is because then we don't treat sex workers. Well, we don't care about their desires. We don't allow them the autonomy to do the work that [00:51:00] they want to do. And so I think it is good for everyone to acknowledge that sex work and sex in general can be play.That's the title of the chapter sex work as play. And and I think that sex, like sex trafficking, anti sex trafficking and pro sex work actually go together because it's about valuing consent and it's about understanding nuance and the importance of enthusiasm. And I think we've like created this false dichotomy of like, sex work is bad, sex work is good when, like, actually it's about distinguishing what is consensual, what isn't, what is desired, what isn't.And, A lot of it is about economic opportunities, and like, that's a little bit beyond the scope of the book, but I think if we lived in a truly free society, like, there would still be sex [00:52:00] workers, but people would not be doing it because, they need to just to make money, because people, sex work can be healing, it can be playful, and it can be educational.And a lot of that is missing from the discussion.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, well, and, a lot of that also is because it's criminalized, like, that's part of why that we can't have a full discussion about it because a lot of people are. Taking part in it in furtive ways, trying to not get arrested for it on both sides of the equation.And you talk about your own experience, though, of just trying it out in a couple of different ways. You want to talk about that what you experienced with a sex worker.Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, I mean, I'm not a spokesperson for sex workers. Like, I almost as an experiment did camming. And a few other things.I was actually a stripper for a night. I did [00:53:00] sexting. And I really enjoyed it and it showed me a new vision of what work could be because in our capitalist society, we really value hard work, putting yourself under stress to achieve being impressive. And for me sex work was actually a way out of that and a way to find work that felt like play and to find work that was about nourishing and pleasing my body rather than fighting my body and forcing it to do things you know it doesn't want to do like be on my computer all day or right when I'm really tired like to just Masterbate all day and get paid for it was actually very liberating and showed me that there is a different value system We could adhere to where I was appreciated just for showing up and didn't really need to accomplish anything quote unquote Impressive at least not stereotypically that people were [00:54:00] happy to pay me just for my pleasure That was very liberating.And even though I'm not doing that anymore, I do take that idea with me that my ultimate goal in life is to be paid for my pleasure.Matthew Sheffield: Well, and, you talk about it also, I guess, sex work in the context of that, it is a kind of, it's a way of. having more liberation for everybody regardless of sexual orientation or, male, female, et cetera, that, and I guess you, you quote something, a quote from Augustine who Is was a catholic saint but people Don't know this quote from him enough as I think they should you want to talk about that a little bit or what he said about sex workSuzannah Weiss: Now i'm trying to remember he said something about it being a necessary evil to just [00:55:00] quell men's uncontrollable desires that was the basic gist and that's a very objectifying narrative that Sex workers exist because men are so horny and women must do the difficult job of letting them f**k us.Someone's got to do it or else they'll just become rapists or something, which is very disempowering. It's all about men's desire. It's not about what a sex desire, sex worker's desire might be and it plays into these stereotypes of men being out of control animals who can't control their sexuality and women needing to do a duty to men by like opening their legs and letting them use them.It's the same. And I still see this narrative. Nowadays, that sex work is this necessary evil just to curb rape, which I think we have a bigger problem if we need sex work so that men don't rape.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, and it's [00:56:00] interesting because in the context of sex work, the stereotypical views are, as you said, that, men's sexuality is, violent, dark, chaotic, but then also in the, other literature, it's, That women are those things.That women are chaos, like Jordan Peterson, like he's obsessed with the idea that chaos and it's like, you, you should read what you're saying in one context and then see what you're saying in another, like to understand that it's fine to think, to, to assign one characteristic to either sex is just ridiculous.And and, then, but the other thing about sex work for women who don't do it, like it is. Empowering for them as well to not have to feel pressure to have sex in some sense, right. But that, like, that's, I feel like that's not talked about as much like that for a lot of men, they are, will get into dating or harass women.And in some way, if they have a sexual outlet, [00:57:00] it's, easier for other women, for women who don't, just want to be a regular person and live a regular life to not have to deal with dating if they don't want to. There's no pressure on them. I don't feel like that's talked about too much.Do you think it is?Suzannah Weiss: I haven't heard that talked about specifically the idea that having Well, actually, I have heard it. It's interesting because I also talk in the book about incels, and there was something written about how maybe sex workers can fulfill the desires of incels so that they're not, shoot shooting people or whatever.Again, I think, yeah, the way you're talking about it is a little different that it's more just like if women just don't want to date or have sex. I yeah. When it's talked about in the context of sexual violence, I think there is a bigger issue underneath that, that like sex workers aren't going to solve because the issue is men are free.Feeling inclined towards sexual violence in the [00:58:00] first place. But in terms of just people having different sex drives or different desires, I guess that in a way that sex work could be a solution to that.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, I mean, I know what people that has been a solution for them. If there was a sexual imbalance in their relationship that.They, one side or the other is like, well, if you're okay with it, then I will go and, do some other stuff and as long, and sometimes that works for some people, sometimes it doesn't and, but yeah, and, like, but to your point about the incels, it is like, I think it's pro it is the case.I mean, it is the case that when you have sex work decriminalized that and legalized that it does. You do have less sexual violence in a society. That is true. But to your point though, sex workers should not be the last line of defense against, men not having, the appropriate tools to deal with stress, to deal [00:59:00] with, um, capitalistic expectations or, negative sexuality of their own.That was, that they learned from society to what, like we were talking about earlier, that if you don't have money. Then you're worthless. And if you, can't that you should think of sex or relationships as, like a lot of, ragming dating advice, podcasts, they say things like that all.Relationships are prostitute, john and men should think of their wife as, their prostitute and they should be thought of as the john that you cannot be anything other than a john. Like that's, a, it is a terrible state of affairs and it's a terrible thing to tell men. And yeah, but there's.There's not enough, there's not enough talk of, how educational dare I say, religious system should be sending more positive messages to men like that.Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, there's a lot more people can get out of a [01:00:00] relationship than a woman giving her body so that a man can give her money. Like even for someone who wants that dynamic, I would hope that they are also.Getting something physical out of it and like everyone each to their own. But I think in general most people wants all elements. They want, comfort, support. Sexual pleasure, like a relationship can involve a lot of things for both people or all people. And when we dichotomize it like that, then, we kind of split those benefits in half so that women get half of them and get half rather than everyone enjoying everything a relationship has to offer.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, or I mean, even just the idea that like, I mean, society still very is very negative toward women who have casual sex and who are not, who aren't trying to have a live in relationship with a man or somebody else. Like just [01:01:00] saying that, we'll, this, there is a, much more negative or it's women who, are in a situation ship as it's now being called, or if friends with benefits type of relationship, like the women are regarded as suckers.If they're doing that where, and, instead of being like, well, actually aren't, they getting something, like, what if you, why is it impossible for a woman? To not want to have a emotional attachment from sex, like there is. We're still in that, like, and you see it so much, I think, in a lot of popular media and social media and TikToks, like people complaining and saying it's stupid for women to even want that, right?Suzannah Weiss: And a narrative I hear a lot nowadays is that women have made pussy too cheap, which is interesting that we're still talking about it in these economic terms. But I hear a lot of people in like the LA Spiritual community a lot of even I saw like a comment on Instagram Recently [01:02:00] that had like thousands of likes saying, women have ruined dating by making pussy too cheap They've been having casual sex and now men think they don't need to put in effort However, why, like there's this narrative that women have to train men to be civilized or to treat them like human beings.I don't want a man, I have to train. Like if a man is saying, oh, I'm gonna, you're looking for a relationship, but I'm gonna keep just pushing for a hookup, just 'cause some other woman had casual sex with him. That's not someone I want anyway. So why are we again having this low standard for men that women have to train them to invest in a relationship and make our pussies expensive because apparently we always have to have a price tag.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. No. and it's like, Understand that people are in different moments in their life and it's okay for them to want different things at [01:03:00] different moments. Like there's nothing wrong with that and it's not your business. I mean, that really, I think is that message I think should be inculcated a lot more you don't like, yeah, like, I mean, cause again, like in, one of the other themes of the book is that, That women's bodies are kind of regarded as a communal possession almost in some sense that and, that you people think they're entitled to pass judgment on the way that other women, express their, I have sex or express sexuality and it's like, it's without anybody saying that to men.And it's like, if some women want to have more sex, then that's fine. You don't have to have a comment on that. That's okay.Suzannah Weiss: Yeah, there's, what was, well, there's been this commodification of women's bodies since agriculture, probably when women became men's [01:04:00] property and it became important to know who's which child belonged to which father.And since then, we still have this vestige of talking about women valuing themselves more or making him work for it or a different things that still suggest that women are commodities. And yeah, even I talk about the irony of women using the insult w***e for a woman who is free with her sexuality, because often women who say that are still coming from an economic mindset of.Well, it's more expensive to have sex with me. I need a wedding ring. Like, but that is still, then you're the w***e. If you are basing it on material items that you get in exchange for sex.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. And it is probably why some women hate sex workers. Because, they feel like that, that they have cheated the system, if you will.And it's like, [01:05:00] and they themselves implicitly are saying. Well, I see myself as a rival to you in some sense, that is what that negativity implies to me. What do you think?Suzannah Weiss: Yeah.Yeah. I think people in general don't like people who gain this of some and who find ways to make money find ways to, I think maybe they're jealous that a lot of sex workers, their work is play. And. they get to receive pleasure for a living. And I think people do think they've gained the system because we have this idea of no pain, no gain, and you must stress yourself out to make money.AndMatthew Sheffield: Well, and that women are not supposed to have fun having sex. They're not supposed to enjoy it. It's cheating if women enjoy it. [01:06:00]Suzannah Weiss: So they're doubly gaming the system.Matthew Sheffield: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, that, I mean, yeah, like, and, that's why, I do, I, do feel like, though, that, as society is kind of readjusting to, cause like the porn industry before Pornhub, it, was, A very different place than it is now.Because now, the, there were all, before there were all these studios that were making massive amounts of money and very, few women or LGBT people had any sort of presence in the industry, at the top end as executives or directors. And the evolution of, free internet porn has really kind collapsed all of that.Capitalism on itself. And now you, it is much more personal directed, individual directed, and you are seeing a lot more people, who are gay or trans being able to have, earn a living from [01:07:00] doing what they wanted to do. Which they really, that was not available to them in, many different ways.And then, and then you're also seeing that a lot of women who had been, and, I know, several of them that, they, were making more money before, but now they have more freedom and to set their schedule, to set what they want to do, and so, but, society is still trying to readjust to all this, that, And then, you're also, and I guess we haven't even talked about the, idea of like the sugar relationship as well.Like that's, is a thing that has always existed. Right. But now people are, more upfront about it in a lot of ways. Do you think so?Suzannah Weiss: I think so. And I think if that is what turns someone on, then that is fine. I think that. I just hope that whatever relationship people are in, it is because they are getting something out of it and not just the money.I mean, I [01:08:00] hope that people in those relationships are enjoying both the money and the sex. That is like, that is my only opinion on what other people should do.Matthew Sheffield: Well, or they can have more than one and get enjoyment another way. That's possible too, right? So yeah, anyway all right. Well, is there anything else you feel like we should Have discussed here, or do you think we hit all the major points?Suzannah Weiss: I think that we've hit the major points.Matthew Sheffield: Okay. Well, good. I hope it's been a, you've had a, good experience. Has, it has. Ha Did you have fun? Hopefully you had fun. Susanna .Suzannah Weiss: Yes. I enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.Matthew Sheffield: Okay, great. All right. So for people who want to keep up with you on social media, you want to give them your website address and social media and all that stuff.Suzannah Weiss: My website is [01:09:00] SusannaWeiss. com. S U Z A N A H W E I S S. My Twitter is Susanna Weiss. My Instagram is Weiss Susanna. And my book is Subjectified, Becoming a Sexual Subject, which you can order on Amazon.Matthew Sheffield: All right. Sounds good. Thanks. Thanks for being here, Susanna.Suzannah Weiss: Thank you.Matthew Sheffield: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the episode. And you can always get more if you go to theoryofchange. show to get the archives, the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And you can also go to flux. community to see the other content that I'm producing with my friends and colleagues as well.So that's it for this episode. I will see you next time. [01:10:00] [01:11:00] [01:12:00] 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 SummaryPresident Joe Biden and Donald Trump are facing off for the second time this year, but a number of polls have shown a surprisingly close race, despite the fact that Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies and he stands as the only president in American history to have sent an armed mob to block the certification of his electoral defeat.How is this scenario possible? There are a lot of reasons for it, and some of them involve decisions made by Democratic leaders and donors that were made many years ago by refusing to invest in progressive advocacy media. Right wing media is now a gigantic enterprise that is capable of influencing people who don’t even watch it.The Biden-Trump race is also taking place in a post-pandemic moment, in which many companies dramatically raised prices and have refused to lower them. It’s a reality that has affected many people, especially those with lower incomes.What it all means is that there are millions of Americans who dislike both of the major parties’ presidential candidates and that the contest between Trump and Biden is likely to be decided by these so-called “double-haters.”Joining me to discuss in this episode is Stephen Clermont. He is the head of polling at Change Research, a Democratic polling company.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. Cover photo: President Joe Biden speaks during the Department of Homeland Security twentieth anniversary ceremony at DHS Headquarters in Washington, DC. (DHS photo by Tia Dufour)Flux is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* How ‘unlikely voters’ could be the key to the 2024 presidential election* Can we trust opinion polls? The Pew Research Center is trying to make sure* Latino evangelicals are reshaping American politics, and politicians should take notice* How much do political party elites know about their own voters?* The right built an infrastructure to attack democracy, the left must build one to protect itAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction02:34 — Trump's legal challenges and public perception08:39 — Persuadable voters are real, even though they've declined in number12:26 — Republicans and Democrats have very different political ecosystems17:36 — Partisan media is an enormous advantage for Republicans28:50 — Trump is doubling down on Republicans' negative campaign strategies32:42 — Economic challenges and Biden's presidency35:24 — Trump's past actions and public awareness46:33 — Hispanic voters and immigration policies50:48 — Republican primary dynamics and voter motivation53:57 — How Republicans use "demotivation" tactics to target left-leaning AmericansAudio 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 the election, I think there's a lot of stuff going on, and in the news cycle, the thing that happened most recently is the felony conviction of Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying documents in the furtherance of, well, basically campaign finance violations in New York City.And you guys did a poll recently that asked about that to a number of [00:03:00] respondents. So, why don't you walk us through the findings and then we can talk about what your take on, on them is.STEPHEN CLERMONT: Sure. Well, we recently completed a national survey. We actually started it the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies.I should, I think calling him Trump is, I think it'd be a little more formal and respectful. The former president and likely Republican nominee is. convicted of 34 felony charges, which is not something that happens every election cycle. So as part of to just to get a read on what we we found and what people's responses to this.I think, I think it's important to level set like what polling is. And what we should expect from polling now versus what we think. And it's, it's interesting to me to see the number of polls that were, are published and how many people get excited about them. And the New York Times comes out with a [00:04:00] poll and it dominates the, the political narrative and goes to these averages.I've always worked in polling in, for democratic companies that are helping campaigns When elections or interest groups trying to pass legislation or companies trying to understand how laws are going to react to their business and like polling really does need to actually have a purpose and a solution beyond just like, Too much of it gets reported as people want to react to it and feel a certain way, or like they expect Trump is convicted and polling should respond to that.And I think part of that comes from how polling used to be done, like 20, 25 years ago, Trump would have been convicted on a Thursday. Newsweek would have gotten in the field on a Friday, they would have done two nights worth of interviewing and be up that weekend with results, and they normally show very [00:05:00] respondents reacted very much to events like after the Democratic Convention in 1984, Walter Mondale was trailing.I think Ronald Reagan by a point or two and he ended up losing in 49 states. Polls were very reactive to events when people would put them in the field. And I think a lot of people put polls in the field after the conviction. And I think we're setting ourselves up for disappointment because polling, polling used to be you'd call people randomly on a phone.And you would adjust it to a bunch of demographics on age, gender, race region. Polling never used to be weighted by party ID or past vote. So you, it would always be an effect of people who have been most, responding most to the news being ones most likely to take surveys. So you'd see these big bounces.That's partly because polling the way it was then was not controlling the partisan composition. Because party ID is an attitudinal variable and the right [00:06:00] way to do polling is you don't wait by things that are attitudinal and then over time, we've gotten to the point now where it's just like wait party or wait to pass vote based on either interviews that you've done over time, the last 5, 000 interviews, what was the party ID and that you'd wait to that and control by party so to see, to see big movement, Towards Trump is not something they are away from Trump is towards Biden is not something I think we should be expecting from polling right now.People's minds are very set. You're not really going to convince Republicans who are answering a survey to say that I'm a Republican. I voted for Trump. I'm voting for Joe Biden. That just doesn't happen in polling. And so the things that we have found that I believe are interesting is we asked this question. How much have you heard about his legal challenges? 86 percent a great deal. Would you say his legal challenges are justified? They're very serious allegations made against him and they [00:07:00] need to be investigated. 52 percent unjustified. He's being politically persecuted. 44 percent and normally you can see like Democrats largely believe that justified.Republicans say that they're unjustified. Although 8 percent say that they are, and 52 percent of independents say that they're justified. So the, the thing that I'm looking at when I'm sort of analyzing these results is a majority of people believe these charges are justified. Joe Biden is not at 52 percent in polling.So we're seeing is like majorities of this country believe these are justified. The question that we need to ask is what percentage of those are ultimately going to end up voting for Trump? People don't believe, only 15 percent believe he's going to serve time in prison. 51 percent say the charges will be overturned.And. Or 66 percent believe that his conviction is, will be upheld, but he's not going to serve time.SHEFFIELD: But when weCLERMONT: ask a [00:08:00] question like thinking about the verdict, how does this make you feel about voting in the November presidential election? This is where this, these questions get tricky. So 38 percent say they're more likely to vote for Trump, 29 percent more likely to vote for Biden. 33 percent does not impact my vote. But you have to look at this is. The people that say that they're more likely to vote for Trump are already voting for him. 78 percent of Republicans say that they're more likely to vote for Trump. Because of this versus 59 percent of Democrats who say they're most likely to vote for Biden. So the thing that we're looking at we look at various measures in our polls of sort of the people who are going to make the difference.Persuadable voters are real, even though they've declined in numberCLERMONT: Whether it's double haters, people who are unfavorable to both Trump and Biden. And there's a broader category that I refer to as movable voters, which are people who, Don't support either Trump or Biden, or in this case the way we asked it, RFK, in polling, people are undecided or say that they're going to vote for none of these [00:09:00] candidates, as well as people who somewhat disapprove of the job that Joe Biden is doing.It's this sort of weird phenomenon that exists during the Biden presidency where everyone who approves of the job he's doing numbers that are sort of in the high thirties to low forties, overwhelmingly voting for him. People who strongly disapprove of him the job he's doing overwhelmingly voting for Trump.And there's this, this group of somewhat disapprovers or not sure, who in the 2022 election, the Democrats ended up winning because those voters broke for Democrats down ballot.And I've gone back and looked at the. Sort of soft disapprovers in the 2012 election. And those voters, those who somewhat disapprove of the job Obama was doing were more than two to one Romney voters. There were just more people who approved of the job that Barack Obama was doing than Joe Biden. So the movables which we've been tracking for a bunch of surveys we put out a [00:10:00] big report with this group, Future Majority, looking at them earlier this year. 24 percent say they're more likely to vote for Biden, 6 percent more likely to vote for Trump.70 percent this does not impact my vote. And the double haters, the movables, they don't like either candidate, but they're much more intensely. Dislike Trump versus Biden, like the ratio of very unfaith to somewhat unfaith is more split with Biden. It's overwhelmingly very unfavorable towards Trump.And we see that in a lot of the polling, the public polling that's done and the polling that we do. Trump is at the level he got in 2020. He's at 46, 47, 48 percent nationally. And in all the swing states, he has, it's very important to, to, he has not gained vote share and a lot of like polling is reported by margins.But if I can urge everyone listening, [00:11:00] when you're looking at a poll, don't, don't look at the margin, don't look like, Oh my God, Biden's trailing by four. Biden's up one, look at where the raw percentage of where Biden is, where Trump is, and how big the undecided vote is because Trump has. Consolidated and kept his voters.That has been true since the conviction. His very favorable with Republicans is up 10 points from the low point after the 22 election. He's consolidating his base and keeping his base with him, which has been his big project basically since the, since the January 6th attack and. Biden is a few points lower than where he needs to be, but we say when we're thinking about this election, which is, it's not going to be one on big decisive moments with verdicts or sentences or big speeches at conventions, or maybe even, it's going to be a slog of winning [00:12:00] every single day, every single news cycle Trump has very limited ways he can do that beyond his own base.And the Biden's big challenge is just getting the people skeptical of what he has accomplished in his presidency who are hesitant about voting for him now, but voted for him before to come out and vote for him again. And that's what the campaign is essentially going to be.Republicans and Democrats have very different political ecosystemsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's, and it is these polls are a good illustration of the fundamental differences of the Republican and Democratic parties' ecosystems that, the Republican, so I think, and I think the best illustration of this is that the percentage of white evangelicals in the general population has declined over the past several decades, but the percentage of white evangelicals as in the vote. In the electorate has stayed basically the same.And so basically what they had, [00:13:00] the Republican party has been sort of squeezing more and more blood from the stone over time. And and their demographic is overwhelmingly older. In the 2020 election, I believe I think everybody in their polls showed that over 50 was the only age group that Donald Trump.One, he lost all the other age groups. Yes, it depends. Yeah, that's my recollection. Yeah.CLERMONT: And the evangelical, the white evangelicals are strategically located important places like Wisconsin, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee and Madison through all throughout Michigan, outside Detroit,SHEFFIELD: Pennsylvania.CLERMONT: Yeah, they, they do make the difference in there.I haven't gone back to look at this and I probably should have just Percentage of white evangelicals voting for Trump now versus for George W. Bush and for John Kerry. I, my recollection is that they were in Bush. Bush was in the high 60s, low 70s, and [00:14:00] with Trump now, it's over 80%. Like, I think the way that the evangelical community has been fused to the Republican Party is much stronger now than it was then.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think so. And so, so whereas on the Democratic side so Democrats kind of have Republicans are in some ways, and people have made this observation that in a lot of ways, Republicans are a coalition of kind of the middle and the very richest, and then Democrats are a coalition of sort of the middle and the very upper middle and then the lower in terms of income.And that's, and because of that, though, that means that a lot of people who are, we'll say a somewhat regular democratic voter, they don't really pay attention to politics very much. They don't follow it. It's not a hobby. It's not fun for them. It's annoying for them. They hate it actually.They don't, they don't like it. And so. That's kind of the, the disadvantage that Joe Biden [00:15:00] has. I think it has an ecosystem compared to Donald Trump. But what, what do you think?CLERMONT: I think that's right. And I think we can see, I mean, one of the most consistent poll findings you can be out there is like, you ask about the CHIPS Act or you ask about the inflation reduction act, all the things that Joe Biden has done.Yes, people aware of that. It's like when you give them the information, they're strongly supportive of it, but they've never heard of it. It's not, it's whatever sort of building projects are being done in their communities is not being connected to the larger that this was a result of Joe Biden, the Democrats passing this legislation.And there isn't, there's, I think this is a larger challenge for Democrats, but the recent past now and in the future is there's no coherent narrative of what democratic leadership and what democratic government means, where we can fit these different initiatives in to the larger goal and larger story of why, [00:16:00] why voting for Democrats.Why that, why you personally benefit from that and what is the narrative we're bringing along like Donald Trump is very, the one thing he has been very good at and very consistent about since he started running in 2015 is he fully adopts the hero narrative. He's the reluctant hero being brought to help.Save his audience, his people, the people he's talking to. And all he does in these rallies is tell stories. And he tells stories that are all very simple. Here are these villains. They're doing horrible things. They're doing horrible things to you. This is how I beat them, and this is how I'm going to beat them in the future.And that story is being reinforced over and over and over again, and he doesn't have to tell. His audience, like what policies I'm going to bring, what, what are these things? It's the policies fit into the general [00:17:00] story of we're going to win. We're going to beat the people that you don't like. We're going to take the benefits from government, keep them from ourselves and.And beat the other side. And that is something that's self reinforcing. And that's what we as Democrats need to be working and telling something that is just as compelling. But it's also far more humane, beneficial, and more relevant to the future of America.SHEFFIELD: Well, and of course, Donald Trump has a lot of help in carrying his message.Partisan media is an enormous advantage for RepublicansSHEFFIELD: So that, I, I think that. And we were talking a little bit before we recorded here that the, the political media environment. is so drastically different than it was before Donald Trump came along. That before most, almost the entirety of right wing media was it was, it was [00:18:00] Fox news, it was talk radio hosts, and both of those media sources, they took orders from the Republicans in DC, like, Rush Limbaugh, he famously had, he was invited to the White House by Bush 41.You remember that? Way back when. And then, and then of course Roger Ailes, the, the founder of Fox News, he was a Republican political consultant and he would have calls every single day with the strategists of the, of the Republican presidential candidates. And, listen to what they said and, give his own feedback, but then he would come back and force that message onto everybody at Fox.But in, once Trump came along, not only has that order kind of broken down in terms of they don't take orders from the congressional leaders anymore, especially. But also there are, is just a multiplicity of right wing media outlets that never existed before. There was no Newsmax TV. There was no right side broadcasting.There was no. [00:19:00] Or, and EWTN, which most people have never heard of who are not Catholic. But if you're Catholic, you know what it is. And, and yeah, they went severely right wing. You got another one TTBN then all these far right pastors have these gigantic YouTube channels. And and then of course you got all these racist activists who are like Nick Fuentes out there, like right wing media is now a multi-billion dollar. And, and then of course, let's, can't forget Joe Rogan and, all these conspiracy people like Brett Weinstein and Ben Shapiro and whatnot. Like this is a, there's nothing like it on the left and Donald Trump has a very, very big advantage in that, like, if you go and look at his rallies, when people are there, They're not actually really paying attention to him.They're not listening to what he says there. But they know that when they go back home and they turn on Steve Dannon's podcast or whatever, [00:20:00] he will have provided them exactly the, the bullet points from what happened there and they'll believe it. And Biden doesn't have that.CLERMONT: I would also say, like, before it came on today, this morning I was looking at a new study that came from the Pew Research Center, and they did in depth looks at Facebook users, Twitter users, TikTok users, and Instagram users.And you look at the report on TikTok users, 45 percent of them say that they That they end up getting fed to them political content. Most of them go on to TikTok for entertainment and only 7 percent produce political content for TikTok. So you have, you, there is a vehicle that's as we all know, it's not, not that is owned by a, the Chinese government, which is actively feeding political content to people going on the site who are not there for political content.It is more of a one way. It's not [00:21:00] like people go on Twitter. I think Twitter is just mostly like political hacks like me who go on and make political comments and interact with other people on politically. That's not what pick talk is and other social media channels. Our people are doing. They're not there for politics, but they're getting politics.The algorithm is serving them political content. And I'd be willing to bet there's a video that was all on my socials this morning of Joe Biden at a concert on the White House lawn where he was looking rather old, and I just sort of shuddered at how much that's just being fed through all these different channels to people that are not seeking out political news.And I'll just say what what you said really resonates with me. Just how different things are. And in 2014 I was working for a non profit organization and I would regularly go to these briefings at the DNC that progressive groups would have and they would meet [00:22:00] with leading democratic strategists and one of them that really stuck out with me was A prominent, one of the more prominent pollsters was talking about the Republican campaign strategy that year.And he's just like, in Iowa, I can't fully figure it out. Like they have like 12 different message tracks that they're using in mail and on TV and digitally. And it's just like, there's no coherent theme. They're just throwing stuff out there. And like so much of Democratic. Democratic people in the nineties and early two thousands that came up in democratic politics and democratic messaging.The key was discipline, having the same saying, finding the right three things to say, saying them over and over and over again, getting the words right and being focused because that's what people will respond to. And we really did shift even before Trump to the key in political communications is having as many compelling messages that your campaign can produce, spew them [00:23:00] out as much as you can through all these different channels that have proliferated.On Facebook, on YouTube, and all these different places. And then see which one sticks to which audience, and then keep feeding them. And you're right, like, we, we have a much harder time doing that. Like, the democratic campaign structure is still largely based on our money is going to put up 30 second television ads on local television.And that's important, but it's a small component of what needs to be done to actually mobilize public opinion.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I guess to that end also, there is. There has been some interesting discussion I think sparked by Nate Cohn, the New York Times pollster about the idea that and it's not just other people have noticed this as well, that in surveys, I mean, the paradox is a lot of Democratic voters are not paying attention a lot, or they don't, they're kind of diffident about Joe Biden, but also the [00:24:00] other flip side is that for people who are very likely to vote, Joe Biden does much better among those people.So what, what do you think is going on with that dichotomy there, or do you believe that that one's real?CLERMONT: I, it's kind of a cop out to say we'll see on election day. I've seen this belief that the 2022 election sort of validates this. But we actually like, we've gone back and looked at our own analytics and our own models from the voter in 2022 was more of a Trump voter.There were more Trump voters in the 2022 electorate than there were Biden voters, and Trump voters turned out at a higher rate in 22 than Biden voters did. So it was just not the typical midterm drop off that we've normally saw. Like from 2008 to 2010 or from 2012 to 2014. I think we sort of used a much bigger democratic drop off, but it wasn't like the 2022 electorate was overwhelmingly more Biden.And then I think the, when you look at these [00:25:00] polls and then they say that the Non 2020 voter is more Trump. I don't think they think that's true. They're largely undecided But the the challenge is if you're doing telephone polling with the response rate as low as they are, which is one or two percent It's really hard.It's really hard to get a voter on to do a phone poll And it's even harder to get a non voter And I, I think it's gonna be a challenge for every pollster in every method. It changed research. We, we don't do phone polling. We do our polling explicitly online. We're, we're trying to reach as broad a population as possible.And I think, like, I think the 2020 non voter who's answering a poll is just fundamentally different than the larger population of non voters. I, I do, can, you do see that the attachment to Joe Biden and opinions about Joe Biden, attachment to the Democratic Party with younger [00:26:00] voters is much less than it is with older voters.But the older electorate in this country is still tilts Trump. And it's still going to be a very close election that is going to come down to how do you persuade and turn out younger voters to the idea that voting for Joe Biden is going to, is ultimately more in their interest in voting for Donald Trump.AndSHEFFIELD: I don't thinkCLERMONT: they're really going to tell us that to the degree we want them to and expect them to until we get much closer to the election.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's right. And, and I think, yeah, the, the, the lack of response, the lack of or rather, the low response rates, it, it makes. determining not just who is a likely voter, but who even is out there.It makes it much less of a science and much more of an and I think a lot of people who are news consumers are not aware of that. And they probably should be.CLERMONT: And it's always the case with undecided voters or [00:27:00] none of the above voters. We saw in this national poll that those voters who don't have a choice in this election, when we asked them who they voted for in 2020.Overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden, which is again, the challenge you have, we have to sort of persuade them to go from no choice, none of the above, not sure to buy. But it's, you have to acknowledge that the, the undecided voters exist. And like who they are more likely to, to vote for when you're assessing this election and realize that they couldn't end up not vote that's yeah, that's the, the type of thing that keeps me and every democratic strategist up at night and will for the next five months.SHEFFIELD: Well, and there is a bit of a paradox. I mean, that it's possible that some of these voter, because a lot of democratic C4 groups in particular spend a lot of money on voter registration. But [00:28:00] as Trump is mobilizing kind of the sort of I don't know, the, religious as an identity rather than a participation people.And there are quite a few of those or people who let's say, And this is a cross racial phenomenon. Like you see Trump going out to UFC events and trying to go and find, people that are not participating, generally speaking in civic culture or voting and and that's why he's trying to do all these outreach. I mean, he had some rappers who were gang members accused of murder on put them on the stage with him in New York. And they, he didn't do that just because he's celebrating being a criminal. It's, They must have had some sort of data that showed them that there are people who like these guys and maybe it will be helpful to us.I don't know. What do you think?CLERMONT: I think that's right.Trump is doubling down on Republicans' negative campaign strategiesCLERMONT: And I think if, if you're from the Trump campaign and you, you have, you know that you're fairly strong with your existing group of voters, [00:29:00] like, like they, they had the opportunity to turn away from Trump during the primary and go with Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or any of the other people who are running that I've already forgotten about.And They didn't do it. They, but Trump won pretty much everything. So, and it's just like, who are the new slice of voters out there? And I think what they're particularly looking at are. I mean, men under 30, people who were like in middle school and in high school when Trump first started running for president, who have much lower attachment to, whose political identities aren't really formed do not necessarily have the same level of attachment, anti Trump feeling that older people do, and Sort of the, for lack of a better word, sort of the MSNBC outrage works very effectively with my mother is not going to work with these group of voters.And if you're trying to persuade a new group, group of voters with an outlaw image and [00:30:00] something that's different, something that's different that would be the group that I would go after. Because that's, that's where the most. where the most potential they have with, with, with voters who really are not committed on either side.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah, I think that's right. But it's also that Trump is like a typical Republican in one sense that. They're very, they're a lot better in opposition than they are in governance. They don't know how to govern. They can't pass legislation because they all actually hate each other.And so, but when they're on the outside, shooting into the tent, that's a lot easier for them. And so, Trump's sort of, I mean, the phrase he used for his inauguration was American carnage, he was going to stop that. There are a lot of people out there I think that have, um, they feel like the economy hasn't worked for them. They feel like the educational market hasn't worked for them. They are frustrated in their personal life. Maybe they want to have a relationship and [00:31:00] they don't have one or, whatever it is. They feel dissatisfied in a number of ways.And Trump's negativity, apocalyptic narrative actually is really effective for them because he'll say anything to win. And so. And, but, but, like this is Trump's way of doing what Bill Clinton famously said to feel that, feel their pain, that's what he's doing, I think, in some sense.CLERMONT: Yeah. And what you've said in terms of the multi billion dollar Republican conservative right wing media system combined with Trump, it is to create much. As much negative sentiment about everything in American life as they can, and it was interesting. There was a poll that was come out by this group called blueprint, which had like of young voters and sort of agreement with a lot of these apocalyptic statements.You look at that a little bit further. The people who strongly agree that, like, basically things are terrible is in the mid twenties. [00:32:00] The thing that struck out to me in that poll is only 27, 23 percent of young voters think that their life will be worse than their parents. 45 percent believe will be better.But 54 percent believe the U. S. Will be worse off. And there's lots of polling that we've done. I think the New York Times poll that was just released recently that was so bad for Biden. It's like 75 percent of people say they were satisfied with how things are going in their personal life. But just the similar percentage believe that things are just going horribly in this country today.And that is where the benefit is. It's just like it's not like my life is so terrible. We need to shake and break things up.Economic challenges and Biden's presidencyCLERMONT: It's this, like the constant negativity about the country, which has also been, I mean, Joe Biden, if you were to pick a time to be president, probably the four years after COVID would not be that sort of the same blueprint poll majority believed life was [00:33:00] better pre COVID.We've gone through this massive disruption. But I mean, it's just basically when Trump was president, personal disposable income grew at a higher rate than inflation. And then it really grew at a much higher rate inflation during. The COVID pandemic where Trump and the Fed just flooded everything with money and people got through it because they had money from the government that they don't get normally.And Joe Biden, after that instant spike of the Recovery Act, inflation has grown faster than personal disposable income his entire presidency. And that is the weight, is, makes this much more challenging. Even if Democrats didn't have the structural media advantages that we do. Disadvantage that we currently face just the experience of people's like just the amount of money that they believe that they have And the belief that they're falling behind Their income is falling behind the cost of living has [00:34:00] created this cloud that gets back to your first question of why is Biden?tied with someone who led a coup and who's a convicted felon and And if you watch any of his recent rallies, especially when he's talking about sharks and batteries and boats is clearly not all there it is because like we're living in an era where The income going to the bottom 90 is at the lowest it has been in a hundred years people are paying more for education than they I certainly did when I went to college and Everything is costing more.And this belief that things in this country are out of control. Some of which you can see in the news and other things is manufactured by this billion dollar right wing news system. That is why this race is so close. It's this belief that things are out of, beyond my life, things are out of control elsewhere and the sort of halo effect [00:35:00] every previous presidential administration has when they've been gone for a few years is what's Trump's advantage is running again now, and it's very hard to analyze of just like what's going to happen in the future.I wish we all knew, but this race is fundamentally different. Than any race that we've had before. Polling gives us some clues, but none of it is definitive.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Trump's past actions and public awarenessSHEFFIELD: Well, and it's also that, especially with younger voters. As you said, people who were in middle school or high school, they probably really don't have any idea of what Trump as the president was like and all the, things that he did, all the corruption, all the different scandals, all the attempts to break the law and to, arrest people.I mean, like I think even now, like people. Aren't I'd say most people are not aware that Donald Trump actually tried to pressure Jeff Sessions to arrest Hillary Clinton. Like lock her up. Wasn't just talk. He [00:36:00] literally tried to do it and was denied by Jeff Sessions. But like, there was just so much stuff that he did and, and they never heard of any of it.And many of them, like, and like, there's been surveys showing that a lot of people. Aren't even aware that he was indicted for trying to steal the election in 2020. They don't even know that this happened. It's disturbing.CLERMONT: It's his advantage. And then Gallup put out these amazing word clouds right after the 2016 election.It's just like, what, what did you hear about Hillary? And it's this giant word email that dominates and everything else is in tiny type and you look at Trump's one. And it's just like, there's no one thing, no one word, no one scandal that dominates And like, I'm sure, like, I don't read the books and sort of looking back at the Trump administration, but like sort of open up one of them and go back.It's like, Oh, my God, did that really happen? It's we've we forget about it because there was so much of it and just so much stuff put out [00:37:00] there and that has been one of one of probably his most effective way beyond his hero narrative stories of just putting so much stuff out there that no one it's whySHEFFIELD: Exactly.CLERMONT: And part, part of me is just like, this is really annoying, like debate on Twitter and on sub stacks and podcasts of just like, like how far should Democrats go in calling him a convicted felon? And. I mean, the Biden team and one of the more recent ads, I think gets at it. It's just like showed a picture of Trump and corrupt and Trump, corruption, Trump, corruption, because corruption is something bigger than well, Trump is a bad guy.He's committed felonies. It's Trump is a corrupt politician. People know that corrupt politicians ultimately steal from them. And it's part of like, and people, The majority of this country believe that the cause of inflation has been economic [00:38:00] and corporate corruption and greed more than the policies of the Biden administration.So, I mean, Joe Biden early on in his administration tried to portray himself as like, The new FDR, if anything, like this campaign and the second term needs to be focused on being the new Teddy Roosevelt, going after economic corruption, defeating the most corrupt president we've ever had in our history, beating him soundly once and for all, and then taking on all the corrupt interests that have been backing him that The corrupt Republican nominee for president has said, if you give me a billion dollars to the oil companies, I'll give you all that you want.I mean, the key for these young voters is Is really just like, what is, what does this Trump second term mean for them? And the, the late Republican pollster, Arthur Finkelstein had this formulation of, there's only two types of elections. There's character elections and then there are issue elections.And I think we have [00:39:00] enough experience now that we're, we've done the character campaigns against Trump, that sort of. That's why, another reason why we're at parody now. And it's like, how do we do an effective issue campaign that makes his corruption central? But has a plan and a vision that goes beyond the candidates in this race and about what type of country this is going to be.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and yeah, the whole debate about, how much to call him a felon or whatnot. It's, I think it's missing the point that in today's media environment. The quality of a message matter is a lot less than the quantity of messages, plural. And, and that's again, like that is, this is a, this is a new way of thinking especially for Democrats because it's not, as you were saying, like everything used to be, well, we're going to say these things here and there, and that's what [00:40:00] we're going to stick to.And then, yeah, for this brief moment in Obama, 2008. It's almost like, I don't know, like they prefigured the, the environment that we're in, but nobody seems to have learned as much from that experience as I feel like they should have. Like, there was, I think and I forget who it was, but said something like Obama in 2008 is who you want him to be.And like that's, That got lost along the way, like people need to understand, they have, they have to create a way of thinking about Joe Biden that is valid for any different person, like you have to create multiple ways. And what does this mean for me? What does this mean? Student loans?Does this mean, ending airline, convenience fees and ATM surcharges and like, those are all things that Biden's done. Amen. But if you don't tell people that he's done them, then how are they ever going to know about it? Especially when the only things that [00:41:00] they really hear are just lies about the economy, being in a depression or something.CLERMONT: No, it's, it's my old boss, Harrison Hickman once said they walked into this meeting with the Gore campaign. It's just like, this campaign is simple. It's just like, Al Gore is on your side, George W. Bush is not. And I think you could do, you take that basic formulation for almost any election that's come after that.It's like, okay, that's the story you want to tell, and then what are the different proof points, and in the past you might need four. Now we probably need 50 and we've got to figure out, like, how do you get that? How do you get the right message in terms of the right voter with the right media? I mean, that that's the 2024 problem.The actual, like, what we want to say, like, basically, Joe Biden is on your side. Donald Trump is not like there are endless numbers of proof points of that, and it's Like, there is no sort of one single thing. [00:42:00] I know right now, and I've tested this myself, like, you hear a lot about 35 insulin. That is because that is the Biden accomplishment that tests the highest, and has the highest broad sort of recognition of the benefit of it.And then which is, which is good, which is the right start. And then the rest of it needs to fit in with that larger, larger frame. And then it's just sort of what society do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a society of freedom where you have economic freedom to Pursue your best option for life is personal freedom, where, if you're a woman, you can make your own reproductive decisions.You don't have to check in with your state legislator. Are we fighting for freedom in other countries that are being invaded by totalitarian leaders? It's, it's. The one thing I, I will give the Biden team a lot of credit. Like they, they're the ads and their frame, foundational frame of freedom works.We've done a lot of work. I've done a lot of work with that with [00:43:00] future majority of testing, almost any way to talk about any issue through the lens of freedom. And that is how they've defined a lot, like the high, high level of messaging in the campaign. And then from that is you can build all sorts of proof points from that, and it's like you said, it's, it is the quantity of getting that in front of the most number of people in a way that they can, well, they're actually be able to sort of, A, hear it, B, it sticks with them for more than five seconds, and then C, just like, reinforces the argument of why Trump And the wider Republican party are such a danger going forward.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, because, it's, I think, as you were saying earlier, that Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign was largely, a character attack on Donald Trump and didn't work. And this is the other fundamental difference between the Democratic and Republican ecosystems is that, [00:44:00] the, the Democratic electorate has to have a vision of the future.They have to have a positive thing that they are moving toward in order to, to really be enthused and come out. The Republican electorate. the world is ending and it's hopeless and nothing can improve. So they don't need that. And so if you, but if you're a Democrat and, and the only thing you're saying, if the only thing you're saying is we have to protect democracy from Donald Trump, the, the dictator wannabe for people who don't feel served by democracy right now.That means nothing to them. It's, it's, it's like saying, well, I want you to help you keep your job while I hate my job. And I hate my boss. Like that's, that's what I'm saying here is that people, they, Democrats and left leaning people want something better to look forward to and they need to have a vision and Biden, that's, I think that's the big thing he's got to do here to get these [00:45:00] people enthused.CLERMONT: Which I would argue is why focusing on freedom is a way that moves beyond the current debate right now. If you just say protecting democracy, just flip it, defending your freedom, you can talk about so many more different things with different audiences. Democracy isn't necessarily working right now. I kind of agree with that because there are 49 Republican senators who are blocking everything that we're doing.And an absolute, I don't know. I just characterized Mike Johnson is an interesting choice to be speaker of the house. And hopefully that experiment will last only a few more months. But yeah, the, the fight for, it's not so much. It. Democracy and fighting for democracy and fighting for continued fair elections is important is a much larger fight to protect our freedoms.That are under assault from not only Donald Trump, but Republican state legislators, Republican governors evangelical [00:46:00] pastors and all these different dark money groups that are funding all of this. That's what our fight is about. It is, are we going to have the opportunity, are we going to have the economic opportunities to live better lives and the economic freedom to do that?And are we going to have the Freedom to make our own decisions. Or are we going to outsource that to the Congress state legislatures in the Supreme court? I would passionately say, no, I don't want that. And that's, that's the choice that we need to make clearest in this election.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, I, I think that's right.Hispanic voters and immigration policiesSHEFFIELD: And I, I guess one of the other interesting message points Is and, and this has been a longer term trend that to go back to the religion thing that, evangelicals or people with those belief systems have become increasingly, increasingly Republican, but also, Republicans have becoming more evangelical as well.So like Pew has done some, some they've [00:47:00] stayed in touch with a group of voters and with a giant panel survey. And that's what, and they found it, the Republican party has become more evangelical over the years. But there, and, and there is a considerable growing amount of research about the Hispanic population becoming more evangelical as well.And as that happens. They also are becoming more Republican. And like, and so I guess this is my way of getting into immigration as a topic because I think that the sort of the online or the political activists today. People on Twitter, especially who are, who are left leaning there, they're very angry about Joe Biden doing this policy that he did with to tighten border asylum applications.And I don't think they realized that the polling really does actually support him. Quite a bit on this regard. What do youCLERMONT: think it does? And I think it's always important. Say this is a poster that the Hispanic community is not a monolith and is very different in [00:48:00] different places. But yeah, it's not surprising to me because we sort of been old and been doing political work forever.In 2012, I did focus groups in Las Cruces, New Mexico with Hispanic voters on. The then New Mexico governor Susana Martinez's effort to ban driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. That was what the Republicans that year were basing their entire legislative campaign on. And you would think like, Las Cruces is very close to the Mexican border and there would be greater outrage about like the governor's proposal.But I think that room was. split fairly evenly between people who supported that policy and who didn't, and who spoke very passionately opposed to that policy. And, I think the audience, the Anglo audience we had after that was, we ended up cutting that one short because they were so overwhelmingly in favor of banning [00:49:00] driver's licenses.There was no, there was no moving any of them. But yeah, there was a large debate that year between the activist community on that policy and where the voters were. And that Democrats, we were able to thread the needle in the campaign that year and expanded our, Numbers in the House and the Senate. But it was very, very tough and very difficult.And this, the Hispanic, Hispanic population is like every other population in this country. You have to do in depth studies of them, understand the nuances on how they approach these issues. Understand, yeah, the growing influence of religion and how economic issues trump a lot of other things, just like they do for many other voters in the electorate.And. I mean, Democrats, Hispanics broadly have voted more for Democratic nominees for president in Congress than Republicans, but that number is much more variable than we [00:50:00] appreciate. George W. Bush got almost 45 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, and I think we look, Obama did particularly well in 2012, and Hillary did in 2016 with the way that the issues were framed then.But a lot has happened since then, and, I mean, Democrats can't count on the support from any population. We've got to go out and earn every vote. And yeah, the issue set in the way to approach voters is different now than it was when they racked up big numbers, but I think that the issues as they relate to immigration are very, very nuanced, and they always have been.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and I think that, I mean, this goes to the, the kind of the, the larger problem of the electorate.Republican primary dynamics and voter motivationSHEFFIELD: Like, people too often think of, of voting and who, who wins the elections as, oh, well, so when people were persuaded from one side to the other, or the [00:51:00] undecideds were persuaded, but in many cases, it's just about who actually show up. And like, and, and I think to some degree people are, people have gotten there, there are some people on the left side of the aisle that have gotten some undue hope from all these Nikki Haley undead primary voters. They're trying to say, Oh, look at all these people that Donald Trump hasn't persuaded.And it's like, because his fans aren't bothering to vote. Do you not understand that? And that it's, Democrats or Independents who hate Trump emphatically and are showing up to give him the middle finger and the ballot box. You really can't draw any inferences from what these votes were for Nikki Haley.I don't.CLERMONT: I would say, broadly, I would agree with that. It is interesting in states like Pennsylvania and Florida that have closed Republican primaries. That she got 20, like 15, 20 percent there. It's, it's not nothing. Not sure what it means for the general election yet, but I think, [00:52:00] look, I think most Republicans are going to vote for Trump.It's ultimately like he was able to draw the inside straight against Hillary because ultimately more Romney voters voted for Trump than Obama voters voted for Hillary. That's, that's just reality that we face, but it's not nothing like when I was saying that he's gained support since 2022 among Republicans, his very favorable has gone from 50 to 61.So that means like 39 percent of Republicans are not very favorable towards him. And in the 2018 election, those people by and large sat home, like the, the, the Democrats who are very unfavorable towards Trump, they voted. The Republicans, very favorable towards Trump, they voted. The people who stayed home, by and large, were Republicans who didn't love Trump.And there are plenty of Republicans who don't love Trump. They're just not going to vote for a Democrat. They're not going to vote for Biden. But, like, there's something there. There is general [00:53:00] dissatisfaction. And there are ways to try to demotivate Republicans either overtly or covertly. That like all options need to be on the table in order to do that.And again, Trump is going to be, if he debates in a couple of weeks, which I doubt he will we'll sort of see like, this isn't the Trump that existed in 2015 and 2016, this isn't the Trump that existed in 2020 he's benefited by being off Twitter. Off our screens only within the right wing media ecosystem, which you reading the teleprompter.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.CLERMONT: Reading the teleprompter being in the right wing bubble that democratic strategists like me are like barely, barely aware of. That is really, really helped him. But in theory, this is a campaign where he's going to have to get out of that at some point in this race, actually, we'll have to start at some point and then it will become a lot more challenging.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, all right.How Republicans use "demotivation" tactics to target left-leaning AmericansSHEFFIELD: Well, let's maybe end with [00:54:00] a discussion of a topic. You just mentioned there. I was a perfect inadvertent segue, which is the motivation. So the, the Republican Party has, has spent a lot of money over the decades on that. And whether it was running ads for Ralph Nader in 2004, the only television ads in 2004 that ran for Ralph Nader were paid for by Republicans.Yeah. And so, but, but, but they also, so like Peter Thiel, he is a backer of this. Podcasting platform called callin which also funds people like Brianna joy gray and funds other ostensibly left wing podcasters such as Jimmy door. And those individuals seem to basically only attack. Joe Biden and never say anything bad about Donald Trump and people who are allegedly socialists that's an interesting posture, I have to say.CLERMONT: Yeah, no that's, it's another one [00:55:00] of the effective tools that the right wing Right wing donors know how to do media. They know how to buy media. They know how to control media and they find the right people who are perfectly fine taking money to say things that they already likely already believe, but but still pretending to be something else.And there's no easy challenge to that. I mean, again, I think part of it becomes awareness. I was talking to someone. last week who's interested in looking at Jill Stein voters and seeing how persuadable they are and asked him if he had listened to any podcasts that Jill Stein has been on, such as people that you mentioned Brianna Joy Gray and Jimmy Dore and Katie Halper and some of the others.And he hadn't. And when you do that and you sort of hear just how extreme the rhetoric is, I would also put in it just coincidentally that all of the [00:56:00] things that they say, particularly about the war in Ukraine somehow also dovetail with the propaganda coming out of the Kremlin. That is a major challenge that does need to have a lot more exposure than it currently does.It is, it is always interesting to me that people, people do, including me, obsessed about, like, what's being spread on TikTok, and is on Twitter, and crazy thing, Elon, or crazy, racist, insane thing Elon has written on Twitter, very little attention is paid to YouTube, which is by far and away the dominant one.Social media platform in this country that is used by many, many different people to spread misinformation and to spread misinformation, but also to make money by broadcasting very well produced shows. And we're not gonna, Democrats are not going to win by pretending that doesn't exist. We just have to find the right platforms to call [00:57:00] it out and expose it.But yeah, it's, it's always, I've done a lot of work in New Mexico over the years, and we certainly have races that swing somehow swing races, these random green candidates show up. And every time we go in and challenge the signatures and what they've been doing, it's always been backed with by the New Mexico Republican party.That always seems to happen. I remember there was a green candidate who was going to run in the race between Bob Casey and Rick Santorum in 2006, and all of the effort and organizing effort on that side was coming straight from the Santorum campaign. This is something that's been going on a long time that deserves a lot more attention from the national press, just to tell the story of how politics is really being done in this country.But yeah, we can expect a lot of that level of demotivation that is some, that is in the interest of Peter Thiel and David Sachs and that whole network, which also happens to dovetail with the interest of Vladimir Putin and President [00:58:00] Xi in China. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: it is. Yeah. And and of course, I mean, it should be said that no candidate is owed anybody's vote.And if there's for people who feel like the Democratic Party is not progressive enough for them I think that that's, there's nothing wrong with having that viewpoint. But on the other hand, if you actually want to achieve your ideals, well, then you need to get involved in primaries and you need to be in favor of ranked choice voting.Like that's. That's what you should actually do if you're serious about this stuff, rather than having helping Donald Trump in the general election and, or, I mean, Cornel West is literally running for president to make money because he's a deadbeat dad who owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in IRS taxes.That's why this guy's running for president. It's not sincere in any way, shape, or form. And you are a fool if you vote for him. It's that simple.CLERMONT: Yes, it is there. There are plenty of ways to get active [00:59:00] politically in your community. It's no more simple thing than walking around your neighborhood and knock on doors and talk to people about what they believe is important.And, and you have your point of view that that is what persuasion is all about. That's what that's what real politics is all about. It is not going on YouTube to rant and rave to get the biggest, monetize the biggest audience. Mean, that helps that you do a substantive show like this, then monetizing that I'm 100 percent for.But yeah, the politics is really about making it, being active and making a difference locally and in primaries and then just like persuading. People that progressive policies are the best way to move forward in this country. That's Ultimately anything that passes in any big movement has been based on persuasion.It is not letting the other side have power and then expecting we're going to have this mass revolutionary [01:00:00] reaction to it that is childish, childish, and if it actually did happen, would be far more dangerous than whatever fantasies you think it's going to be no clearer than the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution or anything throughout history of revolutionary change produces an awful lot of violence and ultimately leads to the rule of a strong man.And. Hopefully we will not have that the American experiment will preclude that, but it's only going to preclude it by us doing the hard work every day of persuading people that our ideas and our plans and our vision for the future is better than the other sides.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's a great way to end it there.So Steven for people who want to keep up with your stuff, what's your recommendation for that?CLERMONT: I would always change research has a new sub stack called touch grass. Where we give our perspective on the data that we are collecting and interpreting I would [01:01:00] subscribe to that subscribe to change polls on twitter and I think the key fundamental thing is Don't stay off 538.Don't let polls make you crazy. Polls are not therapy polls are not Designed to for your mood of the day. It is It is understanding public opinion and really the best thing you can do is talk to your friends and family go knock on doors in your community. Do other things, get informed in different ways other than looking at polling averages because I think the dirty secret is that they're not always right.They haven't been right in recent elections, but polls are tools to help candidates win. And although we're not working for the Biden campaign or, I am wishing all the best of luck for them to figure this out because we're working for a whole bunch of other candidates down the ballot that all, all need to win.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, sounds good. [01:02:00] And oh, I, I guess you, you should give your Twitter a plug. Oh, sorry. You can do that. Sorry. My, myCLERMONT: Twitter, my Twitter account is SJ Claremont SJ C-L-E-R-M-O-N-T, and change Researchers Twitter account is@changepolls.com. Oh. Not change polls.com at Change polls.SHEFFIELD: Okay.All right. Well, sounds good. Thanks for joining me again. Thanks,CLERMONT: Matthew.SHEFFIELD: Alright.All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion and you can always get more if you go to theoryofchange.show. You can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And my thanks especially to those of you who are paid subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and please do tell your friends and family about the show. I appreciate it very much. Thanks a lot. [01:03:00] [01:04:00] [01:05:00] 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 SummaryPodcasts are an increasingly important part of many Americans news and entertainment options. There are thousands of them and many of them feature guests like this one, but some of them don’t. The political dynamic of podcast guests is interesting also because it appears that people who hail from the center-left side of the aisle are less likely to be prolific podcast guests than those who hail from the rightward side of the political spectrum.The Pew Research Center is doing a lot of interesting analysis on podcasts of late, and I wanted to bring in one of their analysts, Galen Stocking, to discuss his very interesting study about podcast guests. The findings are notable in what they can tell us about the podcast ecosystem, and also how the center used artificial intelligence to conduct the research.The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. The video of this episode is also available.Flux is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* Podcasts are increasingly popular, why do people listen to them?* Why many podcasts and streamers who target male audiences aren’t helping their fans* Fox and CNN are having very different identity crises* Social media moderation standards are more about epistemology than technologyAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:24 — Many podcasts with guests routinely featured the same guests, especially ones affiliated with the Daily Wire14:33 — How Pew used AI to study podcast guests20:53 — Republican podcast listeners significantly trust their shows much more than Democratic podcast listeners25:35 — Breaking down the demographics of specific podcast formats29:22 — Trial and error with AI for podcast transcript analysisAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: There are a lot of data points in the research that you guys have been doing, both on the current study, and also in the larger context. So let's maybe start off to set the table with some of the larger context how popular are podcasts [00:02:00] and among other media sources in the research you guys have done?GALEN STOCKING: Podcasts are incredibly popular. There's been a number of different research studies looking at this and. If we look at the longtime horizon there's some research from Edison Research on Triton, Triton Digital that SE shows that from 2013 to 2023 there was an increase of from 12% to 42% of Americans ages 12 and older who said they'd listened to a podcast in the past month.So that's phenomenal growth. We also ask people in 2022 if they, I'm sorry, 2023, listen to podcasts in the last year and 49 percent of us adults said they had. So a very wide base of people who use podcasts in general and listen to them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And what about the age range here? Is it how does that compare to other media?STOCKING: That's a great question. Actually it is, it does tend to be [00:03:00] more popular among younger Americans. So two thirds of Americans ages 18 to 29 say they've used a podcast or listened to podcasts in the last year that compares to 28 percent of those 65 and up. And Other groups are somewhere in the middle, but that does suggest that it even among older Americans podcasts have a foothold and people are listening to them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's also the case that you know this sometimes with some technologies there tend to be some gender differences, but it's not as much with regard to podcasts, isn't that right?STOCKING: No, not a lot of gender differences and also really interestingly no partisan differences really.There's a 46 percent of Republicans or independently Republican say that they listened to a podcast in last year and 54 percent of Democrats say the same thing. So it's, that's pretty close about roughly half of people from both parties.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then now in [00:04:00] terms of the research that Pew has been doing with looking at podcasts you guys break them down into different categories and, and that's pertinent to the further analysis that we'll be talking about.So, can you kind of just overview what those categories are? You do note that there are some differences in terms of guests, like, which shows do not have guests such as true crime et cetera. So in other words, sports, self-help relationship, entertainment, et cetera.STOCKING: So we, we looked at 434 of what we're calling top rank podcasts. Those are podcasts that charted regularly in the top 200 on either Spotify or Apple in a six-month period in 2000 22. And we took those podcasts, we looked at their episode descriptions and determined which podcasts had guests.And we found that overall three quarters of podcasts had guests at some point during all of 2022 and then another 28 percent or [00:05:00] so had guests at least half the time or more than 4 percent had, I guess, basically in every episode, but there are some differences in terms of the types of podcasts in terms of the areas that each podcast focused on. You look at sports podcasts. All sports podcasts had a guest on it, at least one episode. It's just a matter of how sports podcasts, at least among the top ranked podcasts tend to operate. They have guests on Entertainment podcasts also pretty high 85 percent.Politics was also pretty high, 78 percent. You contrast that with true crime podcasts which dropped down to 56 percent of those had guests on at least, in at least one episode. And so, and only five percent of them regularly had, had guests on. So, there's some just differences based on topics, just rounds it in what they're actually looking at in the podcast.SHEFFIELD: And generally it would seem I mean, If I were to make an inference, it would be that the shows that are more topical based tend to have guests more often. Would you agree with that?STOCKING: We didn't look at whether, so you can talk [00:06:00] about politics and not talk about present day politics. You could talk about sports and be more broadly focused. In fact, I can think of a couple of podcasts that are political podcasts that we looked at that were not based on present day.So I'm not sure if it's necessarily as topical focus, but we did look at top podcasts that had a news focus that that you know specifically tended to talk about news broadly defined whether it's politics or sports or crime or yeah Whether whatever and those podcasts definitely did seem to have guests more regular regularly so 89 of those news focus podcasts had at least one guest and 13 of them Broadcast on regularly, so it is much more and that's compared to non-news focused, which was only 3 percent of those, those podcasts.So yeah, it is much, it is more common on those news focused podcasts. I can't, topical is, is maybe not just about news, right? So it can, it can be more broadly defined. And so I'm cannot necessarily speak to that broader definition.SHEFFIELD: [00:07:00] Yeah. Well, and, and there is one little wrinkle in that is that the ones that the podcasts that were doing self-help and relationships, which, generally not as newsy or current events focused had a lot of guests that according to the analysis.STOCKING: Yeah. And often those guests are experts or other kinds of people that I think can bring some kind of diverse perspective on, on whatever they're talking about.Many podcasts with guests routinely featured the same guests, especially ones affiliated with the Daily WireSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. All right. And then, so one of the other. I think probably the most interesting finding in the study to me is that the person that a lot of the shows that did have guests, the episodes that did have guests, many of them were featuring the same guests across the podcast. So let's talk about that. If we could.STOCKING: Yeah. So. We found that there was a set of guests that did appear more regularly than than other guests. So, and when we looked in detail at who some of these, these guests are, we, pulled out the names of the [00:08:00] top 15 or so. They, they appeared on, some up to 40 episodes during that year and they tend to fall into two categories in terms of looking at the number of episodes that they appeared on.So they, they were either tended to be either sports commentators in some kind sports journalists or people who talk about sports in general or political commentators. So those two categories seem to be going on a lot of podcast episodes, but that doesn't, that's not quite the same as those who went on the greatest diversity of shows who went on, the most shows that actually draw drew from a pretty wide Pool in terms of the backgrounds of those individuals?There were, were everything from scientists to entertainment industry people, to journalists, to athletes. All across, across that, I'm sorry, not athletes. Not, that's my mistake.SHEFFIELD: Oh, okay. No problem. Yeah. And in terms of the political commentators one of the things that. That was interesting in that regard is that from a political guest standpoint, one of the [00:09:00] interesting findings was that many of the most frequent guests were individuals who were affiliated with various daily wire podcasts. And they were pretty overwhelming when you look at the most top ranked guests. So let's, can you talk about that a little bit?STOCKING: Yeah. One thing we found was that many of the hosts of podcasts that are published by the daily wire. tend to go on other podcasts that published by the Daily Wire as well as, as well as other shows in general. And so we found people like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh were often on other shows from Daily Wire as well as other shows in general.And, and because that they showed up in both the number, the highest number of shows that people, that guests appeared on, as well as the highest number of episodes that guests appeared on,SHEFFIELD: and this is kind of fits in the larger point, which is that you found that most of the people who were on podcasts had. You only one appearance but among those who had multiple appearances, they had many multiple appearances.And that was a, it's an [00:10:00] interesting finding in terms of, it, is this an artifact of network marketing? Is this a fact of people just being in demand? I mean, what's let's, I guess, tell us the numbers here. And then we can talk about perhaps. Your, your thoughts are on that.STOCKING: Yeah.So 78 percent of guests we found in all of these top ring podcast episodes in 2022 appeared on just one single episode. It's not one podcast, one single episode of one podcast. So that remaining group, that 22 percent breaks down into 10 percent appeared multiple times on the same podcast and 12 percent that appeared on multiple podcasts.So it is, of those who appeared most often More than once it is split, roughly 50 50 between appearing on multiple shows and multiple podcasts. And if you look at the At least from from my universe, the people that are on the greatest number of shows, there's more names that jump out that are outside of, a couple of different niche areas.So people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, who are, Elon Musk or Judd Apatow [00:11:00] or Anthony Fauci, who are from. Walks of life and are apparently on multiple podcasts potentially because of the stature that they have in, in, in society.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it is, it's interesting, when you go through the list of the number of shows that various individuals appeared on that I mean, I'm just looking at the list right now that other than Neil deGrasse Tyson, He's literally the only person that I recognize as somebody who's overtly, a progressive individual.Whereas the number of shows that more right leaning personalities appeared on there, it's just a huge, I mean, I guess Judd Apatow, but he's more of an entertainment focused person. But from the right side of the aisle, we've got Elon Musk, we've got Matt Walsh, we've got Dave Rubin, we've got Jordan Peterson, Matt tbe James O'Keefe. So it's interesting to how that works, that there is appears to be somewhat of a, a dichotomy between left and right in terms of guests.STOCKING: [00:12:00] So we didn't actually look at the political orientation of either the, the podcast or, or the guests in, in any of this research.But what we did do, yeah, is create, do a network analysis of the guest because we wanted to see if people who are on one podcast. If if pockets tend to share the same guests, right, because I can give us some sense of if there are some some networks developing from that. And so when we did that, we found 5 groups. And the 1st group was podcast that tended to be news and media with either a centrist or center left. Orientation. And then the second group tends to be a lot of news and media and some other categories some other types of pockets as well, but from a more center, right perspective and. There were some podcasts that were shared over there, but the natural groups that emerged from looking at this, from looking at the guests that were shared, did segment some of those some of those podcasts into different groups simply by who they're bringing on.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it is also, [00:13:00] Oh, go ahead.STOCKING: I would say another way to put that is, is that there's not much sharing between some of the top ranked center left pockets in that one group as compared to the guests that are brought on those. Podcasts in that center right group. There, there are some, there's some podcasts that are kind of more in the middle that, that tend to share guests with both categories, but there's a lot of I don't want to say isolation, but segmentation between those.Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Huh. Yeah. And, and then it should be pointed out as you guys note that 12 of the 18 most prolific guests were sports journalists or commentators. So, that's, that's and it's, it's an interesting thing to think about, because is this a function of that there are just not that many sports commentators who, people would want to have on their show, or is it just simply it's easier to be a guest to come and talk about sports. I don't know if you want to speculate that on that or not.STOCKING: Well, what I can, what I can say, though, is sports podcast tended to show up in a lot of [00:14:00] these other different groups.There was one group that was, fairly sports oriented, but like the dream on green show Was, which is, he's an athlete for go and say warriors was in a category that was not connected to sports was more entertainment focused. And so that suggests, and as other sports podcasts were, we're sharing guests with other podcasts that were in different categories.So something about the, either the guests that bring off that they bring on are people that other podcasts want to bring on or vice versa. But there's a lot of crossover with sports and, and other, other topical realms as well.How Pew used AI to study podcast guestsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, true. Okay. And then so I guess just in terms of how you guys looked at or did this data analysis, this is as far as I know, the first real large scale.Study of podcast guests that I have heard of. So can you talk about that a little bit of how that, how that worked and what you guys did with that?STOCKING: Yeah. So when we concluded our an earlier study that was looking at the [00:15:00] podcasts themselves, that we had these 450 or so podcasts that were ranked highly over the course of 2022, we recognize that one of the top formats of these podcasts was interviews.And so we wanted to see. We were asking ourselves, who were they actually interviewing it? And what does that tell us about the podcast themselves? So we pulled all of the episode descriptions for every available episode description from 2022 for each of these podcasts. It turns out some of those podcasts didn't actually have episode descriptions available in for 2022.And we started looking at those and realized that. There are 24, 000 episode descriptions, and that was going to take a long time to read by hand and go through. So we used a a large language model like ChatGPT, essentially it was a private instance of ChatGPT and gave that model each episode description in turn with some instructions of look at this episode, this episode description [00:16:00] and tell us who the guests were on this episode.And that did a pretty good job. It took some steps to try to determine what the best prompts would be to, to get that, but we ended up getting a 9 percent accuracy When compared with human coders across a subset of, of descriptions. So about 90 percent accuracy of, of, of the guests that were on there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's, and I guess at this point and we were talking before the recording that you guys did not do any transcripts on the show. So we don't know how long it is. And you mentioned this, that we don't know how long they were on the, Each individual up. So, because, I mean, it really does very widely.Some, some of them have the guests there the whole time, and some of them might be only for, just quick check in. So we'll be if you can come up with that, in a subsequent study, that would be interesting, I think. So one of the other interesting aspects of this study is that, that You don't too often get a lot of chances to compare directly obtained data from, [00:17:00] from people's actual behavior and then compare it with polling.So sometimes with elections you get that, but even then there's some, sampling can be potentially an issue. And so with this one and this is an earlier poll that you guys did in December of 2022, you asked. People specifically, what podcast do you listen to? And how much of a correspondence with the sort of top charts, top ranking charts was there in according to people's responses.STOCKING: So I think what's interesting about this is going back to, I'm sure you're familiar with the Chris Anderson theory about the long tail of, of media and consumption. There were very few podcasts from that study that had more, more than just a few, like 1 or 2 percentage points in it. of people saying that they listened to it.Now, that could be because they, they didn't recall it. And it also, I believe that the question wording was, which podcast do you listen to the most? So that people may listen to multiple podcasts and, and, that might not be There might just be one single one who listens the most, [00:18:00] but the one that did show up was one that was in, in our studying us the Joe Rogan experience.That was about, I believe it was 5 percent of Americans said they listened to that podcast the most. And that was in our list of top ranked podcasts. I don't know the ranking of, of those. We, because we don't know. There's, there's some challenges there, but it was definitely in the top.SHEFFIELD: Oh, yeah.Yeah. Just because there are so many podcasts period. But yeah, the, the Joe Rogan experience was 3 percent higher than the next highest name, which was the New York times, the daily 2%. And Yeah, so, and and it's of course a challenge I guess I don't remember and maybe you can, if you remember what the sample size on that particular survey was, because obviously that's another problem as well to draw inference.STOCKING: The sample size on the survey overall was 5, 000. I don't remember the sample size on people who said they listened to a podcast. It was, probably on the order of 2, 500 ish, but I, I, I'm not [00:19:00] entirely certain what the exact number is.SHEFFIELD: Okay. And then, so, I mean, now there are some, some differences across different groups about like what types of podcasts that they tend to be interested in, and that was and that's something I guess you guys didn't, focus on that as much with this particular study.But I think it's worth going back and looking at that if you, if you don't mind, if you have that can pull that up.STOCKING: Yeah, so we looked at a few different demographic breakdowns of podcasts themselves to, to see how different groups were engaging with, with, with podcasts overall. And we, like, like we mentioned earlier younger Americans are more likely to listen to podcasts than older Americans.And the ages, the ages 18 to 29 are, had the highest rate of, of listenership. We, we saw some similar findings when we look at the reasons why. People in those different age groups looked at or listened to podcasts. Ages, people ages 18 to 29 were more just [00:20:00] within each of those age groups.Three quarters of that group said that they listened to podcasts for entertainment. Compare that to the 65 plus group of the people who are 65 plus and listen to podcasts, just 30 percent said entertainment. People who are in that group, that 65 plus group were more likely to say that they listened to the podcast to learn or to stay up to date about current events.So 61 percent for learning and 38% for single state current events, whereas for the youngest age group they are less likely to say learning less likely to say current events compared with the oldest group. So 50% of, of that group said that. They are, they listen to podcasts to learn something and a 25 percent say, so listen to the day.Listen to podcasts to stay up to date with current events. So about a 10 percentage point gap between people of different age groups in, in general on both of those questions.Republican podcast listeners significantly trust their shows much more than Democratic podcast listenersSTOCKING: Now, we also looked at political orientation and we, like I mentioned earlier, we didn't [00:21:00] really see much of a difference at the level of party. So if you are a Republican or lean Republican, there's, it's a pretty similar rate between Republicans and Democrats in terms of listening to podcasts overall. But one thing we did see when we looked more closely at that is that people who So Republicans were more likely to say that they trusted the news that they got on politics, on, on, on podcasts and Democrats were by pretty wide margin 45 percent that they say they trust.Of Republicans say they trust the news they got on podcasts more than news they got in other sources and just 19 percent of Democrats said that so it's a pretty big gap there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it is an interesting data point because when you, when you look at the when you, when you look at the most popular right of center podcasts, they tend to be created by people who are radio hosts, talk radio hosts overwhelmingly.Whereas there are a few, there's a handful of center [00:22:00] left podcasters who are radio hosts, but obviously it's not nearly as much of a medium for them. And so I'm sure that that plays into a part of it, given how much that right wing talk video talks about how all the other forms of media cannot be trusted, except for us.So it's a shows up in in, in, in your research here. Yeah, I'll go ahead.STOCKING: I would say it's also interesting. I think you brought the point about radio hosts within the sports podcast community and many of the sports podcasts were run by sports talk radio let's say they're current or former.And so there does seem to be a direct connection between there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I guess some, and one of the other points that's interesting to me on the general demographic research you guys have done, and, and we talked about some of this stuff in a previous episode with one of your colleagues that I will link to in our show notes here.So people can check that out, but I don't think we touched on the, some of the racial [00:23:00] demographics in terms of what. People are looking for in the different shows that they are listening to. And there are some, some notable differences particularly in regard to black Americans use of podcasts and what they are interested in.And just going through some of the data points that, everybody generally speaking entertainment and pop culture was pretty popular among a lot of people across white, Hispanic, black. But 65 percent of black respondents said that they were interested in those podcasts and 40 percent of white respondents said that but, and, and there was also a pretty big gap between whites and Hispanics in regard to podcasts about race and ethnicity, which, perhaps it's not a surprise but one thing that was kind of interesting, I think is that Podcast about self-help and relationships.There was a very large difference between white respondents and black respondents. 32 points. 57 percent of black [00:24:00] respondents said they were interested in those podcasts and only 25 percent of white respondents said that. Did you, did that particular study have any individual follow up interviews to kind of, ask people to explain some of the stuff or did you guys not do that for this one?STOCKING: No, we didn't do any follow up interviews on this. One thing I think that we did see that was interesting as well because we, we come from often come from a news perspective on looking at these, these questions is asked broke down the level of getting news by each of these demographic groups by racial ethnic groups and Black Americans were more likely than white Americans or Hispanic Americans to say that they listen podcasts that primarily are about news especially in depth about news.So 69 percent to 57% and are more likely to feature The host actually talking about their opinions about news. And this again was about a 15 percentage point gap. So there's, there's different news usages for podcasts [00:25:00] by ethnicity as well.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. And some of that might also be related to the fact that that there are.Of course, radio state, many radio stations that are oriented toward black consumers. And obviously those individuals have podcasts just in the same way that these conservative talk radio shows are in the podcast world. Yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to make sure we hit all the points here. I think we have, is that, am I, do you, is there anything you feel like that we have missed so far?Breaking down the demographics of specific podcast formatsSTOCKING: Uh, yeah, so I actually wanted to go back to the news findings a little bit. We, we did find that. News is pretty common on podcasts and also both from a supply side in terms of the number of podcasts that were about news about one in six were about news, which is interesting to think of from the, the wide range of podcasts, podcasts about everything from we [00:26:00] found in our, in our mix of top podcasts everything from, popular TV shows to sports to people that are podcasts that were of just recording some people playing D& D playing Dungeons and Dragons. But the, the fact that there were almost 20 percent of podcasts that were about news we thought was, was a pretty compelling sign that news is important in that space, in, in the podcast space. And we also saw that from the demand side as well.Half of podcast listeners say that they at least sometimes Commentary about news, and especially about government and politics news, and two thirds say they hear news discussed on their podcasts overall. Well, one element of that that is important to, to note though 47, so about percent, so about half of those who hear government and politics news on the podcast they listen to say that it's information that lines up with their own views.Another 46 percent say that it's a mix and only 7 percent say they hear information or opinions that don't line up. So it's a lot of for about half of [00:27:00] Americans that, that are getting this news about politics and government, they're on podcasts. It's, it's information that is in comports with what they already believe.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I guess sort of related to that is we didn't talk about so one of the. The categories that you looked at is true crime podcast, which some of them tend to be very popular. There is no, there, that is another area where there are some demographic differences not on the political side.It's about 2 percentage points. Between Republicans and Democrats but there is a pretty big difference between men and women who are listening to these. So, in the December 2022 poll 23 percent of men said that they Listen to them. And 44 percent of women said that. And it was interesting also that the, the age differences, I was a little surprised at that, that I typically, at least for me, I associate, shows like Dateline and true crime with older audiences.But that's not, doesn't appear to be the case in the podcast world. There's not a lot of [00:28:00] older. Listeners listening to those seems like.STOCKING: Yeah. And I think the other interesting data point in there is education. People with lower levels of education, be with high school education or less are more likely to listen to true crime podcasts than people with higher levels of education.And that actually crosses with gender in that women with lower levels of education are more likely to listen to true crime podcast and both women with higher levels of education and men with similar levels of education.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, that's, it's all interesting stuff.STOCKING: Well, I think the other part of this too is, is that true crime podcasts are really popular. From a perspective of supplies perspective, there's a lot of them out there and they, they. chart really well. So that was the largest category of Top Brain Podcasts. So a quarter of our Top Brain Podcasts were true crime podcasts.The next, Largest category was politics and government at 10%. So pretty, pretty big gap there in terms [00:29:00] of, of topics. So, there's a lot of them out there and there's a lot of selection and, and that people can choose from in terms of like the, the actual crime, if it's like, cause a lot of them are focusing on just one crime or the, the kind of host that, that is, is talking about the, the true crime.There's a lot of selection out there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. And thenTrial and error with AI for podcast transcript analysisSHEFFIELD: now in terms of this particular study, we talked about some of the, we talked about the methods that you were using. Is there, are there things, aspects that. That you learn from this that you would do differently in future studies on all this.STOCKING: So I think 1 of the most difficult parts of this was actually finding the right prompts for the, at least from methodological standpoint. And that's something, this is a new technology. People don't, there's not really like guidebooks on how to use them, how to get this kind of, use them to extract information and that kind of thing.So that was a real trial by error. And I [00:30:00] think we spent a lot of time on determining just what the best prompt was to give us the most accurate results. The other side of it that was really tough sometimes was distinguishing between the guest and the host. Sometimes it's a like. Matthew is, is going to be talking about X, Y, and Z today.And the LLM would not know that Matthew was the host and would think it's a guest. So, that was really something we had to go back through by hand and classify some of those to make sure that, that it was not actually getting the host. So we actually would look at the top guests, Retrieve per podcast to make sure that didn't match up with the host, for example., It's not just something we can just throw into a model and say, Oh, it's done. It required a lot of human effort afterwards. And, and we also want to be careful and make sure that it's doing what we want it to do.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You're going to make sure. And I guess I mean, the, one of the other concerns of course, also in using an LLM for [00:31:00] research purposes is hallucinations and you guys had some issues eliminating those as well. You want to talk about that?STOCKING: Yeah. So because LLMs are based on a wide corpus of data they sometimes will, when we tell it to extract information from a prompt that you give it from a bit of information that you give it, it will sometimes scope beyond that.So we actually had a command within our prompt that said, Okay. Okay. Okay. Do not use any information outside of what we're giving you here. And that seemed to be, I don't have the exact information, but something to that fact. And that seemed to limit that. We didn't really find that it was, that the model was giving, giving us names that were not in the text.SHEFFIELD: Interesting. Okay. Well, great. I think this has been informative and we'll look forward to seeing the future studies you guys come out with.STOCKING: Yeah. Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for [00:32:00] today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more. If you go to theory of change that show, you can get the video, audio and transcript of the episodes. And if you're a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support.You are making this possible and you have unlimited access to all the content. And I also encourage everybody to go over to flux that community theory of change as part of the flux. Media network. So go to flex community for more podcasts and articles about politics, religion, media, and society, and how they all interrelate. And if you're watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button to get notified whenever we're posting a new episode. I do encourage you to do that.So thanks for watching or listening. 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 SummaryFar-right extremism is on the rise in the United States and in many other different countries and for the most part, the individuals leading these movements are Christofascist. That is, they are Christians who have a fascistic and authoritarian viewpoint. But there is another subset. And while they are not as popular or well-known, they have lots and lots of money. Another interesting thing about this group is that its leaders market themselves as centrist or moderate, which is unusual on the surface, but it makes sense within the larger historical context of far-right libertarianism labeling itself as somehow apart from the conventional left and right paradigm. They’re at great pains to portray themselves as different from conventional Republicans, and yet they are hosting fundraisers for Donald Trump. Here at Theory of Change, we’ve covered libertarianism’s connections to 20th century fascism and some of the older history of libertarianism. And joining me today to talk about the more recent trends is Gil Duran. He is the creator of a newsletter called The Nerd Reich about San Francisco politics and right wing extremism.The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. The video of this episode is also available.Related Content* Graphic “Political Ideologies by their Self-Described Priorities” mentioned in this episode* Graphic “Political Ideologies by Beliefs” mentioned in this episode* The failed promises of tech liberation and the “Californian Ideology” of the 1980s* The far-right origins of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency* Inside TESCREAL, the bizarre techno-religion that’s becoming an obsession of billionaires* The world’s richest people have realized they’ve destabilized the global economy, but rather than step back, they’re planning for apocalypse* How Elon Musk and so many other white rich men became a reactionary ideologues* Atheist libertarians and Christian fundamentalists have come together in their shared love of broken cognitive processesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction08:39 — Balaji Srinivasan and the delusions of “Grey” libertarianism20:21 — How the Covid-19 pandemic shifted the political alliances of libertarian dogmatists27:29 — What investors have in common with conspiracy theorists34:26 — Right-wing oligarchs have made it clear they will suppress dissenting speech39:57 — Techbros love China's centralized authoritarianism47:37 — Balaji and his friends are ludicrous, but their vast wealth means they need to be taken seriously54:09 — Why right-wing oligarchs love to call themselves populistCover image: Far-right investor Balaji Srinivasan during an October 2023 podcast interview. Photo via screenshot.Audio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: This is a really bizarre and a strange movement that you've been writing about but before we get into it, I did just want to get into your background a little bit, for people to understand how you got interested. So right now, you are doing a newsletter that is called FrameLab. Why don't you tell us about that?GIL DURAN: Sure. FrameLab is a [00:03:00] newsletter that focuses on moral politics and language in politics, and it's very much rooted in the work of Dr. George Lakoff, the Berkeley cognitive scientist who's known for books like Metaphors We Live By and Don't Think of an Elephant, and we've been doing that for a few years. It's a Ghost-powered nonprofit powered newsletter. I also write a newsletter focused on San Francisco tech politics called The Nerd Reich, which focuses on the authoritarian nature of the politics emanating out of Silicon Valley and San Francisco these days.SHEFFIELD: The Nerd Reich. Yeah, it is the perfect description of what we're talking about here. And it's remarkable that the group of people that we'll be talking about here, they really think of themselves as doing something completely different. It's not part of any tribe. They even use different terms to describe themselves. They call themselves Greys as opposed to Blue and Red, of course, Democrat and Republican. But these people are basically [00:04:00] just secular Republicans. That's what they are.So, but you know, in in the nineties and the eighties and, let's say early two thousands, if you were a secular conservative or libertarian and you didn't know anything about political science or political ideologies. It was actually possible to think of yourself as a liberal in some sense because the Republican party was doing things that, I mean, they've always been crazy since the Goldwater days, but, they were doing stuff that I think everybody now, looks at it's just absurd, ridiculous. They were trying to censor rap lyrics, use the government to censor those, they thought The Simpsons was controversial. I mean, and they, were saying homosexuality was satanic, literally caused by demons, and so was mental illness.That's what they were saying back in those days. And so if you had any sort of rationality, you didn't want to be a part of it. [00:05:00] And it seems like a lot of these people, they really did think that they were on the left and, but as the Republican party got better at PR and communications, they sort of tamped those beliefs down out of the public.So they don't say those things. They still believe those things. And you get little flashes of it every now and again, like the Colorado. Republican party for pride month. They just released a video that, said God hates pride and you should burn pride flags. Like, so you still get, they obviously still believe this stuff.They just don't talk about it. But for the Silicon Valley, right, they think there's something different. Why don't you, why don't you talk about that? Like they love the word centrist, especially.DURAN: Yeah, definitely. We've have right now in San Francisco is a big push by tech venture capitalists and their acolytes to capture city government in one of the most progressive cities in the country and push it to the right by adopting a bunch of really right wing policies on [00:06:00] things like criminal justice on things like dealing with poverty and drug addiction. And they've been using words like centrist and moderate to mask this, but it's been increasingly untenable for them to do so, because in a lot of ways.It's really clear how they are not moderate. They actually have some very extreme political beliefs and affiliations and some extreme behaviors. For example, Gary Tan, who's the CEO of Y Combinator, a very famous startup accelerator in January tweeted, die slow at seven progressive members of the board of supervisors.Earned him a lot of local infamy, some really bad stories, bad headlines. He had to apologize, said he was just quoting Tupac lyrics. But I'd say that someone who's a moderate, And who's trying to take over the entire city government and who tweets die slow at, elected officials is obviously someone who's quite extreme.So, we're seeing this development where we're seeing this [00:07:00] movement emerge from San Francisco and Gary Tan is not alone. He's got a bunch of other people just like him here in the Bay Area and in Silicon Valley pushing for a real right wing drift in California's politics, particularly in Northern California.And so that's something I've been digging into over the past few months. I first got interested because I was the editorial page editor of the San Francisco Examiner and I've lived in the Bay Area most of my adult life. And for the first time ever, it seemed to me the politics here had become so weird, so oddly polarized especially driven by social media.And I couldn't quite put my finger on what was happening back in 2021, 2022. But in subsequent years, I have done a lot more digging and research and they have also emerged more fully. And I realized that this is all part of a kind of a, of movement a new emergent ideology, which goes by a few [00:08:00] different names but it's very much a right wing tech focused ideology in which the wealthy.People of Silicon Valley should have ultimate power over society and everything else should be pretty much subservient to their whims. Great example, for instance, Elon Musk, he's pretty much kind of the figurehead, the, major patrons of this, the patron saint of this movement. There are a lot of little mini Elon's though, here in San Francisco doing very similar things.And you may not have heard of them yet, but probably soon you will.Balaji Srinivasan's and the delusions of "Grey" libertarianismSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And well, and for two of those people they are uh, Mark Andreessen, who is a billionaire investor. And then another guy, I guess he's a, not quite a billionaire as far as I know. But maybe he is Balaji uh, Srinivasan, who is a crypto, a very big crypto advocate.And, both of these. guys are kind [00:09:00] of, they seem to be the ones who produce the most output for this, coterie of, oligarchs. And it's still not very good, I have to say. And they think they're so smart, but Srinivasan, he doesn't even know how to spell the word grey, that is spelled with a, with an E instead of an A but he thinks he's so smart and but yeah, like, I mean, and, Srinivasan, he wrote a book that's kind of, sort of, I think you describe it as a bit of a manifesto for these people called Network State.Do you want to talk about that book and what he's preaching in his, new cult manual?DURAN: Sure. Like I said before, there was something I couldn't quite put my finger on, but once I had time to do more reading, And to think I came across a book review by a historian named Quinn Slobodian called crack up capitalism.And this is a book that deals with this movement of tech zillionaires to create their own independent [00:10:00] territories that they can govern new cities, new states, new little countries, even digital countries. Just as you create a new currency with crypto, you create a new country with this new emerging crack, crack up capitalism.Ideology. Well, in that book, he mentions Balaji Srinivasan and the idea of the network state. And so after I read Slobodin's book, I read the network state and suddenly I had words and ideas to fill in the gaps. The thing that was missing there that I was perceiving was this underlying ideology. And you look a degree further and you find that all these people are connected with people trying to do this in San Francisco.So then it became very clear in a matter of just establishing the. Connections, which wasn't hard to do because these guys go online a bit a lot and they speak on long podcasts and they kind Of say the quiet part loud the network state idea is the idea that the united states is not long for this world.The United States is obsolete. He compared it in 2013, [00:11:00] Balaji Srinivasan did, to Microsoft, a company that is on the way out and new companies will emerge and take its place and in the place of countries like the United States and other traditional nations will be these smaller nations that are.Completely different and completely government governed by basically tech corporations and tech billionaires, basically company towns that will be sovereign and independent and have their own rules and laws. And there's actually a movement right now to create these different territories all around the world.There's a place called Prospera in Honduras, where they're trying to create a different. Their own little city on this island in Honduras called Rotan. There is a plan to build a city called Praxis in the Mediterranean, Afropolitan in Africa. There are projects in Asia. There's a planned 5 million person city for the United States.I think it's called Tolosa. So there are actually people trying to make a [00:12:00] move and build these cities inspired by the philosophy of Balaji Sreenivasan. He wasn't necessarily the originator of this idea. Before that, even, you had Peter Thiel funding a movement called Seasteading, which was the idea that we would create these little floating countries out on boats or oil rigs, et cetera, and that those would be countries in the middle of the ocean.But, no one wants to be trapped in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of annoying entitled and arrogant strangers. So now the movement has kind of moved away to doing it at sea, to doing it on land. And there's actually a City being proposed right now, about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco in Solano County in a very rural area called California forever, where a bunch of these connected tech billionaires like Mark Andreessen, who wrote the cover blurb for Balaji Sreenivasan's network state book.are investing in trying to build a new 400, 000 person city in Solano County. [00:13:00] So it's not just a theory on nerd podcasts anymore, or in weird, obscure books. It is actually something they're trying to do. And so what I've been doing is trying to Excavate and illuminate that there's an ideology behind what's happening here.SHEFFIELD: There's a plan and there's a hell of a lot of money behind it too.Yeah, well, and also there, there's also a precedent even further back than Peter Thiel that. Libertarians for decades have fantasized about moving into the state of New Hampshire and they call it the free state project in which they will take over the entire state because it has, it's very small and has a small amount of people.And well, it's just not worked at all, uh, because people don't want to vote for their ideas. And so, like that, I think that is the, difference is that essentially, these are just. Conventional sort of, libertarian dogma and, but they've realized they can't market it as [00:14:00] such anymore because if they did, people would run away immediately given how, I mean, and you can see that the libertarian party, I think, they're happy when they get 3 percent in a national for instance, so, Yeah.And but also this, idea though and you've, gone through and looked at the network state book and, one of the other things that's in there is that, that really does belie this, their, false claims that they're not part of, red or blue is that, Srinivasan literally is telling his acolytes, you need to get rid of the blue.You need to kick them out. You need to expel them and you need to ally with red and you need to essentially bribe the police and allow them to do whatever they want and turn them into your political and personal enemies. Security force, essentially, right?DURAN: Yeah, one of the, that was really kind of a shocking moment for me.I read the network state book and it seemed [00:15:00] a bit out there, but there was nothing in it. That was sort of off the rails. Shocking, then I started digging around Balaji’s and podcast appearances and lo and behold, I find this six hour podcast appearance in two segments, one four hour segment, one two hour segment from September of last year.And in it, he lays out this nightmarishly dystopian vision for what could happen in San Francisco if tech gets its way. And basically what he spelled out was a situation in which tech aligned citizens who've decided to do whatever tech wants, adopt grey t shirts emblazoned with logos. I think you said like a Bitcoin logo or a Y Combinator logo, different kind of corporate based grey tribes because the grey tribe and the greys buy up entire blocks of the city, start putting in grey politicians and [00:16:00] demanding that things be oriented in the way the grey tech tribe wants them oriented. In addition, they bribe The San Francisco Police Department by providing weekly banquets and jobs for their relatives doing security for tech companies, et cetera, and start establishing grade dominance over the cities, kicking the blues, that is the Democrats out of entire parts of the city that the greys now control and Sreenivasan says that ultimately the goal would be to have like 50, 000 greys marching through the streets.With the police, flying and real drones in a grey pride parade, and that really kind of blew my mind because this is not the kind of stuff you would even say, a few drinks in at the bar, much less in public. On a podcast that's being published on YouTube while you're supposedly completely sober and in your normal [00:17:00] state of mind.So that really showed me that there's some really alarming thinking going on with some of these folks, especially when you consider the fact that he has very, close alignment with Gary Tan, who's the guy trying to spearhead the takeover of San Francisco. City Hall as we speak. In fact, in October, a month after Srinivasan's appearance on this podcast, where he talked about the Grey Pride Parade and purging the blues from entire sections of the city, Gary Tan spoke at Srinivasan's Network State Conference.That was the first Network State Conference in Amsterdam. And in that speech, Gary Tan, in a conversation with Balaji Sreenivasan, says that his project in San Francisco is basically part of the network state project. Previously, two years ago, when he took over Y Combinator, he said he sees Y Combinator as an example of what Balaji talks about when he says the network [00:18:00] state.So their alignment is really, close. And here is, Balaji Srinivasan, the guide, the thought leader for Garry Tan saying, we're going to do this weird fascist thing and wear grey clothes and kick out the Democrats. And so that was really kind of like a big moment for me realizing just how far gone this ideology is that someone could think they could say that.And we think it's a good idea to say that and is actually being listened to. And promoted and played up as a important philosopher by the people who are actually trying to do this here. In fact, there's a group right now trying to build a one square mile tech dominated zone in San Francisco called City Campus.And the idea is that, you buy a property, create co sharing, move all the offices there. And so they're trying to create the grey zone. And in fact. One of the companies, one of the three companies behind this city campus [00:19:00] idea is funded in part by Balaji Sreenivasan. So this is not just something they're talking about in weird podcasts.This is actually something they're trying to do. And I got concerned because no one who's reading a newspaper in San Francisco today, for the most part, is hearing anything about this stuff. You're hearing that the techs are funding the moderates against the progressives. It's a very simple, dumbed down narrative.And I felt like somebody needed to start telling the real story. And so that's why I started writing about these things.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and it's important to really be aware of, because I do think that, the stuff that Andreessen and Balaji and other people say is just, it's so ludicrous. On its face that it's people don't take it seriously.And, like, I in a lot of ways Balaji, and he goes by his first name. We should note that. So we're not being disrespectful by referring to him in that manner. That he he, sounds just [00:20:00] like, you're crazy. Uncle, Ron Paul loving uncle. He talks just the same way as him, but what's dangerous is that he has billions of dollars at his disposal.Whereas your uncle, everybody tries to avoid him at the holiday family parties. AndDURAN: Facebook posts. Yeah.How the Covid-19 pandemic shifted the political alliances of libertarian dogmatistsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so, so this is, these are serious, issues. And and, just to go back to kind of the ideological connection to it. yeah. So the, political spectrum for most of the, modern American history it was largely kind of like this, that that politics is as libertarians often demand to that people say that it's an X Y graph. And so, Then, rather than a complete linear graph, and so essentially we have that over on the, left side, Marxism describes itself as sort of a science of politics and everything that they believe is rational.And so that's why, and again, this is what they say themselves, whether they do that or not, that's, a different thing. But so [00:21:00] Marxism is basically at the far left of the political spectrum. And then, you go through social democracy or progressivism. Then we've got liberalism over here. As we move toward the center, religious democracy.So that would be like in more particularly in, in Europe and other countries where there are, Christian Democrat parties such as Angela Merkel's, who they believe in Christianity as a social framework, but they also are not hostile to personal freedoms and things like that.And then over here, we got conservatism and libertarianism is kind of this very large circle that. can be slightly, to the left of center. And that's where things were, as I was saying earlier during the nineties and whatnot, that, the libertarians weren't fans of impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about sex.They weren't, they advocated for marijuana legalization and, sex work legalization, et cetera. But as time has gone on, and I'd say, especially during the COVID pandemic, [00:22:00] Politics has sort of reconfigured, and now the ideology of conspiracism is really kind of the main underlying, the biggest ideology that exists now, and that's, Where if we think of politics as about who, do you trust and what do you want, conspiracists doesn't trust any institution and that's how you can go from any ideology to any of the other ones.And then libertarianism, instead of being a centrist thing now. Is a far right thing. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing there. And, there is, of course, as you can see on the chart, that there's a direct linkage between libertarianism and fascism and, as things have moved along with some of these Big tech executives, they are pretty much, almost explicitly saying that they, they kind of like fascism.They, are very interested in that. And Peter Thiel, as an [00:23:00] example, he he was going to speak at a group that has, direct ties to former Nazis. Peter Thiel was going to be their featured speaker before the Southern Poverty Law Center had exposed him in that regard. And so it should be concerning to more people, but I think the complexity of it makes it, people get reluctant to be interested in it. I don't know. What do you think?DURAN: Well, it'll, get a lot more interesting real quick here because we're starting to see some of these Silicon Valley guys, including some who were supposedly Democrats or moderates in previous cycles now become pro Trump.Today, there's a fundraiser in San Francisco for Donald Trump. And one of the co hosts, Shamath Palihapitthaya was a democratic megadonor a few years ago, who even considered running for governor of California on a moderate platform. And now he's gone full Trump, full MAGA in 24, which is not normal.But I think part of what you're explaining [00:24:00] is that I think these tech guys. Well, all of them may not align with the Republican party or traditional Republican party in certain ways on certain social issues, like maybe gay rights in some instances, they see the Republican party is the vehicle through which they can get what they want the most and the most quickly.Trump is willing to do anything for support and for money. At this point, he made a huge offer to the oil industry, give me money and I'll give you what you want. Same thing for crypto. So Trump is like making it clear. This is government for sale. And these guys have a lot of money and they want to buy that government.They want to be in charge. And so we were seeing this alignment, this overt alignment between Silicon Valley tech figures and these authoritarian fascists. Elements of the Republican party as expressed and exemplified by the leader of the party, Donald Trump. And so I think it's going to become harder and harder to ignore.And some people are already on it. Adrian LaFrance, the executive editor of the [00:25:00] Atlantic wrote an entire piece on the rise of techno authoritarianism, and we've been starting to see it bubble up. I do think it's, a struggle for the mainstream political media to understand. They still want to deal with these very simplistic, moderate, liberal, right wing ideas.But I think when you have Silicon Valley donors who claimed they were Democrats until in previous cycles, now going all for Trump, post January 6th, post. Felony convictions. I think that's pretty much a red alarm. You got to say, Hey, you know what? Maybe things are not working the way they've always worked.Maybe something has fundamentally changed in our politics and maybe it's quite dangerous and something we need to inform our readers about because American democracy is at stake. And so that's very much what we see here is that they have really gone to the far, far, right. And it seems to me like the pandemic in some ways accelerated this because all of us went through a hard time during the [00:26:00] pandemic, it was a transformational moment and I, and the conspiracism you talk about, I remember I was in Sacramento at the time and I went to a certain yoga studio and watching them go full on anti vax, anti lockdown, open the studio anyway, was a really amazing.And shocking thing to see because, a few months earlier, this had been a normal thing. You go to your yoga class, everybody seems normal and nice. And it really became a mask off moment for a lot of people. And so even people who are on the woo kind of left shifted into real conspiracism mode.And I call it the slippery slope from essential oils into. Full on fascism. So, that's what we saw there. You saw that with different people and people felt threatened or businesses were threatened. It was a tough time for a lot of people. And so coming out of that, it seems like a lot of these Silicon Valley guys also got.A lot more radicalized. They also got a lot richer [00:27:00] and we're seeing that convergence now in 24, they see American democracy as ripe for disruption and they see betting on Trump as the quickest way to do that. And I'm not entirely convinced that they're wrong. We're going to find out in November whether they're wrong or they're right.And so I think people need to be informed. People can only make a decision. If they know what's going on. And right now, I think a lot of people do not know what's going on.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it's true.What investors have in common with conspiracy theoristsSHEFFIELD: And the other thing about it is that, this, radicalization that did happen during the pandemic what it did is that it, it revealed and Paul Krugman last year, I think it was, he, wrote a column talking about how that there are a lot of similarities between sort of the epistemology of conspiracy and in, in sort of the investment banker epistemology as well, because the thing about investment making that I think a lot of people don't realize is that, the people who get rich off of [00:28:00] investing in these companies, They're not particularly skilled at anything.They don't know how to, create CPUs. They don't know how to create graphics cards or laptop designs or servers. They don't know how to do any of that stuff. None of them have any experience with, almost none of them have at this point, almost none of them have any experience with that stuff and what they were is just in the right place at the right time.And essentially. They play with house money, and I mean that in the casino sense that, your odds of winning decrease if you're in a casino, the longer you're there because you don't have as much money like that's ultimately what a game of chance is about is that whoever can play the longest wins.Is going to win. Like generally speaking, that's how it works. Just again, because the odds catch up to you after a while, if you did happen towin,Especially if they're not 50 50, right? So, but if you're in a, economic system where you are [00:29:00] playing with billions of dollars, if you make a hundred faulty investments and one correct, investment.Then people think you're a genius. But in fact, you are kind of a failure. Like if you had a 0. 001 batting average as a baseball player, people would think you're terrible. And so, but in the investment world, it, it doesn't work that way. And so, But, and so, but a lot of investment is just simply based on hunches that, you think well, this thing might work, so I'm going to give them money.And it's not based on real, research or because in the, and in many cases, like if you're creating something completely new and different. Any sort of research, quote unquote, or numbers that you can provide are pulled out of your ass. Like they're not real to say that I predict that, 20 million people will download my app.Well, you don't have any real clue of what you're talking about and, anybody else could make completely different [00:30:00] numbers. So it really is about hunches. And guess what? That is what conspiracism as a thinking is also about, because the Alex Jones fan. They can't prove that COVID was, designed in a lab by Anthony Fauci to kill and to kill the world.They can't prove that at all, but they still choose to believe it because it fits their priors. And it makes sense to them. It's an intuitive reasoning type of thinking. And so this is why I think that they became so radicalized because by the pandemic, because it, Hit to the core of how they think and, how they operate on a daily basis.And then they realized, Oh, Hey, you know what? The right wing Christians are also against evidence based thinking. They're also choosing to believe things that they cannot prove because it makes them feel good. And so that's fundamentally why I think they've. Decided to go full bore for the Republican party in the same way, [00:31:00] to be honest, like, like Charles Koch and some of these other, right wing older and another generation of right wing oligarchs did.I mean, David Koch ran for president in 1980 on the Libertarian ticket. And eventually he realized, oh, well, no one's going to vote for a Grey or in his case, a Yellow as the Libertarian color is. And so this is like, these people are just, they're, just retracing everything and yet they think that they're amazing innovators and super smart but really they invented the wheel 2000 years afterward, someone else.DURAN: And they belong nowhere near public policy. They have no idea what they're talking about. They're so clueless and out of touch and lacking in curiosity and maturity. There's a lot of serious problems in society. But you don't just kind of come in with your bad ideas and your lack of research and start doing all the stuff that we know already failed.And that's what really, concerns me about these guys. I have seen no evidence that they [00:32:00] really care about what's happening to people and what people need. I see evidence that they believe they should have all the power and they should make all the decisions. And as far as I can tell their plan for San Francisco is just to kick out anybody who's poor and anybody who doesn't work for them and called that a successful society.And that's really not how things work in this country. So. I really think that the money goes to their head and they think that because they made a lot of money making a few good guesses that they are now entitled to control everything. And that's just not how it works. I spent about 15 years in politics and government.After I started as a reporter for the San Jose Mercury news during the first dot com boom, and then Craigslist came along, sucked up all the revenue. There was the dot com bubble crash, and then was no longer easy to work at a newspaper, ended up working in blue collar jobs for a few years, then met Jerry Brown, who was then the mayor of Oakland.And that was the beginning of a career in politics. Well, I've worked for two mayors. I've worked for the governor of California and the problems are [00:33:00] very serious. They're some of them almost seem intractable and it takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of ability to create consensus and to get voter approval to get anything done in.Politics and mistakes get made wrong approaches are taken. Sometimes it takes decades to unwind them. And these tech want to be authoritarians seem to have no idea or inkling of that and no interest in it either. They just think it'll be different because they do it. They think that they are special.And they're really not and the ideas they have have already failed, they, they, took out the progressive district attorney of San Francisco because they blamed him for all crime and drug dealing and overdoses in the city. Well, there's still crime and drug dealing and overdoses in the city, even though you got a new day.Anybody who's been in politics could have told you that. Crime rates are higher in Republican states with conservative laws. The issue there is not that you have to be harsh with people and then that's going to be a solution, but they don't seem to be really [00:34:00] interested in inspecting their own deficiencies or learning anything.They're just interested in hearing them, their own selves speak and imposing this very sort of tech authoritarian vision on everybody. But it's not really clear to me what the end game is because, The one thing I know that they don't, even though I don't have billions of dollars or millions of dollars, is that they have no idea what they're doing and they're going to completely fail.Right-wing oligarchs have made it clear they will suppress dissenting speechSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And well, and the other, I think thing that is has also become evident with these guys besides their lack of policies and understanding of history and, whatnot is that. They also, they love to, to claim that they're for absolute free speech, that's what they want. But in practice, they definitely do not like free speech.And especially if it's regarding free speech about them. And that's something that you had talked about in your piece for the new Republican in terms of like, Balaji, he [00:35:00] is encouraged I guess, yeah, he's encouraged his followers to attack journalists and Elon Musk obviously is very big on doing that as well.And they're aligning with their fascist leader, Donald Trump, who says he wants to, crack down on, the media and is constantly trying to cancel anyone who criticizes him on Fox news or elsewhere that basically in their minds, unless something is a hundred percent pro by, biased in favor of them, then it's unfair.And they have no concept of public dialogue and listening to opinions that disagree from them. And I mean, They're then they're made it clear. Like this is a core seems to be a core tenant of their belief system that you will not be able to criticize.DURAN: Yeah, it's about power and who has power. It's about me speech, not free speech.You should be able to say Nazi stuff, but you'll get flagged now, I think, if you say cisgender, which regardless of how you feel [00:36:00] about that concept should not be a cancelable offense on Twitter. And, but look, I'm, sort of prejudiced here because I was one of the journalists banned from Twitter.When Elon took over, I was banned from Twitter for 12 months for asking a question. The question was it was the time he had banned the Elon jet account that was tracking his account. And then he banned someone who wrote a story about the Elon jet account. So I asked if you could be banned for asking about a ban.Of an account that was banned for mentioning this other account that was banned. And I got banned for that. So Elon Musk doesn't believe in free speech. Elon Musk is an authoritarian. Elon Musk believes that whatever he decides should be free speech is free speech and whatever he doesn't agree with should not be free speech.And that's pretty much how everything will work if these guys get their way. So, it's very much a hierarchical structure George Lakoff, who we mentioned earlier, who I do a lot of work with, kind of has spelled out something called the conservative moral [00:37:00] hierarchy. And at the top of that, it's God over man.And then it's sort of man over nature and men over women and white men over others and on. Well, I think what the tech authoritarians are doing is pretty much getting rid of God over man and making it sort of tech. Over man founders over man. I think they see themselves as God in this scenario and they believe therefore they should be able to sort of capriciously decide the rules and sort of return us to a kind of a feudal, a techno feudal society where they are the Lords and the masters and the rest of us are at their mercy and at their whims.And I really think that's what's at stake. Right now, because they see, again, they see some vulnerabilities here. And I can't say I totally disagree with them. The, our political system is very ripe for disruption. Democracy is hanging on by a, Gossamer thread. The Republican party is sort of an empty vessel that they can take over and inhabit and push [00:38:00] it because they have the money, which is the one thing Trump really wants and worships to do that.They can buy off the Republican party and make it do what they want. Journalism, they're all about now start owning their own media, parallel media, starting their own newspapers, taking over Twitter, turning it into something completely different, look at the traditional press is dying and something else is going to take its place.And if they get their way, it will be oppressed that answers to them that is willing to publish pure fiction. If it serves their purposes, and in the meantime, you have all these traditional reporters who won't have jobs in 5 to 10 years trying to still do the same thing they always do and kind of report in a very straightforward, logical way, while the bottom is literally falling out from.Under them. And so I do see that there's some real vulnerabilities we have right now in terms of the things that have upheld democratic society. And it doesn't seem like people are alarmed to the level that they need to be about what's happening. And so that's one place where I do kind of agree with these [00:39:00] guys is that they do see something that is exploitable.And manipulative and they are taking action to make those things happen and so they're not completely wrong about that. I just don't think that once they have the power, they're going to do anything except create a very dangerous and volatile situation that will end with a very bad revolution against anybody who's wealthy and and, a grey, that's also another thing that history shows us, the Greeks dealt with all these ideas along 2, 500 years ago, they knew what happens when you have plutocracy and oligarchy and autocracy.And the democracy we have, the system we have is very much based on an accrued knowledge over thousands of years that is not going to be disrupted by some. Crypto bro who loses a million dollars in a bet over the price of Bitcoin, which is what Balaji did back in 2021 or something.Techbros love China's centralized authoritarianismSHEFFIELD: And the other thing is that the approach, I mean, the approach that they want is [00:40:00] really not. that different from command economy of China in a lot of ways, like that, is the paradox is that and you do see that for instance, like Elon Musk loves China. He, says how great it is all the time.Like they have all kinds of, control over his companies and factories in China. But the reality is, the, people who live in China, it's not a good situation for them. Their economy is, much more volatile and, uh, it has some serious problems and they've got, they wasted all this money on projects that they thought were going to work.They've wasted literally hundreds of billions of dollars on these failed cities with build on the same principle that we've been talking about today. Like the ghost cities of China, like if, people in the audience, if you haven't looked those up, I do encourage you to do that. Like China has completely failed as a, command economy. But in, in the minds of these, [00:41:00] uneducated ignorant right wing oligarchs, they, they don't, they have no knowledge of history. They don't understand that all of these things that they want, as you said, have been tried before and failed. And, but, essentially the difference for them as well.I didn't do it. So, so therefore it will work this time because I'm, smarter than those other guys. And it's like, it's the same concept. It's just not how it works.DURAN: And, to some degree, it's all a hustle, right? It's all short term hustle to get as much as you can by telling whatever story you got to tell that will attract the capital and money and make things work in your favor.I mean, even if you strip it all the weird grey. authoritarian nightmare weirdness of Balaji's theory you still have a plan to take all this money from the cloud, all this wealth that's kind of in some abstract form, buy up real estate and property and with it political power, right? So, they, also pushing really, it's hard to, it's impossible to disentangle the [00:42:00] network state idea from AI.They're kind of one in the same. They're really pushing it as there's going to be this big boom based on AI. So invest in all our companies, give us all this money. And so whether or not the governing part works out, they will still have massive amounts of more wealth at the end of this narrative cycle.Right. So again, it's sort of that casino model of pumping this, who cares if the political experiment fails, as long as, certain people become billionaires or trillionaires in this next big hype cycle. So there's multiple layers to it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and it's, it is, I mean, basically essentially they're, trying to apply the, business model of private equity investment to government.So, a lot of, many of these private equity funds. They don't actually build successful businesses. What they do is they buy existing businesses, strip them to the, for parts, sell them off and then sell the carcass at the end of the day. And, say, wow, look at all this money we made. But in fact, they [00:43:00] destroyed the very thing that they claimed that they were trying to save in the beginning. That's, their view of government. That's what they want to do to government.DURAN: Yeah. Gary Tannis turned Y Combinator into not just a company that's trying to bet on startups, but that's also trying to bet on little local startup political movements and politicians.And they're making a lot of bad bets. They might make one or two. Right. So he's turned it into an overtly political organization that is literally trying to combinate a way to get power. And, we've got kind of different little modes, little characters they've invented to try to gain power some better than others, but it's very much applying that metaphor of, we're going to take over.Government and can create new forms of government, just like we've done this with certain businesses, but I think they'll find that it's a lot more complex. In government and the problems because they involve [00:44:00] people you can't necessarily control are harder to solve. But another important point, I would say that Balaji makes that isn't talked about enough, including in my writing, is that government is the only trillionaire.Government has the most money. So why are we allowing all these politicians and Democrats to control that massive spigot of money and on both in local budgets and in state budgets and in national federal budgets, when we could have that massive power turned to our own purposes. So then we can get into our outer space or conquer death through transhumanism.We haven't talked to really about the whole bundle of weird beliefs that unite these folks, but it's not just about taking over San Francisco and having the grey uniforms there into things like transhumanism, they think. That some of them are going to live forever. They found a way to beat death. They believe.SHEFFIELD: And actually, oh, and I'm sorry. And for the audience [00:45:00] we, do have a an entire episode about this, the whole TESCREAL idea.DURAN: Yeah, exactly. Oh, good. I'll listen to that one. So you guys then know about TESCREAL and, Gary Tan views himself as an effective accelerationist. And it's about, we got to do whatever we got to, we are entitled to do whatever it takes to make the human species multi planetary and accelerate into this amazing future that we're going to create. Therefore, anything we do is justified and everybody should get out of our way. It's basically an ideology of tech supremacy that borders on a religious belief, right?It's very culty. Right, all cult leaders tell the story.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, Operationally, it's no different than a evangelical authoritarian leader who says, my goal is to bring about the rapture and so therefore I'm going to give Israel all the money that I can and encourage it to have as many wars as it can and will invade as many countries in the Middle East as we want and with the end [00:46:00] goal of Armageddon and having Jesus come to earth and I will bring that to pass.It's really no different than that vision operationally. Like the justification is different. , but it works the same.DURAN: Well in San Francisco in the seventies, we had a religious leader who was very powerful and very charismatic, and he decided to go to South America and start his own little city. It was called Jonestown, and 900 people died in the end drinking the Kool-Aid.So I would call Jim Jones, perhaps the network state OG, because this has all been tried before in different forms. They're not creating anything new. And it's very dangerous to play with these ideas in this way. And there's an increasing tone of violence rising in San Francisco, Bay Area politics. And this is an area where we, where people actually do get killed in politics.There's been a lot of violence assassinations over the years. And so that's another part of what they're doing. I wrote about this on the nerd Reich recently pushing this sort of violent Tone, which is very disturbing [00:47:00] to me. We can disagree on a lot of things on local politics, but the moment we're sort of liking pictures of guns being pointed at politicians, things of this nature, it gets kind of scary.And so that's why I bring Jim Jones into it because it's not an exaggeration to say things are getting really scary with these tech guys in their politics, and I don't think it's going to end well.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, it isn't. And, that is why people have to, who are against, I mean, the majority of people don't like these ideas and they have to pay attention and they have to tell their friends and their family members, about it.Balaji and his friends are ludicrous, but their vast wealth means they need to be taken seriouslySHEFFIELD: Kind of the organizing problem for the left in the United States or the center left, we'll say, is that the right has become so bizarre, so Baroque, so fascistic that it's almost unbelievable what they want and what they say, and, and, it's just this constant stream of horribleness. And so, so [00:48:00] oftentimes people will just be so disgusted by it that they just completely tune it out. I don't want to hear about that. This is depressing. This is awful. Or they don't believe it's real. Like, the, very common reaction to Balaji and his things that he's saying, people just say, Oh, this guy's a clown.This guy's a clown. He's ridiculous. He's a loser, whatever. Like that, I see people say that all the time about him. I see people say that about Marc Andreessen, about Elon Musk, and it's like, did you not pay attention to what, people said about Donald Trump in 2015? Like, like I, I wrote an analysis at the end of, November of 2015 saying Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination and here's why.And when I published it, I got so much pushback from people saying, oh, this is ridiculous. You are exaggerating your, this is nonsense, Matt. No way would this ever happen. And, then it did. And so, and we're kind of, Stuck seeing this [00:49:00] happen again with the, techno fascist.Right. It seems like, and hopefully it doesn't repeat in that way.DURAN: Well, we'll see if not, they'll try out some new models and modes, right. They're going to keep iterating, but I think something that gives me hope is. That we do have a tremendous amount of power as democracy loving people. They are a small minority trying a really dangerous act here.And if they fail, we're going to all see exactly who they are. And we're going to know that going forward and we can take appropriate measures, hopefully to protect society from any further attacks or incursions of this kind. In Solano County, where a group of billionaires is trying to build this tech utopia called.California forever. Solano is about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco, kind of a rural area, mostly Democrat, but pretty mixed in the billionaire secretly bought like tens of thousands of acres of property and are trying to impose this 400, 000 person vision for [00:50:00] a city on the county, and they have really united Democrats and Republicans against them.The, Democrats in 2024 are uniting with Republicans in 2024 to say no to the billionaire project because they know that whatever it is, these billionaires want, and they all see different reasons for disliking them and their project that this is not the way things should work with just these wealthy groups of individuals imposing entirely new.Entities upon us. And so that gives me some hope. And if people wake up and they have knowledge and they're told what's happening, I think there'll be a major pendulum swing. And I think we'll see these Silicon Valley types go back to acting really nice and progressive and appreciating things like diversity and democracy, because right now they seem to think they can get away with anything.And they're making a big bet and we've got to make a big bet in the opposite direction and show them that in this country, it's a government of the people. By the people and for the people, not government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires.SHEFFIELD: [00:51:00] Yeah. And, people, and some of that also includes supporting independent media, like that's and not cause you know, the New York times doesn't need your money.Washington post doesn't need your money, regular, small podcasters and writers and like, That's and, journalists that you see, trying to do their thing on, on, Substack or Ghost or whatever, like that's who needs your support here. Don't throw your money away on the Atlantic or, some big media corporation, like don't do that.This is what you should not be subscribing to those things with your money. There's enough of us out there that we could make a difference if more people understood that, I think.DURAN: Well, I mean, I read and subscribe to all of those things, but I'd say it's important to find the people doing the important local work, or the important work that's focused on the issues that matter that you care about, and also support them.If you can, I don't expect to make a living totally off of my newsletter. It's nice when people subscribe and pay, it certainly helps keep me [00:52:00] motivated and keep me believing. But I think we've got a, and you want to make sure whoever you're paying or subscribing to is, doing something that's based on the general principles of truth, of facts, things you can verify that represent kind of the full reality.Cause there's some stuff out there that's not like that, but I definitely think that going forward. We do have to invest more in independent media because it's not clear as more and more outlets fall prey to private equity or billionaires that we're always going to get the same level of truth or reporting that we got out of some of those institutions and look at the Washington Post is kind of in the middle of a big takeover by Editors who just kind of kicking out people making it clear things are not going to work the way they've traditionally worked.And so I think that kind of thing is going to get bigger and more pronounced. And I do think we're going to need to find new ways to do journalism that are not dependent on corporate funded entities or [00:53:00] investment funded publications. And it's dangerous because there's a lot of room there for propagandists and disinformationists.I mean, look at Michael Schellenberger's got 108, 000 subscribers on a mostly paywalled sub stack newsletter. The guy's just publishing pure fiction. So there is a degree to which we have to be careful about who we trust and not assume that because somebody's publishing something that they are a Telling the truth or using journalistic principles.But I, for myself have lost the dream of working for a mainstream publication and think that the journalism I'm going to do in my lifetime is going to be very independent what I'm doing now. And it may be something that I'm doing on the side like this. I'm not sitting around all day writing a newsletter.This is something I do on the weekends at nights when I have some free time during the day. And but I think we're going to have to find ways to tell each other what the truth is and keep each other informed because. The billionaires are going to be able to buy everything at some point.That's one thing their money will get them. And we have [00:54:00] no guarantees that, then how do we get information? how do we know what to believe or what's going on?Why right-wing oligarchs love to call themselves populistSHEFFIELD: And yeah, well, and you see that, sorry, and you do see that, like with the there's this just enormous profusion of right wing TV news, quote unquote, networks, like alternatives to Fox News.So, there's Newsmax, there's Real America's Voice, there's there's a, there's Trinity Network Television, which is or Like a right wing evangelical. there's, so many and, there's a, of the right side broadcasting network, all of these people are just getting, tons of oligarch money which is really ironic because at the same time that this is happening and websites like the daily caller and other places that the oligarchs are buying up all these institution right wing oligarchs are, they also are trying to say that they are populist that they represent the people, an average person.And [00:55:00] I think, Elon Musk pushes that a lot, and his, friend Jason Calisanes pushes that a lot. And Balaji pushes that a lot also. Like, they claim that they actually are in favor of the regular common person and that they're populist. Like they, like they love to say that J. D. Vance is a populist, the guy who's literally Peter Thiel's errand boy. Or that Donald Trump is a populist. The idea that Donald Trump is a populist is so patently absurd. The guy, spent his entire career. Cheating and refusing to pay small contractors who did work for him. Like that is the one consistent thing that Donald Trump has been in his whole life is that, is a guy who stiffs the contractors.but it, is, it does seem like, at least to some people that this is. This is an appealing narrative of the, these are just guys who want to innovate. They want the freedom to innovate. And I'm a populist too. I can be rich if I just believe in [00:56:00] them enough or something like that.Like that's what they're pushing to people and some people buy it.DURAN: Yeah. Well, claiming things are popular is an important part of persuasion. To make undecided people think, Oh, that's what's happening. This is where the movement is. This is what's popular. And so they try to tap into that because, the, social effect of people believing that something that everyone else is doing thing or thinks that thing is good.But yeah, don't never trust the. Populous messages from people who wouldn't give you the time of day and probably, haven't been anywhere around normal people for a very long time. These people are all traveling in bubbles and places where they're just sort of worshipped or treated with great respect.And so, you're not going to see them out there on the shaking hands and knocking on doors and, being of the people. And but again The big lie is really popular with these folks. So the bigger, the lie, we're the popular ones. We're working for the common people. The more you can see their right wing leanings, because they have no problem with that level of, [00:57:00] disinformation and misdirection.And so it's not really surprising. Hypocrisy is not surprising. Lying is not surprising. It's all part of the strategy. And I think we're going to see an exponential increase soon as Elon's. Twitter tries to make a big game changing difference in this election, aided in part by these early-stage AI shenanigans.So, the lies are going to get bigger, the lies are going to get better, and the lies are going to get harder and harder to disbelieve because we'll be seeing them with our own eyes. And the yeah, I mean, you've seen some of these photos they've generated of Trump, like, surrounded by African Americans at a barbecue looking popular.So all this AI generated stuff that would never actually happen in real life. And we're going to see more of that. It's going to become more sophisticated. And that's why I've been, we've had some Democrats doing ads using AI video, and I've been against that because once that's the game, man, it's going to really be really hard for people to know what's [00:58:00] up and what's down.So, yeah, I think there's, a lot more to come on this and soon. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, the thing people can do is, yeah, pay attention and help your friends get educated. As well. So. All right. Well, let's see. Is there anything else you think we need to cover here, or do you think we hit all the bases?DURAN: I think we, we hit a lot. Give people a lot to think about.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Well, great. All right, well, so, Gil Duran for people who want to keep up with your stuff what's your recommendations for,DURAN: You can follow me at thenerdreich.com. I'm also on Twitter at GilDuran76, and you can easily find me on any other social media platforms.As well, I occasionally write for the New Republic and the San Francisco Chronicle, but I'd say if you, uh, subscribe to the Nerd Reich, then you'll kind of be up to date on whatever I'm up to.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, sounds good. I encourage everybody to do that. Thanks for being here.DURAN: Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody [00:59:00] joining us for the conversation. And if you want to get more, just go to theoryofchange.show where you can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes and my thanks, especially to the paid subscribing members. Thank you very much for your support.You're making this possible. But we also do have free subscriptions if you can't afford to do that right now. And I do also encourage everybody to go to flux. community where you can get the archives of this program and also my other one, Doomscroll, and other articles that we publish as well. And I appreciate everybody who signs up and follows us and all that good stuff.If you can leave a nice review on your favorite podcast platforms that's much appreciated. And if you're on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button as well. All right. So that will do it for this one. I will 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 SummaryLike many businesses right now, America’s news media industry is in a crisis. But what’s particularly dangerous about this crisis is that it’s one that most people don’t really know about it. A huge part of the reason why is that many journalists themselves, who are used to explaining how other parts of the world work, don’t seem to understand their own industry.There’s a lot that’s changed about the media business in the past few decades. The internet and the idea that “information wants to be free” have seriously disrupted the news industry of course. But there’s another trend that’s had very serious implications for journalism that is mostly unknown, and that is the rise of private hedge funds that have almost completely gobbled up America’s newspapers. While that might seem like just another boring stock market story, the conglomeration of newspapers has led to massive job cuts which have in turn led to a lot of important local news being missed or being covered incorrectly.The death of local news is a very serious problem for America and so today I wanted to talk about the situation with Margot Susca, she is the author of a new book called “Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy.”The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the complete text. The video of this episode is also available.Related Content* Black churches and independent media helped shape African-Americans’ political identities, and Republicans seem to be benefiting from their decline* How the far right built a political machine that's crushing the opposition* MAGA media outlets are showcasing the extreme policies a second Trump administration would enact* Today’s disinformation economy was built on the lying techniques of Big TobaccoAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction10:22 — What hedge funds are doing to local media16:51 — How corporate media consolidation facilitates misinformation20:55 — The importance of local news in civic education and de-radicalization32:06 — Newspapers didn't actually need hedge funds, they were profitable38:32 — The nonprofit news ecosystem: A glimmer of hopeAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: This is a complex topic, I think, and it's about finances and stocks, so [00:03:00] most people, when they hear those things, their eyes roll all the way back into their heads. But it's a serious issue. Maybe let's start with how did you get into it because it's not something that you were initially really paying a lot of attention to?MARGOT SUSCA: I think it's it's fair and I did try to bring some narrative elements to it, but I think it's a fair point. Initially when I started doing research for the book, it was because of a question that I was asked in an interview with NBC News “Think” program that, it was not long after the FCC had eroded some media cross ownership rules and I was asked by the producer of the show about, how did I know that, I was saying, gosh, this is so terrible for democracy that you could now own a TV station or a radio station and a newspaper in the same market.And I said, this is [00:04:00] terrible. And, this producer said, well, how do you, know it's as bad for democracy as you say? And I was thinking, theoretically, I knew as a politically economist of media, I had studied this, I had several dog eared works.From, scholars that I had, used over the years, but I didn't really have any data to back it up. So early in 2018, I started studying the newspaper chains. I started looking at some of the, largest publicly traded newspaper chains in the United States to look at layoffs.Specifically, I wanted to really kind of dig into the issue of layoffs. And over the course of the next several months I was doing a little bit at a time, it became very clear to me that the real story wasn't just the layoffs, but the real story, really, the institutional investors. These were the private equity firms that Controlled most of the shares of [00:05:00] the publicly traded chains but also by then, Alden Global Capital owned owned the digital first media news group newspaper chain.So it became very clear that the story wasn't just about the chains that I was studying, and it wasn't just about these kind of effects, which I thought layoffs was one of the effects, but it was really about These institutional investors. It was about these wall street firms, but I'm about to write a business book.I mean, this was not even a section of the paper that I would read. I would read the sports section. I would read the front section of the paper. When I was younger, I wouldn't even read the business section. So it's not, it's kind of funny to think that I would write. A book that was so heavy into, into financial issues.And I think because I had been a journalist, I was used to having to, research subjects. And, if you looked at the bookshelf that's behind me, it's filled with texts about private equity and hedge funds. And I was very lucky that. [00:06:00] One of my good friends from college is now at a hedge fund and he was one of the first phone calls that I made, which is, what am I, where do I look?What am I talking about? Where do I even go? And became a resource as I started. Looking at this subject. So, it is a huge issue and it is, as I, and over the next three years, it took three years and, unraveling, 20 years of what became 20 years of us securities and exchange commission documents.Bankruptcy court documents for a number of the chains some that still exist, some that were merged into others or folded. It became this, steady kind of unraveling of, kind of what had happened to newspapers over the last, 20 years and well, yeah,SHEFFIELD: And one of the things that you, do talk about in the book is that, the gobbling up of, newspapers and media by hedge funds. It is something that this is part of [00:07:00] a larger trend of private equity firms buying up other industries as well. And, so let's can we maybe talk maybe about the larger context of that? And when did all this stuff start happening and and maybe some of the other industries that have been affected this.SUSCA: Yeah, so I, I learned, in the course of doing the research that this was part of what other scholars have called this period of financialization, that this wasn't just newspapers weren't just the only things that became the targets, that newspapers became the targets of a certain trend.Group of private equity firms and hedge funds, but that there were other, other firms and other sectors that have been influenced and affected chances are, if you live in an apartment complex that it probably has a private equity connection if you're, at a major hospital chain, it probably has a private [00:08:00] equity or, have been, in a hospital.It's probably has a private equity connection. A nurse, a major nursing home company probably has a private equity connection. It is literally in almost every industry that you can think of. That has. Had, other researchers have studied its impacts that have had dire consequences linking it to the 2008 mortgage collapse that a very small number of firms have profited very handsomely off of the destruction of, really on the backs of average Americans.And what I was really interested in studying once it became clear over the course of. What was a couple of years of research was how this one institution that we have, which is the U. S. Newspaper market, which is meant to be a watchdog on all of these other government officials. And in some cases, industry has been really hamstrung by industries that were meant [00:09:00] to be a watchdog over.And that's, what's really the most troubling is if it's, if we are, left with private equity influencing, we're supposed to be the watchdogs, we, the one industry that's named in the U S constitution, and if this is supposed to be really the last frontier and with the amount of influence that I was able to trace, I think it's really troubling how much influence there is.In the U S chain market. and it grew over the time, I started doing while you wereSHEFFIELD: looking at it. Yeah,SUSCA: that's right. From early 2018 until, from early 2018 until early 2022. And I turned in, the final draft Alden global capital bought a chain, Chatham asset management bought a chain.And along the way there were all these communications with senators, you know I had foiled the u. s department of labor. There were a number of government agencies that were aware That were at least expressed some [00:10:00] concern. A supreme court case that you know dealt with the fcc so we essentially have what I say in the book's conclusion is a failure at every turn a regulatory a legislative failure as these chains just grew Larger and unchecked by a system that is meant to be.A guardrail for public for the public.What hedge funds are doing to local mediaSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you mentioned some of these companies. Let's, maybe kind of talk about in detail about some of the specific ones. So, all the global capital, I think, is, the 1 that is often talked about by, if to, to the extent that people are aware of it, but for people who haven't heard of, Alden Global Capital, what is it and how much do they own?And generally what are their business practices?SUSCA: So Alden Global Capital owns the well now they own Tribune. So that is the Chicago Tribune. So the Orlando Sentinel. [00:11:00] And that deal went through, gosh, you're going to test me on some of the dates, I think that deal went through in late 2021, and they also, they first became owners of the Media News Group chain, sometimes used synonymously with Digital First which was a chain That includes the Denver Post and a number of other titles kind of regional newspapers.So that puts them, in charge of, two of, I think, the, most significant regional newspaper chains are, in the country. How many newspapers they own is sometimes up for debate and I would have to, I'm not sure how many it is. I'd have to double check on what that figure is.Of course, they own the Baltimore Sun, which they just sold, they just offloaded. To the person who owns Sinclair. And that was a hotly debated issue. So what their playbook [00:12:00] is, they started as part of Randall Smith, who was a hedge fund guy who was, I, found in a financial text was described as a profiting off of the misery of other people.And Heath Freeman, who's the head of Alden, is described as kind of Randall Smith's protégé. And in 2017, so often newspapers get described as this tired old business. In 2017, Ken Dockter, who's kind of a newspaper writes about newspapers for Neiman described and wrote about some leaked Alden financials where he reported on Alden making $170 million in profits from the operation of its newspaper chains.So I think it's important to note that whereas a publicly traded newspaper company, might have millions of shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. When it comes to a hedge fund company, one of the things that happens is if you only [00:13:00] have, five people in that hedge fund, you get to share and split whatever profits exist among a very small group of investors and hedge funds like Alden Global Capital get to choose who they pick as their investors.And it's oftentimes there's a minimum buy in that hedge funds have for their investors. They don't get to just Like, you and I probably wouldn't get to, they have a very wealthy class of investors that get to be chosen. And yeah,SHEFFIELD: they're also not really regulated in almost in terms of who is allowed to become a member, whether it's foreign countries or, just individuals of any kind and other businesses.And they're not required to make disclosures. They are really this black box that is buying up America's information ecosystem that is not overtly reactionary. I mean, like, that's, that really is [00:14:00] the, quintessence of the problem is that, we're, there has been a profusion of, radical far right media. Like for right now, for instance, of course everybody knows about Fox News Channel, but now there's like five alternatives to Fox News Channel that are there even further to the right. So you've got Newsmax, you've got OAN, you've got Real America's Voice, you've got Right Side Broadcasting Network, you've got Salem Media or whatever they, Salem News Channel, I believe they call it.So there's been a profusion of these far right sources, and then at the same time, there has been kind of this massive concentration in by private equity firms of non overtly right wing media.And then they are cutting it to the bone at the same time. Like that's one of the other, that's one of the other practices of how they get all this money from their newspapers is they lay off thousands and thousands of people.SUSCA: Yeah. I mean, that's, it's almost inevitable. You can, the, patterns that emerge.It's immediate that the [00:15:00] layoffs come. And, I just was reading Gannett's annual report. Gannett is not owned by a hedge fund, but its largest shareholders are some of the world's largest institutional investors. One of its largest is BlackRock, which has like 10 trillion, trillion with a T, like Tom in assets under management.I mean, these firms have, assets under management that would rival some some countries, GDPs. I mean, these are huge, hugely wealthy, firms. And at the time of its merger with gate house, which was owned by a private equity firm, they employed 21, 000 people. When at the time, these two companies merged Thursday's annual report showed they employ now 10, 000 people.So in, the span of four years, they have hacked more than half. Of their staff, and largely a lot of those came in the newsroom. I mean, came from people who were doing the work of democracy, who were [00:16:00] covering school boards, who were covering, the kind of county commissions, mayoral races, covering legis state legislatures.I was reading another report. One in 10 state legislatures is covered by students today. I mean, that should shock everyone. I teach some very talented. Young people, but they're, many of them are still teenagers without that kind of institutional knowledge, to really understand, but into your point about the right wing media ecosystem and the void and this kind of lack of consideration of what happens.The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, its Spanish language counterpart, is owned by a different hedge fund, a New Jersey based hedge fund named Chatham Asset Management.How corporate media consolidation facilitates misinformationSUSCA: And I just saw a friend who just left the Miami Herald a month ago. And she's, she speaks Spanish and she was talking to me about the readership at [00:17:00] El Nuevo Herald is down dramatically because there have been, there has been no investment in El Nuevo Herald since Chatham has taken over at the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald.So what's happening is that she lives in Miami and she said, what's happening is El Nuevo's readership is going. To this far right am radio ecosystem that is flourishing in Miami Dade County, and it is rife, she said, with miss with misinformation and disinformation. And she said, when it comes to issues of.LGBTQ issues and, again, we've talked about book banning and some of these other issues, it's just so alarmist and just rife with, factual inaccuracies that, her concern is that people are just not getting any Anything that even resembles, resembles any kind of fair, [00:18:00] accurate coverage.And, that's the reality of news. If you call it the news ecosystem is without reliable local coverage, people are turning to this, to complete, complete, the, information void. Is just, it should shock all of us, really.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And like another another way that this is happening is, that there are these right wing organizations that are creating websites, which they're marketing, they're describing themselves kind of as a newspaper, but in fact, they are a propaganda operation owned by big donors or even the Republican party itself.Of that state that they're in. And so like you've got, and there's now, a pretty, there are many states that have these things that are running in them. So there, there's a chain of things called the star. So Arizona star, Virginia star, et cetera. And then they've also got their other [00:19:00] ones as well.And, and then of course the talk radio ecosystem is still there as well. So like all of these things are happening and it's almost like. I, feel like a lot of people who, especially, if you live in the the Ella corridor from, Boston to dc like local media there does exist and, is, has at least some, stronger foothold compared to the, in the rest of the country.So, like, for instance, even in Southern California, so like here, I live in the Los Angeles area, which is the biggest. The, geographically the biggest metro area in the United States, second biggest in terms of population, all of our newspapers, that are like the sort of local.So like the Long Beach Press Telegram, the Orange County Register, those are both owned by Alden Global Capital. And those, are, Papers have just become a shell of themselves. They really don't cover much of anything. And like, you pick up their [00:20:00] physical copy. It's literally like 10 pages or, they're, a section or less and like, it's, really affecting people's ability to know anything and.We're in this situation now where if the, where in many cases, the only people that are talking about stuff are these horribly biased, reactionary extremists who are trying to shove an agenda on people like another example is. You've got this paper that's owned by the the Falun Gong cult, the the Epoch Times.Like, now they're, they are delivering newspapers, physical copies in my neighborhood, and I'm sure a lot of people have seen this happening in their neighborhoods, that they just show up and throw it on your doorstep, whether you ask for it or not. And like, This has real impacts on people's opinions. So that's, I guess I put a lot on the table there, so feel free to pick and choose which one yourespond to.The importance of local news in civic education and deradicalizationSUSCA: That's, listen, I mean, we should, local news, having a vibrant local news [00:21:00] newspaper in your community slows political part partisanship and it slows voter apathy. So regardless of your political affiliation It should be a bipartisan issue and I think You know that is it should be something that if you really are concerned about democracy Then it should be, something that both, liberals and conservatives care about and that, and it's, funny that you mentioned that, my dad is an MSNBC watcher and over the Christmas holiday, I was down and he was kind of, he's been kind of sick and he had it on and, I am not a cable news viewer because I just find it toxic and he had it on and it was, I was like, This, and I said to him, like, this is toxic, like, this is bizarre, I mean, this is, this is left wing Fox News, and it was just, like, this is just pumping [00:22:00] partisanship into, the living room, I mean, it's just, by design, as, it has partisanship as a feature, not a bug, and, that newspaper and his community, which he doesn't subscribe to, has been absolutely gutted. And I just think there are so many communities where, again, if you had that kind of, it used to bind people. So, where you're turning and, the other point that I would make is, there, there has been a lot of research from Columbia on these pink slime outlets, which are these kinds of hyper partisan dark money funded sites that you're talking about.The other place is that Chevron funds. A local news site. I put that in air quotes in California. So that's the other reality is like, we're not just getting political dark money or political sites or hyper partisan cable sites that are driving a wedge places, but that we [00:23:00] have actual corporations funding sites, right?So Chevron funding a local news site. I mean, imagine if there was, you're not going to get OSHA violations covered, by, and I'm not saying there are OSHA violations that Chevron is, has, but certainly if there were, they're not going to be covered. Imagine Chevron covering any kind of real climate change news in that community.Never going to happen, that is also a real concern. So, I mean, this is really a time where we have to, I never believed in, in government, funded. I mean, we've always had the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Of course, the public broadcasting system, but there have been other scholars, Victor Picard at the University of Pennsylvania, who has advocated for, the return of a, a stronger publicly financed model.And as a former journalist, I always thought, [00:24:00] Oh, well, that's going to interfere with our independence. But, after the, I finished this book and I saw Victor at a conference in October and I said, I think I'm really coming around to, to your view, which is the alternatives are just too dire to ignore.And I'm not sure I know exactly what that would look like. There have been some others who have experimented with some plans. But, this is the continuation of this thread of hedge fund and private equity ownership of an audience that completely disengages or goes completely partisan. 10 more years of this, I think the consequences are, just almost too, almost too difficult to, even think about, and I don't think I'm being, I don't think I'm being, You're notSHEFFIELD: exaggerating.Yeah.SUSCA: Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I really think it's, just really dark to think [00:25:00] about, how severed. We are how polarized we are as a nation.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's also that the idea that of local media as a sort of a dissolver of partisanship, because, the 1 of the problems of why there's so much.I think why there's so much depression and sort of discontent with society is that people have become, addicted to following national and international news that they have no control over themselves and that, and it's just the, these gigantic sort of morality plays, if you will, and that's, It's replaced.It's like a soap opera of the news and you have no power over it at all. But it's also the thing that they tell you is the thing you have to obsess over. And, like, for somebody who is a [00:26:00] professional political activist or something like, obviously that's different. You may have some limited ability to do something about it.You're just. As somebody who has a regular job, you're a teacher or, whatever, you're, a job that's not involving political activism. You really don't have anything that you can do about it. But then at the same time, there it's a nationalization and it's taking you away from things where you could.Have an impact, which is your local community and your state and being concerned about things that are happening there, whether it's trying to get a, like, we're still at this stage where many states, they're, they, have the federal minimum wage floor as an example that, that they, that there are people who are, they would love to have a higher minimum wage, but they don't realize that they could, or that they deserve it.And so like, and that's just one of many problems that if people were paying more attention to their local circumstances in their communities, that they could do something about it. Or, like, I mean, there's just so many things, but, yeah, [00:27:00] like, and the national press doesn't have the ability to talk about those things.Of course they don't. Right. And you can't expect them to do it. But you could support your local your local media to do that. And they would tell you about, what's going on with that.SUSCA: Yeah. And I,SHEFFIELD: oh, go ahead. No, you can go ahead.SUSCA: Well, I just, I mean, I think the issue of trust is also a huge, a huge issue, I may not trust, the CNN anchor, because they don't know me, but you know, I trusted the person who I saw, Covering that issue, or I, who I met who was gonna cover my daughter's gymnastics team being cut because the school board didn't have a budget for it.And I, I got to know them over the course of that budget cycle, so I think that there are issues. Yeah. Because you can actually see them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah,SUSCA: absolutely. So I, that's, that's, something that I've been thinking a lot about too, and you know how all of these are kind of tied.Tied together. And but you know, I think you're what you just brought up is [00:28:00] a really good point. And, I think these local mask mandate, that became so heated these board school board meetings, people screaming about Anthony Fauci at local school board meetings.I don't know, it just, became just fodder for, it was, I think, a signal of how, how polarized we were I don't, it's,yeah, it's, well, it's also interesting time.SHEFFIELD: Well, and the other, as another example of this, that besides, the decay of local media is that, or an example of the decay of local media affecting people's ability to know things that affect them directly is that with these, book bannings that, that, have been happening, especially in Florida, but not just Florida, many other localities and states that these groups that were nationally controlled and operated They would descend into school board meetings and they would be professional activists who had been trained, for extensively to know how to [00:29:00] kind of bully a school board system.And, they've done that also to try to suppress LGBTQ teens in, schools and teachers. Just from even acknowledging that they have a spouse of the same sex or, just even basic stuff like that. And, then the local media, if they're even there at all, which in many cases they're not but if they are there, they come in and they don't know who these groups are because their staff is, extremely young, extremely untrained.They have no political memory. And so, they just show up and they're like, Oh, well, look, here's some concerned parents who are talking about, obscene material and they have no context and they don't provide the audience anything. They don't, they have, even if they hadn't tried to actively misinform them, that's what they've done.And this stuff like this is going to keep happening and happens every single day. Across America because of the decay of local media, [00:30:00]SUSCA: it's such a good point and I think, it's trying to stress to students that, my journalism students that, people will actively try to, manipulate you as a journalist, from, in trying to be.weary of that and trying to be, you know, trying to understand that from whether or not that's a, politician spokesperson, or in this case, the deliberate action of, these kinds of people who paratroop into a local event and claim that they're being affected by, a book about, Jason Reynolds book that's, in a library or, the hate you give being in the library, it's, just, astounding when that young reporter is, expected to cover.The beat of four people because of layoffs, because a hedge fund is, won't staff, fully staff a robust newsroom. I mean, it's, a really interesting point. And that is [00:31:00] the effect that is a direct line from ownership. To an audience that is underserved by a newsroom under this kind of control.I was talking to one of my students, a first year student from a town in New England, a small town in New England, who said that, when she was a member of like a student liaison to the board of education, she received death threats from a group. That's very similar to what you're talking about.I mean, it's just, Imagine giving death, I mean, death threats to a 16 year old who's trying to make her community better. A community, like you're saying, who, kind of paratrooped in to try to actively go against a mask mandate in, one of these small towns. It's just, it's, just, it's mind boggling what some of these groups are doing and it's just, there's a local news ecosystem that is ill equipped to try to inform citizens about the realities of these, of, as you say, this kind [00:32:00] of power structure that exists behind it.It's, just outrageous.Newspapers didn't actually need hedge funds, they were profitableSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and to go back to something you were saying earlier about kind of the financialization of the economy. The, newspaper industry itself wasn't actually unprofitable. Most of these, local dailies, I mean, they went from making gigantic obscene profits to making a smaller amount of profit, but it was still profitable. And like, I, that's a, that is a fact that I think often has gotten lost when people who might defend some of these hedge funds or, giant media conglomerates, they never acknowledged that reality, that they weren't saving anything like the industry itself, obviously you had needed to make some changes and, there were mistakes in terms of training and, some business model stuff, but it wasn't in.A, it wasn't just massive money sinkhole that they like to portray it as. It, [00:33:00] that's just something not true.SUSCA: Someone said to me once, well, these private equity firms, they saved journalism, and I, said, well, where's the evidence of that? Where's the evidence that they saved journalism?I just don't see that if you can, cause I'm, my thing is I, always say to people, Where is your evidence? Where is your evidence? Because I have now, 20, 000 pages of documents. I mean, I'm looking at SEC documents. I've got, bankruptcy court documents that show, annual reports, shareholder meeting, documents.Just give me the report. Give me the record. And the favorite, someone said recently on Facebook, they said, well, I was there. They say, I was there. I was in the newsroom. I said, Okay, well, where's your, other than you being there, Bob, where was your evidence? Do you have a document or a report? Something, show me, and I think this idea again, that, newspapers used to be among portfolio winners, I mean, they, you, I had one [00:34:00] person say to me as a former editor at the South Florida Sun Sentinel he said, which was in tribunes portfolio, and he said, the only way we could have made more money, this is from, they made so much money from advertising in the late eighties and into the nineties.He said, the only way we could have made more money is if our printing presses printed 10 bills. I mean, it was a wildly profitable business, but into the two thousands, into the two thousands. Certainly the digital transition. There were changes even in 2021. Newspapers still beat S and P 500 averages and it doesn't get discussed.And, I start one chapter even talking about Warren Buffett who called the newspaper industry toast. And I was still like so upset about this and because Warren Buffett isn't, didn't run a private equity firm. He wasn't, he was a newspaper owner. For almost a decade. And he had been [00:35:00] a longtime investor.We own the Buffalo news, which is for, a long time, but in a long time, investor in the Washington postSHEFFIELD: as well, right.SUSCA: when he owned this newspaper chain and he said, so he, he bought it and this newspaper chain, and then he sold it to Lee enterprises. And he called the newspaper industry toast.And one of the things that got reported in the Financial Times, but didn't get reported as widely as him calling the newspaper industry toast, is that BH Finance, so the subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, when he sold his newspaper chain to Lee Enterprises, He also refinanced some debt that Lee Enterprises had to a different private equity firm and a different Wall Street bank firm.And so what, and what's going to end up happening is that BH Finance, the subsidiary [00:36:00] of Berkshire Hathaway, is going to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of the debt. that Lee Enterprises, a different newspaper chain, has. So, he's calling the newspaper industry toast, but here, Berkshire Hathaway is also making tons of money for its shareholders off of the debt that a different, that a newspaper newspaper chain has.So, you see, it's like people, you profit off of this, story that you're telling of a newspaper's insolvency, and it just, there's a part of me that just, as the accountability part of my title, I'm a professor of journalism, democracy, and accountability, like, it just drives me bonkers that, that can be, that narrative can be allowed to exist.SHEFFIELD: Well, okay, so, let's, [00:37:00] of the things that are in the book that we didn't talk about. formally yet. What would, what are like one or two things that you want to make sure that we do?SUSCA: Okay, so I, yeah, so I think that, one of the things that I would just emphasize is that, not to say that the U. S. newspaper system is a perfect system, not to say that it worked for everyone throughout American history, It certainly, I think, was the best established system that we had to provide voice for, for, communities across America to, to right wrongs, to right institutional failures.And I think that, we're losing that system. Day, by day, weekly newspapers are closing at an alarming rate. Daily newspapers, more than 200 have closed in the last 15 years. And I think [00:38:00] that, behind those closures there are not, behind those closures, are certainly there are profit motivations.So I think that the one thing that I would say is that, we're losing functioning system that is meant to hold government officials accountable. And I think that's a really troubling, troubling reality. And I think that it's not too late to try to get some interventions.The nonprofit news ecosystem: A glimmer of hopeSUSCA: And one of the things that I would emphasize is that there is a growing nonprofit news ecosystem.Even since I finished the book when I wrote finished the book, there were 400 nonprofit newsrooms in the United States. And today their number about 425 nonprofit newsrooms. So I think that this is a really encouraging sign. There's been a massive philanthropic. A commitment from the MacArthur Foundation and the Knight [00:39:00] Foundation to, give 500 million to the local news ecosystem.Much of it will be geared toward the nonprofit news space. So I think that there are some hopeful moments for the local space. It may not be the newspaper space, and I don't think it has to be the newspaper space, but I think that. It's going to be up to citizens to try to, be active and engaged and it's not, they're going to have to be, to reach out and try to engage with some of these nonprofit newsrooms.In their communities. Hopefully they are in their communities. And, to try to find these reputable news outlets because, the alternatives are are pretty, pretty bad.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I agree. Well, it's been a great conversation. Margo. I I think the book is definitely something that people should be looking at, especially if you are, somebody who works in the news [00:40:00] media, like those are the people who absolutely should read this book.You need to understand your own business and understand what's happening to it, even if it's boring and not exciting to you immediately, it eventually once you get into it, you'll realize It's a lot scarier and a lot more. To you. So at the very least, they should be reading this. And I think everybody else should be reading it too.So, we'll encourage everybody to do that and I'll put it up on the screen. So it's the book is hedged how private investment funds helped. Destroy American newspapers and undermine democracy. And then you are also on social media over at Margot Susca. That's M-A-R-G-O-T-S-U-S-C-A for those who are listening. Thanks for being here.SUSCA: Okay. Thanks, Matt, for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is our program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And of course, you can get more if you go to theoryofchange.show you the full episodes with the audio video and transcript of [00:41:00] everything. And if you are a paid subscribing member, thank you very much.You also have unlimited access to everything. And theory of change is part of the flux media network. So go to flux.community for more podcasts and articles about politics, religion, media, and society. And if you can support us with a paid subscription, obviously I definitely appreciate that. But if you can't right now, I understand that's a difficult circumstances for people.And different at different times. And, but if you can leave a nice review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or something like that, is much appreciated. And if you are a watching on YouTube, please click the like and subscribe. But that is it for this episode. I appreciate everybody for being here 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

Exploring the radicalization of Roman Catholics by a little-known cable channel promoting far-right political agendas. Discussing the influence of EWTN, its reach of 400 million households worldwide, and alignment with extremist Catholic figures. Examining the transition towards conservative views and promotion of cancel culture within the church. Delving into the controversial content of shows like 'The World Over' with Raymond Arroyo, addressing topics like the January 6 insurrection and black violence. Reflecting on the significant shift in content of the Catholic cable channel and the dynamic relationship between the Catholic right and Pope Francis.

The past two episodes of Theory of Change have focused on dating and sex, and I wanted to end the miniseries with a conversation that brings in the topic of media as well. Not just because the next episode arc we'll be doing is about the state of journalism, but also because media have played an important role in how people meet and form connections.It seems forever ago now in 2024, but for many years, one of the ways that people went on dates was through a local newspaper and their personal ads. You’ve likely heard of them, even if you never used them: “Single white female seeking man for tennis and deep conversations.” There were many other types of classified ad as well: “Got a trip to Spain coming up? Learn Spanish from the comfort of your own home with our great tutors!” And so on. Millions of short messages like these were the original social media feeds for communities, the place to figure out what the regular people around us were up to and what they were looking for.And as it happened, some people were looking for sex workers. But strippers, escorts, and other such professionals weren't allowed to advertise in the respectable daily newspaper, so instead, they turned to their local alternative newspaper. In their heyday, alt-weeklies, as they were often called, were an industry that brought in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They also produced a lot of great journalism—and the first real challenge to the bland and cowardly approach that even today dominates so much of mainstream media.The story of the alternative weekly newspaper and how the former “counterculture” became the mainstream is one that Sam Eifling and his co-producers tell in a new podcast for Audible called “Hold Fast: The Unadulterated Story of the World’s Most Scandalous Website” that’s definitely worth a listen.The transcript of our conversation is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the complete text. The video of this episode is also available.Photo montage: Flux. CC by SA.Theory of Change is part of the Flux Media network, please support our work and get more content like this by subscribing on Patreon or Substack.Related Content* Dating in the present age has become quite the mess, how did it happen?* How the Christian right is using sex to sell religion* CNN and Fox are having very different identity crises* Editorial cartooning is under threat in the age of the meme* The rise of Donald Trump reshuffled the right-wing media businessAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:27 — How Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey’s New Times revolutionized newspaper classified ads and later online adult ads19:31 — How dating and hooking up via text advertisements worked30:09 — Alt-weeklies were the first real challengers to the false promise of “objective” news reporting36:24 — Before the “counterculture” won, libertarians thought they were on the political left47:04 — How Backpage replaced alt-weeklies for sex workers trying to be safe52:47 — The bipartisan prosecution of Backpage’s founders01:05:57 — The personal story of a john named John01:14:41 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been corrected. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: I think a lot of people have never heard of Backpage at this point, whether being too young for it or not being [00:04:00] interested in those types of services. So why don't we start off by describing what Backpage was, and then we can get to where it came from.SAM EIFLING: Sure. The simplest way to describe Backpage is that it was a knockoff of Craigslist, like a pure just, straight up Craigslist knockoff that eventually, because of the attitudes and past sort of business expertise of the owners, really became the go to red light district for sex ads on the internet for the better part of a decade.It was a company that grew out of a company I used to work for. It was a newspaper company called New Times Inc. When when I started working there in the early two thousands, it was the biggest chain of alternative news weeklies in America. So these papers you would get, they were free. They were paid for by advertising display ads, which are usually what companies take out and classified ads, which are what individuals mostly take out.Classified ads could be [00:05:00] selling your couch, selling your car, a help wanted ad. And part of the New Times model for a long time was to welcome and encourage ads that had a sort of a grey zone of sexuality, right? So it could be massages, it could be escorts. I'm sure there were working prostitutes advertising at the Backpages, Backpages of New Times papers and probably helping to pay my salary and that of other reporters. It really wasn't our business to focus on at the time. But as that model fell apart, as Craigslist came in, especially, and started disrupting the entire online classified ecosystem, and these papers started wondering how are we going to get the money to pay for the journalism, executives at New Times came up with the idea of essentially running the same style of ads that they ran in the papers online in a Craigslist like format.And over the years, that became increasingly [00:06:00] a lightning rod for attention and negative attention, especially when it came to people who would go to the media or appear in in different venues and say: “I was trafficked via Backpage. Someone held me against my will and advertised me as a sort of basically a prostitute or at that point, really a victim of a crime of sex trafficking on Backpage.”And with a few of those accusations out of millions and millions of ads, there became this groundswell. The groundswell led to activism. The activism fed into political pressure. Political pressure led to the arrest of the main characters in our show, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin. Years ago it started this chain of, alternative news weeklies, and now we're being arrested by the FBI and charged with essentially facilitating prostitution at probably the largest scale that's ever [00:07:00] been, accused in the history of the U. S. government. They were basically saying, you guys are, in the biggest pimps in the history of of America.And they were thrown in jail and taken to trial. And so that's sort of where we picked up is, the beginning of the show is the arrest of, of Lacey and Larkin, and by the end we're, we're at a, a federal trial to hear, to hear the government make their case against, against Backpage and the Backpage executives.How Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey's New Times revolutionized classified ads and weekly newspapersSHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it's a, and it's a story that. It's a, it's a really important story more than you would think. I think for people who, like, Oh, I would never place a adult classified ad, or, I would never go to a prostitute or whatever.There's, there's some, a lot of real implications to all this, both where they came from, and, and the case against them.So let's maybe step back then to the beginning here. In 2024, it's like, It seems a world removed in many ways, this industry that these, these guys really kind of started [00:08:00] and of alternative newspapers.And a lot of this, I mean, it really got started with the village voice out of out of New York City in the 1950s, and then kind of, there were a bunch of, Sort of self styled underground newspapers that were kind of run by anti war college students primarily in the 60s and 70s. And then it became a business with these guys.So, why don't you talk, tell us about that and what they were doing. What they, what did they discover that people had missed certainly.EIFLING: Yeah, it is. it's to me, I'm born, I think age is a big part of this. So I can just say born in 1980.And when was a college student thinking about getting into newspapers or journalism at all, newspapers were still really king newspapers and magazines. And I think a lot, as a lot of did probably in that age. before there were blogs, before there were podcasts, you might think about starting your own paper, [00:09:00] right?It was, it was something you could, you could write, you could print, you could, you could report, you could have a voice, you could raise hell and distribute it. And that was a model that had been around for a long time.In the case of the Village Voice, it started in the mid fifties in New York and sort of set the template, right? Which was a paper that was adversarial to the entrenched power structures in the city, including the existing media, which I think was a big part of what, I anybody now who, gets or a lot of I don't know how many vlogs are picking apart the mainstream media.Well, that used to be the role of these, kind of insurgent newspapers and news gathering organizations.But what, what made New Times different, what made New Times successful was that found a business model to go with it. So our, our really our protagonist the show is a guy named Mike Lacey. Mike Lacey was a college student at the at Arizona State University in the early 70s, and he and a bunch of friends put together this anti Vietnam War protest paper. [00:10:00] At first, it was a collective. It was chaotically run. I'm sure with the ideals of the day in mind as they set the business structure, which was basically no business structure at all.And when I worked at New Times, very famously, Mike Lacey would talk about having donated plasma in the early days to keep the paper going right? These guys were broke. They're having fun. They're raising hell, but they Jim Larkin. Who was not a journalist, but who really enjoyed journalism and appreciated good journalism approached the paper sometime it started and said, look, I think you guys have a really good thing going. I Also think you don't know what you're doing on the business side I have a lot of ideas.And essentially Larkin didn't invent this model But I think he ran it very well, which was to sell a lot of small ads in the paper that maybe were coming from businesses sort of, they were selling these ads to businesses that were too small to advertise in the in the big [00:11:00] daily, which was the Arizona Republic in phoenix.So if you ran a very small business, or if you were a one person, if you were like a person giving guitar lessons, you were a handyman, or you were you were the kind of seamstress who would patch up people's clothes. Like this is the kind of stuff that, you know, you probably wouldn't place an ad in the daily, might just flyers around your neighborhood, but here comes this paper. The space is cheaper. You can buy small ads and you can participate in the community through your advertising, right?You, you become, you have a platform effectively. If you buy a little piece of this paper, the genius of classified ads, the absolute, the key to classified advertising. They're really two one, they are really small, but because they're small, you can sell them basically at a premium on the page. So if one page of advertising holds just one ad, that ad costs a lot of money.[00:12:00]But you have holds 200 ads collectively, those 200 ads add up to a lot more money than you would charge for the one. It's more work to put them in and also just know, it's, it's it's like any kind of, like, parceling up of a, of real estate, right? The smaller you cut it, the more you can sell, the more total sales value you're probably going to get out of it. So what happened in these papers, New Times especially, but The Voice did this, they could run literally thousands of these ads.And these ads were run by so many people from so many walks of life that, No one advertiser really had editorial say over the paper, which was key. If you had one big ad and one big advertiser, that company, and it was always a company at that point, that company would expect to have some leverage against paper.And they would. And dailies they did, anywhere, anywhere a big advertiser is funding a lot of the work of a journalism organization, they have a lot of say whether whether [00:13:00] the journalists even realize it or not, right? The owners make way for for a big advertiser. If there are thousands and thousands of advertisers, if it's that democratic, that collective and that many people are coming in, you can run a lot of material in the paper that could potentially piss a lot of them off.But be fine because if 10 people walk out, you don't really right? There's so many people advertising that it effectively creates this way of community support, financial support for a newspaper, a news venture, and New Times ran that model very well. They ran it in in Phoenix, and then eventually they saw other weekly papers around the country.This is in the early, mid nineties. Actually, I guess, yeah, the early, mid nineties is really when they started to expand and they saw other papers that maybe were doing good journalism that had the, had the instincts to cover their city really aggressively and and to connect with a community of readers, but maybe they didn't have the business down.And so [00:14:00] gradually New Times started buying up these papers. They went to Denver, they went to Miami. They went to San Francisco and where they went, they would buy a paper that maybe wasn't making as much money as it could. They sort of install their software, a way of thinking of it. Their, their business--SHEFFIELD: Their formula.EIFLING: Their formula, which they took lot of s**t for over the years, like having a formula, but they became very financially successful. And through that through a zillion teeny tiny ads, right, from people every walk of life, walking, walking into the newspaper with up to the ad window, sometimes dictating an ad, sometimes having it written down they were making at the time I guess 2005, they eventually merged the Village Voice Company and New Times.And when those two companies merged, they created a company that had Even though Craigslist was eating into their model at that, at that stage, then it combined [00:15:00] revenue of almost 200 million a year.It was a giant And that was off of, I think, 17 papers. And there was big money to be made, and a lot of. Bare journalism that just would not have any place, in many cases, at the Daily Papers because it was just too it was too unfriendly to kind of the, the ethos that most papers maintain to be to be the kind of like network TV of, of their city, right?These papers could be HBO or something more aggressive, something a little more adult, something a little more risk taking. And for a lot of journalists that made an attractive place to go try to start a career.SHEFFIELD: For people, I think, especially who kind of built. This alt weekly model. They, and the people who worked in it, at the, at the high level, I don't think they really understood that how abnormal this was and that this was a moment in history that was so [00:16:00] completely unique.Nothing like that had ever really been done before. And and it was fleeting with, with the rise of a Craigslist and, and social media.EIFLING: I think. I think that's right. I think we got a good, I know, 40 year run out of it, which I was lucky enough to grab a little piece of and a lot of my co creators too, we were, we were of a generation that look backward, enjoy the heyday, really the peak. We were there at the financial peak of alternative weeklies and maybe the cultural peak.And I think as the internet atomized journalism in different ways. The cultural need for a paper that did the things that those papers did also kind of dispersed, right? Like, they were very aggressive about covering music and culture and well, I mean, that's TikTok now, right? That's instagram.There's so many people [00:17:00] who have become mainstream. Yeah. Experts on those sorts of things in their cities, you no longer need a newspaper to be the arbiter of where to go on a date this right? You don't need to pick up the paper to find concert listings mean, think about the days where, like, you didn't know what movies.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, you got, yeah, you got Fandango. You got Yelp.EIFLING: You've got all of it, right?SHEFFIELD: Or even in your maps app.EIFLING: Yeah, it's, the, it really is the took apart the, departments of, of weekly newspapers, papers too, but just focusing weeklies, it took took and. who just loved those subject areas, I kind of just started doing mean, let's take Craigslist, Craig Newmark.Sometime, I don't know when he moved to San Francisco, was, he was the Bay Area in the 90s, and was new to town, and had given him recommendations on go shows, what bars to hang out in, or [00:18:00] he was into at the time. those recommendations from people.And so he decided, man, I now know the well enough. want to give my own recommendations on this stuff. So he started Craig's list of basically just like stuff to do around the Area. And it out of generous spirit. I all had in a certain town and they do we go?And they say, all right, well, here's my top 10 recommendations. he was kind of doing that on a rolling basis. And as he got a large enough list, he made it gave a more formal structure and kind of operationalized it and built on this classified site, which turned into a literal website of world historic importance and in what it did publishing in America.And, but it came out that same impulse, It's like, I some cool stuff. I know people are looking for cool stuff. I'm just going to tell him what I think is cool. And this conversation. And so [00:19:00] think that large, that writ by everybody who has a publishing platform now always going to make it really tough for papers to exist because much of what got do was a conversation now lot more people lead a lot more conversations and their, their to and there are benefits toAnd, but but it was a completely different time for, for us. Understanding a city understanding was to do and who who had to say it's completely You're right.How dating and hooking up via text classified ads workedSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and in addition to that, at the sort cultural level it also definitely was the case that this was a unique. Model in terms of what it did for dating and sex and things like that, that, I, and we, you talked about it a little bit earlier but you know, the, the idea that, because, I mean, obviously call, prostitution, the oldest profession.So people have always done it and they did it before the old [00:20:00] weekly. But doing it became a lot more manageable for people. They pre screen their clients. this was not something that, somebody who was just working really could ever do back the day,And so with the rise of the, the, adult ads in, in these papers and then later within Backpage know, some of the And dating websites. I mean, this was This was something completely different, but that I, think is interesting and unique about the, the sex ad in the old paper is that these were ads. These were, you were interacting with someone, but it was only based on like now, you, you look at, whether Tinder, Bumble, whatever it is, you see And that tells you nothing really about who they are. Not really.And [00:21:00] so it's, whereas, with, with these classified ads, you could actually see how somebody thought. thing you could see about it. I mean, what's, what's yourEIFLING: I think that's, yeah, there's a few vectors there that I admit I never dated Via classifieds, right? I'm the, I'm at that generational cusp where I was born earning a salary from that, but I was never my dating scene. So in course of reporting the show, I had to go back and ask people who, who did use classifieds, right?And, and there are a lot different ways, a lot of different entry points, but one couple who I found in San Francisco who married based on ads that they 90s, Ed and Lisa I talked to, I to their home and I asked them, hey, how did this work? it?And the way they did which I think a, was common model at the time, And there are certainly like, degrees of classifieds. [00:22:00] Let's just, let's just be, be clear in the way that there are adult dating sites versus just dating sites, right? There, there are certainly a myriad different dating apps.These that have different levels of of different. They have different cultures, right? Different cultures, different of you're going to find and what people are going to be based on what you can assume they are. And I think the same was true for placing personal ad in a paper. So Ed and Lisa found each other through the mutual appreciation of a paper the San which was competitor to New Times Francisco.And back then, you place an in the personals section and the personal section would, as say, have just some writing about yourself. Right? It would probably list some you people how old you are. would tell people your your age, usual things.You might [00:23:00] educational background. You might say what sort of industry or field you work in. And then want to, yeah, I think be charming in a small Sometimes way to be charming is to you're 6'4 right?That's fine. to be charming is to say you have an athletic build and you really enjoy a certain, certain like exercise pastimes that, know, you want somebody surfer, like say you're surfer, right? Whatever, whatever that is.And in the and Lisa, Lisa placed the ad and she kind of had charming patter go the models that no longer exist who wanted to respond to that called a number and it was like 1 a minute or 50 a minute and you left voicemail for Lisa. Right? So if I read Lisa's Lisa seems really don't get to swipe on her and she back. Right. have to pay money to [00:24:00] call. 900 number at time, leave a voicemail. It's going to charge credit card.in that, and this is what happened with Ed he, he had been a college radio DJ in his day. He, he had very good voice and was charming on his message. He mentioned that he think he's, I think he's 6'4 that he, he would tell him that he looked like Jeff Goldblum is the early nineties that Jeff Goldblum, early 90s Goldblum, 6'4 with a radio DJ voice is good.So he leaves his message and Lisa calls him back. But what she was telling me was that once she plays the ad, and I don't know what she the ad, if anything, the bay Guardian ran for as long as she left in. Because, Probably people are reading it and they're like responding to And as long as ad paper calling the number, that's the money. that was, that was the old model was had to pay to try to court this, you know, this anonymous person who you only know through [00:25:00] 40 words of type or something.I don't know was. It was it was short. And then you would call and leave the voicemail. So, a little bit people and the way that I think if you're on Tinder, Hinge, whatever. Like, you know, a little bit and you just of hope that you bring your best self and that whatever is the little bit that you can reveal in that small somebody else responds to.So it very much, I think, of a to that dance, in a different way. And you're without an image of somebody, you really have to you have, you have to, you have to people with other, other wiles, right? have to bring, bring other stuff to table. Yep. Yeah. And then there was also a genre and you guys did talk about it in the show.Also that there was the, sort of the, the spotted Type of classified personal ad where, essentially proclaim their infatuation with someone that they saw somewhere in a random moment. And like, I, I don't, that sort of thing is gone now, I think. But for those who [00:26:00] aren't familiar with that tell us about those.I used to love this on Craigslist. So as a sort of a sidebar of this, Craigslist used to run personals. They no longer do. Craigslist dropped out of that game. Amid the pressure that Backpage stirred up, Craigslist was also in the in the crosshairs of Congress and Whereas Backpage basically said come at me bro. Craigslist was like peace too much heat. We're getting out of this game.But Craigslist used to have the most fun read anywhere. I thought, were the missed Connections, right? It's what you're talking about, which is usually the I was riding the bus, I was on, I was in line at this coffee shop or, or I was riding my bike and I saw this amazing person and we had this tiny interaction and you, it's, it's this kind of letter in a bottle that somebody just throws into the ocean-- is the internet of whatever city and they say, you were wearing this, you were about this tall. You said this to me. I said this to you. I should have gotten your number. And, let's get together.And it [00:27:00] feels like those are usually written by guys, but they're, they were this wonderful, I don't know, sort of like sub genre of like inner interior monologues that people were having all over the city.And you really got to see what people wish they'd said in the moment, or maybe there was a reason they couldn't say what they wanted to say, they tried something and it didn't quite work whatever, but you really got to sort of see inside people's hopes romantically and people's regrets, oddly, right?Like an instant regret situation you say, Oh man, I should have, why didn't I just, if I'd only, I could have. And, and as a genre, I, those have been around a long time. Those were in the Village Voice for years.There was a the movie, the Madonna movie from the eighties desperately seeking Susan was kind of based on some of the same same premises in those ads, right? So those have been around a long time. But there I think you're right. They're pretty much gone these days. I follow at least one Instagram account. I can't remember what [00:28:00] called that does that in New York, that there are still misconnections partly because. They're so entertaining, which is the other part of what made classified such a strong component of these papers for so long.They're entertaining. You read that want it. It's like it would be like looking inside of somebody like the city's tender profiles and you're just kind of like scanning these. And what are people, what are people doing to try to find each other? What are the risks that they're taking, which is always part of dating, always part of trying to find somebody is like taking a risk of some kind, right?And When you see people walking through like I should have taken more of a I have put myself out there. Here's who I am. Here's who I know. you are, you're out there and I can tell you a story. So I actually did. I used to be, this is years ago, but I loved reading those so much.And it was always so frustrated that people didn't like, walk up to somebody and start a conversation. And so I actually placed a misconnection for myself in the misconnections. I was like, I was in New York. I was like [00:29:00] 26 years old. I was like, look, I can't. I don't understand why nobody talks to anybody.I'm gonna be at the Natural History Museum. I look like this. I'm gonna be walking around this time. Come up and talk to me if you see me right. I've placed like a like a preview misconnection for people.And I ended up not even go to the museum. I was too sleepy, too sleepy and lazy that day. But somebody wrote me back this woman, her name is Heather, and she was a cook in New York. And she said, Hey, this was really funny. I also I have the same reaction to these I won't make it to the museum. I'm sorry, but I invited her to a house party we ended up dating for a little while because I was like, Hey, you seem cool. Like come to this party.And she did. And then here we were in New York. Right. And so, I think that was the one like weirdly successful wormhole I went through on a misconnection to actually connect with somebody, but it was, It came out of that shared sense of like, are people kidding? Like, step and ask her her name, man.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.EIFLING: Yeah.[00:30:00]SHEFFIELD: that's lost and, it's, it's worth remembering it or knowing about it. You never heardAlt-weeklies as the first real challengers to the false promise of "objective" news reportingSHEFFIELD: There was a political component as well to these papers that we're talking about as well that, that as you were saying, that a lot of the sort of family papers, as you guys refer to them the general interest newspaper, like the, Cleveland plane dealer, Kansas city star, et cetera, et cetera, Amy Harold. They, strictures on them, editorially speaking that, in, in many ways we're kind of seeing a recapitulation of that with the Republican party nationally, having gone so completely insane that, a lot of the national press organizations, they are afraid to say that and afraid to tell the full truth about the Republican party.And, but this is a dynamic that has always existed, ever since the [00:31:00] invention of mainstream journalism, quote unquote and the idea of, object objectivity as a, as a business proposition.And, and it was always absurd because of course, believed it necessarily, especially if it was about something that they knew about I think everybody's had that experience that, when you, when you know about, it's something that I feel that you work in or something that you have is a really big hobby and you read about it.And, publications, a lot of times you'll be like, nah, that's wrong. Or that's, that's not fair or whatever it is. So it was always a flawed model, but you know, it's collapsing on itself, I think, at the, on the national scale, but you know, the Alt Weekly is kind of, they expose that on the, on the local level as well.EIFLING: Yeah. There's a, certainly there's always a component of language policing that we all do with ourselves all the time, every day at scale, at a business, the kind of business that a daily wanted [00:32:00] to be, which is essentially a monopoly. In, in town. Right? They want to be the 1 stop shop, but they also wanted to be. For the most part, inoffensive, right?I think, if you ever read a daily paper, place where you see that attitude, I think, carried out the most is on the, with the, like, the comics. If you, if you read the funny pages, whatever it was. Most newspaper comics really suck. They are so boring. They're not funny. They're, they're really just pretty much like the definition of content as this kind of regurgitated stuff that you open it up and you're like, oh yeah, that's what beatle Bailey is doing today. It's not funny.And then you think of underground comics, right? Underground comics, Are so dynamic and so lively and so alive and so weird and funny and maybe sexy and dark and touch upon human experience in this way that like the kind of the stuff served up in the paper every day is like just isn't I think you can, you can certainly amplify that out and yeah, that [00:33:00] we're just, you didn't want to offend in certain ways. The, the phrase that you'd always hear working at Dailies and I started my career at Dailies and I went to a journalism school at Northwestern that was oriented toward the culture of Dailies.And so part of the culture of dailies is people are going to read this over breakfast. Imagine a person who doesn't want to be hit with a certain level of, like, sexuality or, or graphic violence or whatever are the things that could put somebody off as they eat their grapefruit and drink their coffee, right?You're writing for that person. A person who in the, in the sort of like imagination of the paper is person easily offended who might cancel their subscription or write an angry letter or call the publisher, going to happen. And so most of you're there to do is like not rock the table.Some news. It's just gonna be scary or, or off putting like there's, [00:34:00] that's just the way news is. But, but so much of what the paper coached internally reporters to do and editors to think about is like, don't offend anybody needlessly, right?Well, but like, okay, like life is hard and there's a ton of things that we talk about, a ton of subjects we don't talk about that. can hit people the wrong way.if you never, if you're never going to put yourself in a position to disturbed, well, you're going to have a view of reality that's just a little warped, right. kind of self policing is a big danger of what you're talking about. If, and if you say, I think now certainly there's a lot of, a lot of the culture war, a lot of the sort of left, right bite over reality comes down to what words do we use?Right. What comes down to, I mean, just, it's just extraordinary to me how how much mileage [00:35:00] the, the sort of like, tut, tut right has gotten out of a pronouns. Right. And I think, and I think really the strategy there is to say, you're policing our language, so we're going to police your language. And it becomes this weird, like mirror upon mirror effect,But I think that that battlefield has been really opened up, partly because people don't read the dailies anymore. The exist because they kind of moderated things right?And I I don't moderate in terms of like a debate moderation, but it was a place that that moderates had really the stage, right?And, and I think we have removed moderates from a lot of the content and a lot of the media that we absorb. And so what we get are people who are really pissed off on both sides feeding algorithms that feed us more of that. And so we're back to having language wars when a of it was just kind of, it was understood like you just you use [00:36:00] certain language.It didn't use certain language, whereas at new times we got to use certainly certainly in quotes, right? A lot more profanity and a lot more. Color in the language than, than we would ever get away with in the daily. And it was really fun, but it also helped you capture life as it happened and not be not pretend everything was, was PG rated when life is, life isn't.Alt-weeklies enabled libertarians to intersect with progressives in a way that's almost entirely disappearedSHEFFIELD: And the other interesting thing is that they were conceived in sort of. This moment where Libertarians saw that they were anti-conservative. And basically, essentially what happened is that a lot of things that were perceived as counter-cultural such as being openness to drugs or.Like, supporting marijuana legalization or supporting prostitution legalization, or, being saying profanities on stage, things like [00:37:00] that.EIFLING: Access to abortion, right? Access to abortion is a big one.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so. Those things became mainstream and so essentially libertarianism bifurcated and joined up with its right wing origins and and and some of that story played out in the in the all weekly world as well.Right?EIFLING: I think that's right. I think what used to be counter cultural. Lit. And in some ways it won, right? Like we now, it's not like, i, I wasn't alive in the early seventies, but from all accounts, oh my gosh, there was just no recognition that anything but heterosexuality was the default mode that everybody was issued upon birth.And we just didn't talk about anything else. Right. And it wasn't until, The riot, which literally happened across the street from the old village voice office and the voice, which was not particularly progressive on this, on this particular issue. They were kind of, an old straight boys club, like everybody else.At the time they looked out their [00:38:00] window, watched these, this like gay bar blow up and get into a riot with the cops are like, well, we have to go cover this. And have to discuss this issue. We have to talk about civil rights for people who aren't the sort of like nuclear family from the fifties that everybody had been kind of like boxed in by.I think, I you're right. It, there wasn't a shattering in a way. And I think, though, strangely, we're coming back to it, right? It's coming back around in this way that it felt like many of the, many of the reasons for there to be a counterculture. eventually won the day. I think drug laws, certainly compared to the 70s, are far less draconian nationwide.That's changing very slowly, but man, what a difference between now and when I was a kid.I mean, to think that today in New york City, like, they basically just don't prosecute marijuana possession, and to think of the untold lives wrecked by that [00:39:00] before over basically a Nixon era campaign against people he didn't like. I mean, his. Is a big sea change, right?But now we're back to, for instance, arizona its 160 year old abortion law that roe v. Wade had, had tamped down. We're, we're back in the, we're back in the Civil War. I mean, literally, we're back in Civil War days if you want health care and before, 50 years before women could vote and, and that's where we are, right?SHEFFIELD: You're also seeing it like in, in Florida with these book ban laws, like, the Republicans went back to it.And, and then largely it is because the Libertarians let them do it. That's really they need to, wake the f**k up. It's what I would sayEIFLING: I think it's funny because I and I made this joke with my with my co producers on this is, for a long time, I think in recent years, libertarians and the [00:40:00] religious right have been have been sort of linked arms right in places like Texas.But I think they're both going to be really unhappy. If either of them gets what, what they want, right, if libertarians really get what they want, like the religious rights gonna be pissed off and if, and if religious, if the religious right gets what they want, true libertarians, and I don't think there are that many, frankly, true libertarians I think they're gonna be pissed off.There's this, politics, weird bet, strange bedfellows and all that. But certainly I think if people were ideologically consistent libertarians instead of this sort of like authoritarians in sheep's clothing, as I think a lot of libertarians have proven to be there, they would be consistent on things like government interference in your personal life, including who you marry, who you have sex with, if it's consenting adults, can you, can you, can you advertise that you are a person who is gonna have sex with people. Can you do it for money?All of that would seemingly be things libertarians would be in [00:41:00] favor for, I think what we find is libertarianism, these days as it exists, mostly belongs to men, and most of it isn't really ideologically consistent with anything except laws that certain men want to see put in, put into play, frankly if, if I benefit themselves.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.EIFLING: Or just to benefit their glandular to world. I mean, I don't even think it's really consistent or don't think a benefit. There's not a benefit to most men For women not to be able to access health care and get an abortion this is like it's like guys have you played this out on your checkerboard of life like what happens if sex becomes life threatening to people. Do you think you're gonna have more sex or less?And it, it stuns me to, to see the, the zeal with which men want to, men in particular want to clamp down on women's behavior [00:42:00] and to imagine the world think gonna inherit when, when they're successful that. It's not one. not one that is make you happy. It's not gonna, it's not gonna peaceful. it's not gonna be enjoyable. And and yet here we are, we're fighting these fights without, in some like, without sense of history or without the sense of place that I think frankly, good local journalism can provide help ground in a, in a reality.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and yeah, and that is definitely a thing that's missed is that as these conversations and different topics have, have, sort of bifurcated into their own realms, the things that people like let's say if you were primarily interested in reading an alt weekly for the music reviews or the restaurant reviews, like that was why you picked it up. But you would still look at these other because they were there and it was easy. Right. But now if you're, somebody who's just like a hardcore foodie or, you're a heart, you're [00:43:00] dedicated to two or three musical groups or whatever.You can look at, Only those things. And you don't have to see anything else and you don't get educated about any other issue or any topic. And it really has. I think that's kind of a dilemma that Joe Biden is in right is that I think a lot of people who, I mean, when you ask Americans in polls, do you support same sex marriage or do you support birth control?Do you support marijuana legalization, any of these variety of things that has a vast majority support. Many of the people who have those viewpoints have no idea that there is a party that is trying to take those things away from you. They want to take your contraception. They want to take your, right to get an abortion.They're going to do it. They're going to make your kids pray in their fashion in school. These are their goals. And they don't even know that this is happening. Because they, they don't have any exposure to the media.EIFLING: I think there's also a sense along those lines. I think there's a sense of, well, that's [00:44:00] not really gonna happen. Well, okay. Yes. If you can totally can. has in the past. Think there a lot of people who never thought Roe would be overturned partly because It was so good for the republican base To never be able to get to the end of something, right?It was this, was this telenovela you would always tune into. Republicans are like, tune in next week with your donation dollars as we try to overturn abortion. Everybody's like, man, they just keep making all kinds of money off this. And then, the strangeness of the Trump administration getting to install three judges in four years bites everybody on the ass.And you say, No, these guys were serious. Like they were serious. And I think it would be folly not to take them to at their word. I think I think it is more certainly seems more real then it had been for a long time. The idea that really fundamental questions of American democracy and American rights, [00:45:00] that we had been conditioned to expect could could be overturned. And in fact, there wouldn't be a place to go to really appeal that that that wouldn't be like a do over. It's a bit like Brexit, right?I think there were a lot of people in the UK who are like, we're not really gonna do this, right? Like, we're not this. We're not serious. And then you see,SHEFFIELD: I don't have to vote on it.EIFLING: you watch this. Yeah, or like, this just isn't a big deal. And then it passes barely. And then you see this, the news stories the next day about how many Google searches there were In the U. K. For what is Brexit, right? I think we're at that point where it's like, Wait, what is what is a wait? Contraception like we're not going to have contraception like that just doesn't compute with people. And I think there are and this is my area of expertise at all. But I think there are a lot of journalists who are who are working really hard right now to try to do those stories that get beneath the surface of what certain political leaders.And I think there are a lot of journalists who are who are working really hard right now to try to do those stories that get beneath the surface of what certain political leaders. True religious backgrounds are and what they might ascribe to and what they might do. And it's [00:46:00] way more serious than I think a lot of people have given it credit for.And, I, I come at it from the journalism world. I think we should have more coverage of the results of elections. I think that'd be terrific. think we live in a country where because of the electoral college, I think we There are really only about 10 states every four years that decide the presidential election.We have been conditioned to just not really participate in ways that I think really the kinds of and kinds aims that you're describing. Because truly it just does not matter if most of us participate and that's so deeply structural it will never change inAnd that, I think it, the well, frankly, to change through action or political attention. may as well just like, watch and go about our, our lives very, very hard turn those things back if [00:47:00] if they flip.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.How Backpage replaced alt-weeklies for sex workers trying to be safeSHEFFIELD: Um, so, just now to go back to your, to the story you guys are telling with the, so, so Craigslist comes along and destroys the newspaper industry basically. And a lot of that is their own fault because these executives, they thought that this was forever what they were doing.They didn't realize it was abnominally. And they, and they thought you could get away running a business with 20 or 30 percent profits forever. When no business was like that almost, like it, well, and yeah, like from literally no business other, other than a few years timespan industry will last that long with that kind of just never happens, never and these guys, they, they, they just sat on their ass and, and their business was taken away from them by their own negligence. And so, and, and that was also the case guys, as, as [00:48:00] you guys talk about that, they, they knew Craigslist was out there, but they didn't really, paid too much attention to it and until it kind of completely destroyed the weekly business.So then, as you said, they, they went over and started Backpage and Backpage, and I have to say like Backpage in its heyday, it, it was very important for sex workers to be able to, get a living and in a way that was safe for them. And I mean, you, you want to talk about that aspect For for a little bit here, if you,EIFLING: Yeah, that's. I so I'm not a person who ever used. Backpage or used, I know, like, to me, back, I was a little naïve in, in my 20s and 30s, but on a show this, you sort start to see, like, oh yeah, this is, this was more of a thing.People would really advertise, like, sexual services, and it would be, be online, and reply to [00:49:00] that, and then they would go exchange money, and have sex, and the world would keep turning, and Backpage would keep a little piece of and take an even smaller piece of and give it to, give it to newspapers to keep them running. What's so wild to me about what Backpage did from people that we talked to making this story and sex workers that we quizzed about it, they all really liked it. And it was, it was such a contrast talking to people who advertise on Backpage or use Backpage or who were sex workers.And it might not be, look, it might not be prostitution. It could be, it could be running a dungeon. It could be a of different things that people advertise for. So I don't want to say it was like, all prostitution. wouldn't be the case, but, the public perception of a place of a lot ofAnd there were terrible things that happened out of the ads that people placed in Backpage and on Craigslist. [00:50:00] As, look, I mean, you get millions of people connecting and a lot of them are expecting sex or, or, people get into sexual situations for power dynamics and, and, know, when people got killed, we don't want to minimize that one bit, right?But it a very small number compared with the millions and millions of ads that were going And what sex workers told us was that in those more or less in the open, as Backpage gave them the opportunity to do, that gave them control of the market in a way that they didn't have when they were advertising in more clandestine ways. Right?So if you were advertising your services on Backpage, you might have, because it was so available and open and obvious. And just easy to access for anybody. you might dozens [00:51:00] or hundreds of replies from your you don't have to accept dozens or hundreds of people, your clients or your customers, or, know, whatever term you want to use in this your date, you sift through that. You can be really picky. You can find people who have a good reputation among other people, are in your same business. You can vet aggressively. You don't have to take. The first guy who shows up your door, whatever that is.And so for a lot people who were using Backpage, they felt like they had more They had more safety and they had a better sort of social network that they could use to, to regulate, self regulate the marketplace than they had without it. When it went away the description that we got from sex worker advocate was that it was, it was total chaos, right? It was, it was a lot fear and it was a lot of income lost and it was a big scramble.And what came immediately afterwards for women who were advertising on Backpage [00:52:00] were men who wanted essentially to be like managers or pimps or whatever term you want to use, people who said hey, I can help you find clients now. Well, listen, man, like pimps suck. Like, You don't, we shouldn't, we shouldn't glorify pimps. Pimps are, pimps are not, like, in a perfect world, we would not have people who take a cut of of dangerous and in, in many cases extremely personal profession for with the, the threats of violence, the threats of like financial imbalance, everything that comes with that taking Backpage at least we were told our reporting on this, really put a lot of women in what they felt was a precarious position which was, again, as I say, kind of a fascinating perspective on because if you follow the congressional hearings,The bipartisan prosecution of Backpage's foundersEIFLING: If you looked at what the FBI wanted to say, what the, what the feds have said, it really is this even in the federal trial many of these ads were brought in as evidence and the term that the federal government used the prosecutors used [00:53:00] was these are victims on Backpage. It's I don't really see a victim here. I see somebody who's putting a picture of themselves in a low cut on the Internet.We could we could argue about the merits of that or whether that should be legal or, any number of, of approaches to that. But to call that person, the victim who placed their own ad and is saying, like, come over and, spend time with me and pay me money. And then we'll go our separate ways. Victim seems to me a bit a bit over the line, right?I think it's I think it's rounding up in situation. but it was the perspective of the government that people advertising on Backpage were were being yeah, we're being exploited. And so it's like, and therefore the people running Backpage were criminals running, basically a criminal enterprise And it's it really, I think, calls, if you really go into it, it really calls into questions a lot of assumptions we have about the place of sex work and advertising sex work in [00:54:00] American society.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also I mean numerically You if you look at people making these similar types of ads on Or let's say posts we'll call them making posts of this nature There's a lot more of them on Facebook.There's a lot more of them on Twitter or Instagram. I mean, that is the reality. Like there are a lot of people who are sex workers who, are their trade on But the fact that it's a lower percentage of the posts, that's really the only difference, on here.EIFLING: I will tell you one other difference. Facebook is a giant company. New times was small. Twitter is a giant company. New times was didn't have the pockets. They defend themselves in the And I think we've always, as Americans have accepted that going to be some level of discourse [00:55:00] or advertising that talks about prostitution or sexual services.I mean, I, I wasn't kidding earlier. It used to be in the yellow pages. Like when there were yellow pages back when people did that. There were a lot of escort ads in big cities, which I didn't know or realize because I grew up in a town too small to have escort sections of the yellow pages But but there's always been that presence and it is always been sort of a like marginal like, who's this really hurting? We can't police this bully. Just let it go kind of thingBut I do think when people advertise on. Instagram or twitter or Facebook or whatever platform people are using big platform regulated platform You a really big difference between those platforms and what new Times and Backpage represented is just scale and size and power.And these guys were of the correct size that they were. They built this big marketplace with a lot of people using millions [00:56:00] of people placing ads. but they were, they, they weren't a public company. They weren't a multi billion dollar company. They, they were a very good size to like shoot down, mount their heads on the wall and move along.They didn't have to they didn't have to pick apart. Right. They didn't have to pick apart twitter, it is, likeSHEFFIELD: when they, and they also didn't have the political connections as well because, oh, and they're pissingEIFLING: years was just pissing off. He just pissed off politicians. Absolutely the opposite. Right. And they would tell it and it's hard to this is the kind of thing. It's hard to hard to verify. And so it's hard for me to make the claim. In full. But if you talk to these guys, they would say, absolutely, there's a political motive.They're all political enemies for years, which in the case of Lacey and Larkin, John McCain, Cindy McCain, his wife, were for years since the 80s very in the sights of their [00:57:00] publications, specifically in Phoenix, Phoenix New Times. And they say that a of this is politically motivated, retaliation for years of thwacking the hell out of them every time they got a chance, which the danger of being an impolite, impolitic, aggressive news organization.If you start a giant hooker ad website, people might come and put a guy in a way to put you out of business and throw you, you, throw you in jail, right? Like this is, this is the story that we got into.And it's, it is crazy to think about it in those terms, but. There is a version of of the world in which they were more let's say political or just say maybe even obsequious to power in which they are. They still get to run this website, but they were not. They were really confrontational in a way that I think very few news organizations have that same ethic of [00:58:00] just, Relentless relentless scrutiny of what they saw as powerful and their actions. Right? So I think all of that rolls up over, oh my gosh, 30 years, 40 years of, of, of, of pissing off everybody you can. That comes home to roost eventually. And and I think it does in the story that we've. That we told.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's interesting also that this is a bipartisan effort that happened to them as well.And and you guys talk about that and that, but this is, this is another example of how I think that it's, it is very possible for people who strongly disagree with the Christian rights, authoritarian, morality system still be manipulated to do what they want. And that's kind of what happened with Kamala Harris when she was the, Like she was the one who kind of got this ball rolling. If you [00:59:00] want to talk about that.EIFLING: Yeah, she was one. So there really I remember writing this section of the script because this all is in the recent past and I had to go through and it's what did happen? Once congress, congress, once it got to Congress, which is in 2017, once lacey and Larkin were hauled in front of Congress, they had hearings essentially around accusations that Backpage had facilitated a lot of pretty unsavory crimes some of them involving minors there were, I think it became very in sort of a preview I think, today of a lot of, political discourse that goes online talking about like groomers or, we talk about book bands. In 2017, it was child sex trafficking, right? And I think it's pretty clear now that a lot of the numbers You that advocates and politicians were using at the time to try to the size of that particular problem, which is a nightmare if [01:00:00] it's happening to people, we're way, way, way, way, way overblown, right?It just was not anywhere near the scope and scale of what people thought might happening. Because there were some very terrible real cases that throw a shadow, throw a long shadow over everything else that's But once it got to, once it got to Congress it became a absolutely a bipartisan for Democrats, for Republicans.I think Kamala Harris is a great example because she is a Democrat now that VP, but she's also a cop. She was, she was a cop in California. She was, I mean, I say this is sort of like loose terms, but she was, as the head law enforcement agent in California, she was the person who worked with Ken Paxton in Texas, who was a top cop in Texas, basically.And they both said, linking arms, Kumbaya, Texas and California. These guys have got to go. We're arresting, we're, we're arresting these guys. And so, you Lacey and Larkin went to Sacramento. They were put in a cage. [01:01:00] And so they're in like orange jumpsuits in a cage. I think Lacey compares it to Cairo in the podcast when we interviewed him about And two weeks before her Senate election, right, she's got these big fish on the hook in a courtroom in, in California that that plays well. I think Democrats, look, I think Democrats Always I think back to the crime bill, Bill Clinton's, Bill Clinton's 1990s, right? Democrats love to, in some ways, overcorrect on law and order because they think it gives, it gives them a defense against republicans.I think what ultimately happens, though, is republicans will call Democrats squishes no matter what happens. But Democrats, at least in my lifetime, have often pushed very hard and been real avatars for, like, strong crackdowns on, on things that are seen to have a marginal value, right? Or affecting, a case like this, which is, advertising for sexual [01:02:00] services.There just aren't a lot of people who raise their hand and say, you know what? Like, I actually think we should have more freedom to run hooker ads like that. That constituency is, is probably pretty large, but also it's very quiet compared with how exciting it can be to bust people of ill repute for whatever it is.And by the time it got to Congress in 2017, and they were debating the laws that eventually got passed, fOSTA, sESTA that would change the way that the Internet is regulated. And make it such that a website such as Backpage just won't ever exist again in the U. S.And the way that that it was conceived. It was. Almost lockstep. It was almost perfect. Democrat Republican hand in hand voting to pass these laws that really changed the way the Internet can work. And It happened to be very ideologically conservative by historical standards, House and Senate, but they were not, they were absolutely not [01:03:00] passing many, many bills of that size with that that like mindedness, right? These are very, we live in very divided political times, and there was no division on this. Republicans, Democrats.I'm sure there were, if I looked through Who voted against them, like there may be some really, truly committed social libertarians who, didn't think it was a good way to go, but mainstream man, they were, they were all about it for sure.SHEFFIELD: It's also that it's. hard to have a, it's hard to have a concept of that freedom of speech has, it should protect things that might make you uneasy. In the same, but at the same point, like people were also like there's people haven't drawn the distinction, I think between the, advocating government is something that. That, that I guess, well, in other words, there are more limits that people want on that and [01:04:00] justifiably. So, then, if somebody wants to advertise their, their, their dominatrix website or whatever it is, like, that's not really hurting anybody. If someone wants to be paid to go on aEIFLING: I think that's the thing that, that we really have to, as grownups look at and say I think, I think that is exactly where to start is like, look, man, who's it hurting? And look, there are definitely, there are definitely ways in which people pressure minors into sexual situations and that's gross. And if there's a hell people like that belong there, but most of the minors who get caught up in which I think would be called outside prostitution or street prostitution, mostly are, I was told by leading expert on this, in are people who are thrown out of their home often because they are gay, right.There are just a lot of families in which a kid is in an abusive or, or bad situation. They have to leave home early. Maybe they're 15, [01:05:00] 16, I don't know, and, they're younger and they go and now they have to make money. And there people who take advantage of that and it's pretty bad times, right. But so big asterisk on that, right? I can dim Hamas. Like that's, that's that part of that conversation.But, when it comes to people who want to have sexual experiences with somebody else, I think it is a a very natural, and if it's done in a civil way, probably mutually beneficial and for them and for the world for them come to an agreement and say look, I'm going to pay your time and I am looking to do this that either I've always wanted to try I can't do with my partner don't have a partner for it it's been a something I want to experience and look man, we're all dead for a long time. Like everybody should go have the consensual fun You want to have on this ride around on this rock, because we're not coming back. If you leave it on the table, that's where it's going to stay.The personal story of a john named JohnEIFLING: We talked with we talked with a [01:06:00] guy. So I have, I have friends who are sex workers. I to one of them and I said, Hey, I need to find a client. I need to find somebody who has paid for sexual services to be in the show.And a friend of mine said, okay, I know a guy I'm going to she's a dominatrix. She said I'll put you in touch with this guy.His name is John. I interviewed him. He appears in the podcast. Because he, he really didn't want people to recognize him.And so we took the transcript of the conversation. We gave to an actor. Actor read, reads it. But the story John told me was, I thought pretty damn crazy because he had years earlier discovered via advertisement in the local paper in the city that he lived I think it was under a head right?It something where it was like very weird language and went in and it was probably a place where you could buy bongs and stuff. and he wound up in this dungeon and he had, I guess what you'd call i, this is, I must admit, this is where my expertise sort of, sort of starts to falter But he had what he would [01:07:00] describe I think it's a pain session.Probably he's restrained. Probably somebody's whipping him. There's a safe word is experiencing things that he hasn't experienced before. And what he discovers about himself through, over the years, many such sessions is that, um, he has these different kind of sexual tastes and sexual predilections and one thing that he discovered about himself is that only in these kinds of sessions where he has a safe word where there is a professional there who is, assume, just, you I don't know, whipping him or, or whatever's going on. He can tap out of that.It's such a cathartic environment for him. He can't cry as an adult.And I think there's a lot of men who would be like, if you ask them, when was the last time you cried to be like, I'm not, I couldn't tell you.He said only in those kinds of sessions or when he can access the part of himself that feels safe emotionally to release these [01:08:00] big cathartic cries.And during the course of reporting when I'm kind of, he and I are messaging each other and we're trying to find a time when we can talk, he says, at one point we were supposed to meet at one point. He says he says, hey my, my dad died. I have to cancel. so sorry. We'll reschedule.When we talked again. He mentioned this about the crime. And he said, look as my, my dad just died. by then, it had been a couple of weeks, I think. And he said, I haven't cried about that yet, but I have a pain session and I'm looking forward to a really big cry.Man, this is wild s**t. This is a guy who I think if, not to not to cast, there are people, there are people in this country who would say that's despicable. You shouldn't be able to advertise for this stuff. There shouldn't be dungeons There should be a place where a man gets like, tied up and hit with a whip or whatever whatever's on in there.And to them, I'd say like, yo, this is none of [01:09:00] your business, but man, this guy needs to cry about his dad And this is how he's going to access it. and he's to leave it in a much better mood.And I think the world will be on balance a better place this is just the kind of stuff that I, I don't want to be in charge of regulating in other people's lives. I think that is like a such a personal experience between him whoever he's paying for their, their time.And that's just one example. I mean, if you think about that, think about the complexity of what people access about themselves And can enjoy or decide they don't enjoy or whatever is happening through through sex.It's, it's kind of kind of wild to think that you know better in every case than a guy who's making those choices for himself. Like, my perspective I'm pretty, speaking of I'm pretty, I'm pretty lousy fair about that sort of thing. [01:10:00] Right? Like Right. If that's your, if that's your jam, like, I want you to have access to it, I hope you tip well at the end of it.I have friends who have really made livings for parts of their lives doing sex work, and I think that's, that is a mostly, actually weirdly healthy economy for people to engage in within boundaries, and And I, it would be so weird to me to take that away from him because I just, it could, because it weirds me out or gives me the icks. Like, that's not my business.Like, that's not my, I'll do you, man. I'll do me. I'll do you.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, the other thing about this though, is, I think You know, people who again, like of this sort of squishy, moderate person who doesn't agree with the Christian right, but they kind of feel that, these people are icky they make me uncomfortable. What, and what they don't understand you ally with the Christian, right, not only are they going [01:11:00] to abolish the sex dungeon or the, the adult ads. They're also going to get rid of psychotherapy because they hate that also.They want their one size fits all agenda for you also. And that's why they, they have to be put in a box and not let out because they, they will impose their viewpoint.Look, because again, like, the rest of us, it doesn't affect us if somebody, wants to go to some pastor and say, you know, be Ned Flanders, and say I feel like I sinned because I saw a woman on a and I feel bad about it.Like that's if that's your thing. Look, hey, it. But the rest of us will not be put in that box with you. Like you can go put yourself in there, but that's a kink. You need to understand. And these guys. Yeah,and this is not an exaggeration because like in the state of, of Iowa, for instance, right now, the [01:12:00] radical Republican legislators there are trying to replace school counselors children with their psychological and emotional needs. They're trying, they're replacing them with completely untrained pastors. And this is a that they want and Republicans nationwide, they will do this if people let them like that. You might not like the sex ads or, the adult entertainment or whatever, but they're the frontier keeping you away from these people controlling your life.Like that's the reality.EIFLING: I think there is some of that. Yeah, that recognition needs to happen, which is, um, look, going to a dungeon, getting whipped, having a good cry. That's not, that's not my scene. But if I were to take the position that, that, gave, that made me feel a little, a little icky. And I, I don't mind if, if you crack down on that, right?[01:13:00] Yeah. The line like that, that's, that slope. It is slippery. Like it go and it goes a long way. there are just certain matters that our best left to people who, people who are living those lives and, and have that experience.I, I grew up in a religious part of the country and I in Northwest Arkansas and sort of, sort of developed a a bit of skepticism and hostility even at times to the Christian position on these things.But it was. But it was at the time it was, it was very separate, right? There were churches in There were certainly religious organizations and institutions viewpoints on things, but we didn't have to pray in school. I didn't have to go. I didn't have to go. If I had a problem with school, talk to a right?Like, no, thank you.What does that guy? No, I I don't, I want to, that's not what that, that's not what that's there for. What is there for that is there's a church, there's a place you can go and do [01:14:00] And and I do think it is, yeah, I think it's, it's a, it's a responsibility of full adults to make good choices based not on how each one individually makes, makes us feel for ourselves, but to consider human experience and make sure that people's different needs and different inclinations can met safely and, and responsibly, right?I mean, that's it seems really easy you it down to that, but then you think, oh, there just some other people who would really rather they in charge of your life than you.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right.ConclusionWell, so in terms of the two subjects of the podcast they had a mistrial in 2022, what's the status of their situation?EIFLING: Well, not to spoil the podcast, but so we did, this was, this was a we worked on this show. Really for four [01:15:00] years, right? We, from the time we started, these guys were arrested in 2018. Big news at the time.And it in 2020, kind of everybody's in lockdown and trying to come up with ideas of things to do. We got Trevor Aaronson, Michael Mooney and me got and said, We should do this. We should do this show, right? We should do this podcast.We should do the full story of what's happening with Backpage at the time. Yes, there was this trial scheduled that kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and eventually happened in 2022.We didn't yet have we didn't yet have a deal or no, sorry, 2021. We didn't yet have a deal to do the podcast and I was losing my mind. I was like, God, if only we'd been quicker, if this were easier, if we just had, if we all worked at vice or something, we could be doing this, but we, we didn't, we're all independent and this was things move slow,but it was a very quick mistrial and it was a mistrial for reasons that I think are very consistent with a lot of the rest of the show. Essentially the government [01:16:00] was making repeated insinuations that there was a child sex trafficking angle or a sex trafficking angle to the case. The government brought against Lacey and Larkin.In fact, there really wasn't like that wasn't those weren't the charges. It was a lot of what was discussed in public, but those weren't in the charges.And so the judge, after only week or two of testimony, pulled the plug and basically said, Look, the jury's been tainted. This come up too much. It's a mistrial for us. That was great because we weren't making the show yet. So we finally, in 2022, we make our deal with audible.And so, I think there's a, there, no matter where you are with him personally, and we talked to people who do not these guys, if you listen to the show, plenty of people in there who did not, who were not fans of Lacey and Larkin would is still a tragic ending for two people who, absolutely changed the course of American journalism, changed the course of American history.And it is a, it's a [01:17:00] dark conclusion for for a business and so many of us led and have so many good memories out of and did amazing work from. But yeah, the, the two of them mean, look, we'll see.Lacey's strong, and I don't know what kind of sense he's going to get there's a really good chance that when he comes out, he will still be as much, piss and vinegar as he always has been. And and I don't want to, I don't want to say that his, his chapter is yet finished, but but from what we cover in the show, it's, it's pointing to a hard landing for sure.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, this is it's been a great conversation, Sam. Um, So for people who want to check it out they should they can get on audible. right?EIFLING: Yeah. to audible. You can the shortest way to get there is just audible. com slash hold fast one word it is a subscription service. Podcasting's wild but audible Audible keeps its, its originals close to the vest. So you do have to subscribe. I have been subscribing for a couple of years because I [01:18:00] wanted to get familiar with platform, but there are certainly, if you just like type in Audible, they're free trials. There's like 99 cents for three months. If you're a first timer, it connects to your Amazon account. It's pretty easy to get on there and listen to it. If you want, you can do this one in a day if you are really so inclined, but yeah, I suggest checking it out if this is at all interesting. Because I think we made a hell of a show, frankly. I worked with some really talented people and we poured a gazillion hours into it. We had access that we would not have in any world had if we had not worked at the companies years and years ago and been welcomed into the homes of guys facing federal trial.I think they thought we would give them a fair shake. And I think we did. And it's certainly, I think the response we've gotten from the show so far from people in the media has been really positive. So I feel very comfortable recommending it to just go for a ride.I mean, [01:19:00] if I say it's a show about the alternative press, like I'm sure everybody would fall asleep, but it's about that and sex, power, drugs, guns, and just some crazy stories that if they had not appeared in print, you would not believe they happened. I'll put it that way.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that is an accurate summation of it. So for people who want to follow you on social media, why don't you spell your last name for them?EIFLING: Yeah, sure. Last name is Eifling. E I F L I N G. First name Sam. And I think I never really got more creative than just having a weird last name online. Pretty easy to find on that, all social handles. But, uh, yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. This has been a fun conversation.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the discussion. If you want to get more, you can go to theoryofchange.show where you can get the video, audio and transcript of all the episodes. And if you are a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support. [01:20:00] You have unlimited access to all of the content.And you can also visit us over at flux.community. Theory of Change is part of the Flux media network. So go there and check us out. We got other podcasts and articles about politics, religion, media, and society and how they all intersect. I appreciate everybody supporting us. Tell your friends, tell your family, hell tell people you don't like about Theory of Change and Flux. I really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I will 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