Category: podcast

I recently wrote a piece about political polarization for the site, The Liberal Patriot, titled “It’s all the other side’s fault.” That piece included some ideas I think are very important for understanding toxic conflict, but that are rarely discussed. For example, I think group differences are an important aspect of conflict; groups in conflict will always have various differences, and those differences mean that rage and fear will manifest in very different ways. These differences make it easy for people in both groups to find bad or extreme aspects about the quote “other side” that aren’t present for their own side. This in turn aids people in both groups in finding what seems like compelling, persuasive evidence that the toxic conflict they’re in is “all the other side’s fault.” No matter what your politics are, I think it’s important to understand conflict dynamics; when we lack a good understanding of how conflict works, we’ll tend to act in ways that further inflame and amplify the conflict — ironically, we’ll often act in ways that give more power and strength to our most angry and contemptuous opponents. 

You can find The Liberal Patriot at liberalpatriot.com. This piece of mine was published September 19th 2025. If this topic interests you, you might like checking out that piece because it has quite a few resources linked from it. Here is the episode:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube

What if your consciousness, your self-awareness, isn’t unique at all—but the very same “I” that exists in everyone, everywhere? What if you and I—and everyone—are essentially the same person? In this episode, I talk with Joe Kern, author of “The Odds of Existing: On Open Individualism and the Illusion of Death” about Open Individualism: the radical view that there is only a single subject of consciousness, which is shared by all aware beings. Put another way: instead of seeing your odds of existing—your odds of being self-aware at this moment—as being extremely low, it’s a view of your existence as inevitable, because wherever there is a conscious being, your awareness must be present.

Joe and I explore the logic of this idea, how it challenges our assumptions about identity and existence, common objections to the idea, and what it implies about death. Other topics discussed: religion, the idea of souls, free will, and the multiverse. Joe’s website is at applebutterdreams.wordpress.com. 

Episode links:

• YouTube (includes video)
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Resources mentioned in this talk, or related/recommended: 

• Joe Kern’s website, featuring his book The Odds of Existing: On Open Individualism and the Illusion of Death
  • His posts on the TV show Severence
• Wikipedia entry on Open Individualism
• Arnold Zuboff’s paper One Self: The Logic of Experience, and associated reddit thread
  • Zuboff’s Ask-me-anything on Reddit
• Daniel Kolak’s book I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations of Global Ethics
  • A reddit thread about that book
• Derek Parfit’s famous book Reasons and Persons, which contains ideas and thought experiments often referenced in work on consciousness and Open Individualism 
• Iacopo Vettori’s work on Open Individualism
• The site of Mineta Oliver (née Jurášková), a.k.a. Edralis, where she writes about what she calls “Awareness Monism”
• Related concept: Wikipedia entry for the “vertiginous question,” aka, “Why am I me and not someone else?”
  • Reddit thread on the vertiginous question 

An episode of mine: What it’s like to live without a belief in free will

TRANSCRIPT

(All transcripts will contain errors)

Zach Elwood: What if I told you there are some very smart people who believe that every person who exists, who has ever existed, is essentially the same person? If you aren’t already familiar with this concept, your instinct is probably to dismiss this as a crazy idea. That was my reaction when I first heard about the idea. But the more I delved into this idea, and read the logical and philosophical arguments for it, the more I came to see that this wasn’t some kooky New Age type idea. It’s an idea with a lot of logical points supporting it, and it’s an idea that resolves a lot of the perplexing and confusing aspects of consciousness and existence that many thinkers have puzzled over. It also happens to dovetail with ideas about consciousness found in Buddhist thought. 

This idea goes by different names. The most common name for this idea is Open Individualism, coined by Daniel Kolak, who is perhaps the person most well known for this idea. He’s a philosopher and the author of a book titled I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics. Another name for this idea is Universalism, coined by Arnold Zuboff, who is also well known for promoting this view. Arnold is known for a 1990 paper on this topic titled “One Self: The Logic of Experience.” He also has a book coming out titled “Finding Myself: BEYOND THE FALSE BOUNDARIES OF PERSONAL IDENTITY.” 

I’ll read from the foreword of that book, written by the well known philosopher Thomas Nagel: 

Zuboff proposes and defends with creative philosophical arguments a radically original conception of the mind, according to which the distinction between selves – between me and you, for example – is an illusion. There is only one subject of consciousness; it is the subject of all consciousness, and it is equivalent to the first-person immediacy shared by all conscious experience. The separate bundles of experience in the lives of distinct conscious organisms do not have separate subjects, but share a universal quality of subjective immediacy, which it is easy for each of us to mistake for a unique individual “I” in our own case. 

End quote 

So that’s a pretty succinct summary of what the idea is about, although of course if this idea is new to you, there will be much more to say before you grasp it. 

Nagel goes on to say: 

Both the conclusion and the argument will certainly seem incredible, even outrageous, to many readers, but the whole is presented with such care and skill that it should be regarded as an important contribution even by those who are not persuaded. The relation of the mind to the world is so mysterious that it is not philosophically reasonable to dismiss any view, however radical, out of hand.  

End quote 

I wanted to start out emphasizing that there are some serious and respected thinkers who explore and believe this idea, to help show that it is far less kooky than you may at first be inclined to suppose. Thinking it’s kooky is entirely natural; paradigm-shifting views will all sound pretty kooky at first; they may even strike us as threatening and angering, too, in various ways.   

In this episode, I’ll talk to Joe Kern, who writes about Open Individualism on his blog, and in his book The Odds of Existing. Joe is not as well known as the philosophers I’ve mentioned, but he has been thinking about these ideas for a long time, and I think he has some strong and I think highly accessible writings on this topic. If you’re a fan of the TV show Severance, you can find some pieces by Joe that tie in Severance to Open Individualism. You can find Joe’s site at https://applebutterdreams.wordpress.com. Also, you can get a free copy of Joe’s book on his site. 

Joe’s work has focused on what I see as a strong angle of attack for demonstrating this idea to people. In the quote ”normal” view of what we are as people, many people see their own existence, their sense of being present in the world, of “being here now,” as something that happened against all odds; as something hugely improbable and unlikely. In this view of things, some unthinkably huge number of factors had to align just right for you — your sense of awareness, your current consciousness — to have existed. Often, this is imagined as maybe the right egg and the right sperm coming together in just the right way at the right time to produce you: the consciousness listening to these words right now. 

But what exactly were the factors that led to producing your current self-consciousness? If it was related to the egg and the sperm combining in just the right way, does this mean that if the egg and the sperm had been completely the same, the same material, but there’d been a slightly different few molecules in the egg or the sperm, you’d be an entirely different you hearing this? A different self? Or if the same egg and sperm were combined, just a little bit later, you’d be a different person? How exactly would all these factors work? And would that view of things mean that there are an infinite number of first-person perspectives waiting in the wings, and if something slightly shifts, an entirely different first-person perspective manifests? 

And, related to this, does this mean if something had gone slightly differently in your past, like your parents moving to another country, that that version of you would still have the same sense of self; that it’d still be you, the person hearing these words now, present in that other version of you? In what way is that other, parallel-universe version of yourself any different than just another person, a person in another body, leading an entirely different life? 

In Joe’s book, he walks through the logic of these things and shows that it doesn’t make sense to think of our inner consciousness as improbable. When you think deeply about it, there are no logical factors to find that could be seen to explain why you would have a sense that “you are here” in this universe but, in a slightly different universe, have an entirely different “I” experience. Instead of seeing our first-person experience as improbable, it makes more sense to see our first-person experience as inevitable: that anywhere there is a conscious entity, that same “I am here” sensation will exist; in other words, you will exist wherever a conscious being exists. And this means that we are all manifestations of the same first-person experience; the same I. 

Now you may be thinking of various objections to this; I know I did. But rest assured that the people thinking about these things have talked about your objections and have made strong responses to them. For example, you may be thinking, “Any sentient creature that arises in the universe, no matter how improbable its existence is, must always develop and have its own sense of self; that is not mysterious at all” Joe and I talk about that in our talk, along with other objections. 

I’ll say that, as far as I know, this is the first recorded conversation about Open Individualism. At least neither Joe nor I were aware of another one. I think it’s extremely hard to talk about these ideas. Our language, which relies on a “normal” paradigm of what people are, isn’t well suited to the rather unusual and counterintuitive ideas we’re discussing. There are all sorts of ways to get confused, whether when talking about these ideas, or hearing them, and especially if you’re new to them. One area of confusion is the difference between the content of someone’s life — someone’s traits and experiences, what’s in their brains — and the first-person, “I am here” sensation; the I feeling, or pure awareness – what Joe will refer to as the empty self. It’s easy for us to conflate and confuse these two dimensions; we’re used to thinking about both concepts when we talk about ourselves and about what it means to be a person. But for the purposes of this talk, you should try to separate the content of people’s lives from what we’re talking about: which is simply the first-person awareness; the sense that “I exist right now.”

I mention the difficulty of talking about these topics so that, if at some point in this talk you think Joe or I aren’t being articulate, I hope you aren’t turned off from considering this idea. ** Joe and I were both worried about this; Joe more than I because he has a book on it, and is afraid of representing Open Individualism badly. I think Joe does a good job, and I think I do an okay job, but I just wanted to emphasize the difficulty of talking about this topic, and I hope if you are a bit intrigued you’ll check out the resources and writings on this. On my website behavior-podcast.com, on the page for this episode, I’ll include links to resources by the people who have written about this concept, and include links to some interesting reddit threads about it. 

Along the way in this talk, Joe and I discuss religion, the idea of souls, fear of death and annihilation, existentialism, free will, Daniel Dennett, Derek Parfitt, and the multiverse.  

Okay here’s the talk with Joe Kern…

Zach: Okay. Hi Joe, thanks for joining me.

Zach: Hi Joe, thanks for joining me.

Joe: Oh, thank you. It’s really great to be here.

Zach: It’s a pleasure to talk to myself about these ideas. You know, talk to… Sorry, that was a really bad attempt at some open individualism humor. Talking to myself. I could have planned that joke out a little bit better. [chuckles]

Joe: Oh yeah yeah. That’s all right. I think everybody that comes to this makes a few of those jokes at the beginning, and then everybody just stops right away. They’re like, “This isn’t going to go any further. That’s good enough.”

Zach: It’s definitely too niche a subject to joke around. Nobody will know what you’re talking about. Maybe we could start with how… I’m curious how you found yourself in such a niche area. How did you find yourself to this area?

Joe: Yeah, it was entirely my own obsession, and not finding the answers in existing philosophy or theories. And so I just kind of found my way to my own answer. The question I was trying to answer was, when I was young, I grew up a Christian. You could call it fundamentalist, evangelical. My family was quite thoughtful and intellectual, so I don’t want to give the impression of the stereotype of those words. But I was a Christian, I believed in heaven and hell, I believed I had a soul or was a soul, and that when I died, that soul was going to go to heaven. And that mostly seemed all well and good to me. Then I went to a Christian college, started out even as a Bible major, intending to go into the ministry like my grandfather did. And then toward the end of my college—uh, took me six years to do undergrad—the last two years, I started to doubt my faith. The first seeds of doubt were really about the social issues like homosexuality and women being allowed to speak and lead in church. I just found myself, after a time, not being able to really accept those teachings anymore. I did it first, but then I was like, “Nah, it doesn’t seem right.”

So, I kind of lost my faith over those issues. Once I realized I could make my own choices about that—I just didn’t believe homosexuality was wrong, and so I made that choice. Whatever the Bible said, I made that choice. Once I made that choice, I realized I was free to choose about everything; what facts I believed and what morality I believed. So, that kind of led to my loss of faith. But along with the loss of faith, I lost the belief in heaven and a soul, and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like the idea of annihilation and death. It just terrified me. I’ve been speaking to people about this for 20 years. A lot of people have different things that they fear in death. So, I understand now that my concern isn’t the only concern that people have, but this was my concern. Just ceasing to exist. Not being anywhere ever, for all eternity. It’s really uncanny. It’s hard to even fathom, in the same way that it’s hard to fathom what it was like not existing before you were born. Right? Both of those things…non-existence is completely hard to fathom and also kind of terrifying. 

I was thinking about this and… Let’s see, what happened next? Yeah, I didn’t like that idea. I was kind of holding on to the idea that I might still be a soul even if I didn’t believe in God, or specifically the Christian God or something that might be like a universal soul or something. I was holding on to that idea. And then I was doing more reading and got more into science. Actually, I was a science education major in college, and I was still kind of doubting evolution. Even after I stopped being a Christian, I still doubted evolution a bit. And I met a friend who turned me on to Richard Dawkins, and he started me on…have you read Dawkins?

Zach: Yeah, and you also quote some Dawkins in your book. Right?

Joe: Yeah, that’s right. Have you read The Selfish Gene?

Zach: I have not. No.

Joe: You have not. Okay. I started out with Climbing Mount Improbable, which is a great underrated book of his. It convinced me evolution was true. And then my friend had me read The Selfish Gene, which I read a few years later. It absolutely devastated me. The Selfish Gene really devastated my worldview. I was still holding on to wanting to believe in a soul, and I read The Selfish Gene and it’s this whole theory about how the replicator molecules are the entire reason that any life exists, you know? It started out as just bare replicator molecules. You read chapter two of The Selfish Gene, which I recommend to everybody; it’s a short mind-blowing chapter. So, just these bare replicator molecules. It’s like an algorithmic thing. Just the fact that the molecule that replicates itself more than the others is more successful. It’s like a tautology. It’s like saying that the person that runs fastest in the race wins the race—gets there first. The molecule that replicates itself more has more copies of itself around. And that process, according to Dawkins, which I agree with—I believe—is the entire reason that life exists, including human beings. He ends that chapter two, you know, he uses this contentious language, “We are the robots. Inside of us are the replicator molecules and we are the robots doing their bidding.”

Zach: We’re the carrier for these things that are…

Joe: Exactly. And so I ended that book just like, “Oh, that’s what my existence is! Evolution, this is my existence. This is why I exist. It’s just because of this.” I was depressed for a couple of days, and I was thinking about it, and then I sort of launched back to a thought. I remember I had this thought when I was five years old. I remember I looked over at my brother sitting in the kitchen as he was talking to my mother, and it just struck me all of a sudden, like, “Why is he him and I am me? Why not the other way around? Why am I not him and him me? Or why was I born as this person and not somebody else?” And I started to think maybe there’s a key in that thought to why this… Even though I totally agree with Dawkins’ theory of evolution—selfish gene theory—that thought grabbed me as something like-

Zach: The mystery.

Joe: Yeah, the mystery. The way I formulated it to myself was, evolution reaches down through the eons and creates this genetic person that becomes you. That explains why the human being Joe Kern exists, but it doesn’t explain why I exist. It doesn’t explain why I-

Zach: The ‘I’. The ‘I’ feeling.

Joe: Yeah. You could have a million or infinite number of copies of this human being with the same DNA that’s not me, and this one’s me. And so the thought I gave myself at the time—because, again, I was worried about annihilation and death, and I wanted to believe I was a soul—was, “how do I know I will cease to exist when I die, when I don’t know what caused me to exist in the first place?” So, I held on to that. Then I started doing research. I started reading about consciousness, I read… First was Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind, and then Dennett, his biggest critic, Consciousness Explained. And then after that came Parfit. I found Parfit through Dennett. He quoted him at the end. I’ve read a bunch of other things since then, but those are still the big three in my mind.

So I spent about five years thinking I was writing a theory about the soul, you know, trying to prove that the soul must exist because of this uncanny, strange thought, like, “Why am I me and not somebody else? Evolution doesn’t explain why I exist.” After reading a lot about consciousness and personal identity, which is what Parfit wrote about, I decided I really can’t believe in the soul anymore, either. That was really depressing, another depressing moment, and yet I still had these same thoughts about…

Zach: There’s still something mysterious and wild going on here.

Joe: Yeah. Why do I exist? Souls, I think, are actually conceptually incoherent. And not everybody who believes in open individualism thinks this. This is my thought. I have specific reasons for thinking that, but I feel like souls are conceptually incoherent, and Dennett and Parfit both were big parts of me just being inundated by the evidence against souls, spirits, and that kind of thing. So I decided I just can’t believe that anymore. And then again, I had a few—I don’t know, it could have been longer than a few days—moments of depression and time of depression, like, “Oh man, not only am I not a soul anymore, but what I’ve been working on for these five years or whatever and so excited about might be nothing.” And then the thought just popped into my head—what I now call open individualism, I hadn’t thought of it before—and I was like, “What if I am not just me, but all people?” I still talk to myself about it this way, and the way I first thought of it was like a materialist reincarnation. Reincarnation without souls; the materialist, physicalist, naturalist universe but my life doesn’t end now. When Joe Kern dies, ‘I’ become other people.

That flooded into my mind and I had a few moments—and this is interesting, other people that have come to open individualism have talked about having the same kind of mystical-almost experience. The thought flooded into my mind, and I had some days of just sitting in a park looking at an ant and just being like, “Oh, I’m that ant.” You know, that kind of thing. I had the thoughts and then I was like, “I can’t think that, that’s ridiculous. I’m a hard-line materialist now. That’s a ridiculous New-Agey kind of thought. I can’t think that thought.” But then I started to think of the kind of arguments that I could make that would be strict materialist analytic philosophy, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, arguments. That’s what the sorites argument in the fourth chapter of the book is. And then I was like, “Oh, wow!” So I talked myself into it, spent a couple of years writing, and convinced myself that, yeah, this is absolutely true.

Now, at the time, I didn’t know anybody else who believed this. I thought it’s surely possible. I hadn’t known anybody else so, but it did feel like a discovery that I had made myself and I’d written my entire argument for it, and only after that did I discover—when I published a first draft of it—I found someone who’s now a friend of mine, Iacopo Vettori, who had also written some of his own ideas about open individualism. He told me that it’s called open individualism, this philosopher named Daniel Kolak has coined this term. He invited me to a Facebook group, and then that’s… So yeah, it started out as me finding it on my own and then I found other people who believed it who came at it from their own different angles.

Zach: I think what drives, in general, the interest in what we are, you know, what drives people like Parfit to write his book, or you to go down that path, that fear or that interest in what we are and what happens to us… I’ll say, too, what drove me to be really interested in this was this fear of not just death, because I feel like that didn’t directly bother me, but I started getting these thoughts about, “Oh, what if I am one of these series people? What if I’m just flashing in and out of existence?” That kind of idea about the self, right? The empty individualism kind of ideas. It felt to me like an advanced fear of death. It was, like, “This is even worse than the fear of death. I’m dying every second, theoretically.” Right? So just to say, I think a lot of us are led down these paths by the interest and the fear of, will we continue existing, or what happens to us in the next moment or when we die, or whatever it is.

Joe: When did you first have that thought? Because you mentioned that before in your notes. That was a big moment for you, that thought of just dying every second. Did you read that in Parfit and that’s what gave you the idea?

Zach: No. Like a lot of these things, it’s hard to know how it came to be. But I remember 10 plus years ago, I was thinking about these things where I’m like—and I can’t remember if I read it. I must have read some consciousness related stuff that led me down that path probably.

Joe: Have you read Dennett or Chalmers?

Zach: Yeah, I’ve read Dennet. I read Dennet 10 plus years ago, so I’m sure one of those things led me down that path. But it just strikes me that when it comes to all this philosophical work, so much of it is about us thinking about what’s going to happen to us and what are we. It comes down to these existential fears about trying to figure this stuff out to set our own minds at ease.

Joe: It is interesting because there’s some people that have argued for open individualism from an ethical standpoint. And I think this is the direction Kolak comes from. And I know there’s some other people… I think Magnus Vinding, I’m remembering the name, he writes a lot about ethics and he takes open individualism as a reason to believe in a certain ethical idea or certain morality.

Zach: Treating others as yourself. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. And in Kolak, I don’t see anything about… By the way, I told you my whole story, and that should explain why I’m not qualified to talk about anybody else’s ideas about open individualism. I know a bit about it, but I don’t want to speak for anybody because I really know my theory well and I don’t know anybody else’s theories that well. But I can say that I don’t remember seeing anything in Kolak about fear of death or fear of annihilation. He seemed to really be focusing more on, you know… I feel like the ethical consequences of open individualism are pretty obvious. It’s going to make you want to treat everybody as though they’re yourself. You’re just going to treat people better and care more about the wellbeing of all other conscious beings.

Zach: Yeah, you have a pretty good… You’ve been talking about this for a while. I’m curious if you had to give your thirty-second to minute kind of elevator pitch. I think you have a pretty good summary of this on your website, but do you want to talk about… Maybe you can run with that.

Joe: Yeah. So, my brother asked me for an elevator pitch last summer, and I’ve been avoiding talking about this for years because I got tired of hearing myself talk about it. Obviously, we’re recording now so this is a good time to do it again. But yeah, just kind of ruining parties and things, and cornering people. But my brother asked me and I demurred, and then he asked me again and I’m like, “All right.” And I heard myself speaking for like five minutes straight and just talking a big jumble of twisty stuff that I know he didn’t understand, and as it’s going on, I’m thinking, “See, this is why I don’t like talking about it.” Because I don’t know how to explain everything. The point is I don’t know how to explain everything about my argument it quickly. But that conversation made me think, “Okay, he’s right. I should have an elevator pitch.” 

So I think I can come at it from three angles. Number one, you can start with the conclusion. Open individualism is the idea that we are all one self. There’s not a new self created at the birth of a human being or the coming into consciousness of a human being. We’re all the same self. And so I still stick to my original idea about it—materialist reincarnation. When you die, you become other people. You’re eventually all other people. There’s a science fiction story called “The Egg” by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian. He has this short story that became viral back in 2010; somebody made a comic about it. It’s that same idea and a lot of people might know that. Andy Weir’s idea is that you’re a soul and God is pushing you toward further improvement. You’re a soul that is all conscious beings through time, eventuality. You’re all conscious beings and God is pushing you to perfection. So my version of open individualism: no God, no soul. You are all other people. There’s not the Buddhist idea of karma or anything. It’s just youare all other people.

So that’s the conclusion. I think a lot of people who believe open individualism won’t like the idea of reincarnation, and that’s fair enough. A lot of people want to talk about “You are all people right now. It’s not like you just jump to other people when you die.” And I think that’s fair enough. But for me, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that idea. I experience myself as traveling through time in one direction, and that’s the only way I can do it. But happy for all the people that can sort of wrap their brain around the idea of you actually just are all people right now. 

Now, that’s the conclusion. For my personal approach to it, there’s two ways I can start with. Number one, I can ask people if they’ve ever had that thought that I had when I was five. You ever wonder, “Why am I me and not somebody else?” There’s a lot more questions you can ask along that same line.

Zach: Like how unlikely it is for me to be here.

Joe: Yeah. The question of, “Why was I even a possibility to exist at the beginning of the universe, rather than not?” Again, the creation of a certain human being with certain DNA from certain parents doesn’t explain that. Because genetically identical people, even if you’re not identical twins split from a zygote, it’s still conceivable that they could exist.

Zach: We should remind people that we’re talking about the ‘I’ feeling. We’re not talking about specific people and traits. We’re talking about the internal feeling of being present and of existing. The ‘I’ feeling. I just wanted to emphasize that.

Joe: Yeah, thanks. I guess there’s another part of this. There’s the perfect doppelgänger thought experiment I do that tries to isolate that ‘I’ feeling, but maybe we can get to that later. So you can start with that question. The thing I find is when I ask people that question, a lot of people have had that thought. And it’s pretty common for young people to have it. I cannot remember who wrote the paper, but there was a book he quoted of… There’s a novel [A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes] where there’s a little girl named Emily, seven or 10, who has the same realization. One day she’s playing and all of the sudden she looks down and it’s like, “Oh, here I am. And now I’m stuck with this now for the rest of my life. What am I doing here now, here?”

Zach: Why am I here? Yeah.

Joe: Yeah, I’m not being articulate about it, the novel was quite good. Yeah, that’s one way I can… It’s not really a pitch in the idea, but telling people what I’m talking about. And a lot of people recognize that idea, like, “Oh yeah, I’ve had that same thought!” That might be a hook to get people into the way I’m thinking. But a lot of people have never had that thought and don’t understand what it’s about. And again, fair enough. So then the third way I might say it is, have you ever thought about what are the odds of you existing? What are the chances of you having come in to exist? People think about this a lot. What are the chances your parents meeting? That one sperm and that one ovum had to join. If it had been any other sperm, you wouldn’t exist. This combination of DNA had to come into existence. That’s another way into it, and you think, “Yeah, boy, I’m really amazed at how long the odds are that I came into existence, and yet I did. That’s shocking and I feel so lucky.” My point is—in everything I’ve written—is that it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t think about the odds of you existing. You might be able to jump ahead and see how open individualism solves that. If you are all people, then you exist, no matter what consciousnesses exists.

Zach: I think the strength of you focusing on that, specifically it’s like when you start thinking about… Because, as you say, most people imagine there’s some factors in the past. All these factors had to align for my ‘I’ feeling to exist right now. All these factors, whether it was when the sperm and the egg met up, or the ancestors, or whatever it is, but then as you break down in your book, it’s like when you actually think through logically, what was the defining thing that would have led to this ‘I’ feeling now? You’re left with an idea that, “Oh, if I had replaced the smallest amount of the egg with a little bit of different matter, would that have led to a completely different ‘I’? And you start breaking down the sorites argument of why would a slight difference in all these factors have led to a completely different ‘I’? You start realizing, “Oh, maybe the most efficient answer is that the ‘I’ that I’m feeling now was inevitable, and if the ‘I’ that I’m feeling now was inevitable, then I am everyone. That’s the logical steps that you walk through. And I really like that approach because I had come at it from different angles and somehow I had never really even thought about the common thought that, “Oh, it’s really rare for me to exist, and all these factors had to align,” which is interesting, because I think in open individualism, you can arrive at these things from different angles by examining different parts. You know, there’s different Parfit-like thought experiments.

I did like your focus because I think that makes it accessible to a lot of people who are like, “Oh, yeah. When you start thinking about it, yeah, why would this specific combination of factors and all these things have led to my specific feeling of ‘I’? It also gets into questions like, if you had moved somewhere else when you were a kid, would you still be the same ‘I’ feeling you are now? It starts breaking up the idea that your ‘I’ feeling is the product of all these factors. And then you start thinking, “Oh, the much more efficient answer is that I am going to always exist wherever there’s a conscious being.” I did like that approach.

Joe: That idea of would I exist if… If I had been adopted by a family in—I’m in Japan now, let’s say South Korea. If I’d been adopted by a family in South Korea right after I was born, raised in South Korea, speaking Korean, and Joe Kern was still alive there then—this body was still alive there then—would I exist as that person? The content of my life would be completely different, but would I exist as that person? My intuition is that, yeah, I’m going to exist. Once that sperm and egg join in the zygote and then it creates a human being, I’m going to be wherever that object and the things that grew from that object are in the world. I’m going to be there. That’s kind of the hook for me. The longer I think about this and think about my approach to it, I realize that that’s my essential hook. It’s like if you believe that you would be in South Korea right now under those circumstances, you believe you’re a completely different person—content, language, everything about your life is completely different, but you still exist. It’s not the same as if you had died right after you were born—then you’d think, “Oh, I wouldn’t exist anywhere. I’d be nobody nowhere.” If you think you’d be in South Korea right now, then my argument, through many steps, is that then you should also believe that you would be anybody else. Even if a different sperm and egg had joined, then you’d be that person. And that leads to open individualism.

Zach: Right, you’re using the instincts that we have about ourselves in different situations to apply to everybody in different situations.

Joe: Some people do not believe that they would be in South Korea right now if that happened. They think that’s a different person. I wouldn’t exist. Maybe they think they wouldn’t exist in the same way that they wouldn’t exist as if they had died when they were young. I think that belief is kind of like empty individualist, but a lot of people don’t know that term and they wouldn’t call themselves that. But yeah, if you don’t believe you’d be in South Korea right now under those circumstances, then my argument will have much less power for you—

Zach: That instinct might not work, but other parts of the argument may work. There are people listening to this who—almost everybody, this will be new to if they made it this far—there’s so many objections that spring up, right? Like the defenses of the normal way of seeing people. One of the objections would be, “How can we be the same people? We’re in different bodies. I have no knowledge or awareness of things happening to people in these other bodies.” I think that’s one key objection, but I think the main overcoming of that objection is there’s lots of things in your own life that you have no memory of or no direct awareness of. Like, you lived when you were a kid or even a year ago, and there’s experiences you had that aren’t really available to you now. So just to say that the various objections that people will bring up, you and other people have addressed in various ways as ways to overcome… Because it is such an outlandish thing to say… 

Joe: It is outlandish.

Zach: …we’re all the same person. Everyone’s like, “What the hell are you talking about?” But I do like to emphasize, people who are curious about this, there’s many people who have worked through the objections. And at the end of the day, it requires a different way to see what we are. But when you think it through, it’s not like a crazy, magical idea. When you actually think it through, it’s like, “Oh, maybe this is just how the world works.”

Joe: I guess it’s not really a factual claim. It’s certainly not an empirical claim. Because it doesn’t really change anything. You know? You die, you die. But it’s like I look at it now… I think when I first thought of it, I thought I had solved all the problems of the world and was like, “Oh, this is just the facts of the world, I need to tell everybody.” Other people have had this experience too. Physicist Freeman Dyson talks about this in his memoir, which I learned from Kolak’s book. But now I think of it as this is an option of a way to think about yourself. It’s not just like a New Agey kind of dream option. If you fancy yourself the kind of person who really likes rigorous, logical, reductive arguments, this is an option. If you have… I’ll say it from my point of view… If you’ve come along this journey of coming to conclude, due to science and philosophy and whatnot, that maybe you’re an atheist now, there’s no God, there are no souls, and you don’t like the idea of annihilation in death, this is a way to think about existence in a different way that can make you less afraid of death.

Zach: I do think it solves so many of the problems of consciousness and self. I was reading Zuboff’s book that he sent me…

Joe: Which book was that, by the way?

Zach: I think it was Finding Myself. I don’t think it’s published yet, maybe.

Joe: Okay.

Zach: But in the intro, he basically says something like, “I think there’s many arguments in favor of open individualism, and basically none in the other ways of thinking about self and identity. I think he makes a compelling point. It just solves so many of the weird paradoxes when you start thinking through the thought experiments and stuff.

Joe: That question I started out with when I was five—why am I me and not somebody else—there’s a term for that. It’s called the vertiginous question.

Zach: Yeah, I was going to mention that.

Joe: Yeah, there’s a Wikipedia page for it so I think that’s what it’s going to be called. I’m fine with that. There’s a philosopher named—I don’t know how to pronounce his name, I think it’s Benj Hellie who coined the term. He wrote a paper so he coined the term. It’s on Wikipedia. I call them the enigmas of existence, in what I’ve written. It’s a far more pretentious name, but it does fit the fact that they’re enigmas. It seems like something that needs a solution. And I found open individualism solves those enigmas. Empty individualism, which is another kind of belief, also solves them. But I don’t know if we want to go… It’s a bit harder to talk about.

Zach: We can mention that briefly, because I kind of feel like it’s two sides of the same coin. And I will say, when you were talking about Parfit, I read Parfit’s Reasons and Persons and I was left with this sense of, yeah, but you’re not really explaining… It didn’t really explain much to me. It almost just explained away things. But it didn’t really explain… And I was kind of left… I think you mentioned it too, where it was an unsatisfying conclusion I thought he had because he basically was saying, “Oh, well, somebody is myself if they’ve got all my attributes. And if I don’t exist anymore, it’s the same…” He basically wouldn’t mind going through the teleporter or being recreated. But that was kind of unsatisfying, because it’s like, in a way that I think open individualism solves more. Because it’s like, “Oh, well, if we’re all the same, then that solves that riddle of like…” Well, yeah, it’s a very unsatisfying thing to say, “Oh, you can destroy me, but recreate me somewhere else.” I’m probably not explaining it well, but it just seemed like I was left wanting more from why he wouldn’t care about being destroyed and recreated somewhere else with all the same attributes, which I think open individualism solves that paradox.

Joe: I really wrestled with Parfit for a long time. He was one of the first things I read early on, and I had a similar reaction to him as with Dawkins’ Selfish Gene. I just found myself bulldozed into being forced to believe a lot of things I didn’t want to believe. I consider The Selfish Gene and the third part of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit to be the two most influential things I’ve ever read, and I agree with almost everything Parfit said. It took me a long time to decide that I felt free enough to disagree with some of the things he said because it’s a masterful book, you know? I think I disagree now with Parfit when he says that… Oh, shoot. I feel like this might be a bit too in the weeds but I guess I’ll push forward. So, Parfit says sometimes identity is indeterminate, but I feel like he equivocates identity with existence. And I read that when I first read it, like, “Oh, sometimes whether or not you exist is indeterminate.” And I just thought, yeeah…

Zach: Yeah, it was something based on if there’s another copy of you or something like that.

Joe: Yeah. I felt like I kind of have to accept this. This guy’s such a great… Like, everything else is so airtight, you know? But I lived with that for a long time, and I think that maybe if people talk about personal identity and then they make that equivalent of existence, I try to separate those two ideas. Parfit concludes personal identity is not what matters, and so maybe we come together on this, like it’s not what matters. And then when he gets into the fourth part, he makes his famous non-identity problem about like the actions we perform now are going to affect who exists in the future, and so there’s an extra element to our moral actions now like around global warming or things like that.

So, I feel like Parfit argues for empty individualism in part three and then reverts to closed individualism in part four with the nonidentity problem. This whole thing I talk about with the odds of existing and everything, that presumes a closed individualist idea of existence. That’s kind of the standard idea that most people have. Like, you know, this human being comes into existence—we now know from a sperm and an ovum—a human being comes into existence, you just exist as that person for that duration, and when that human being dies, you cease to exist. A new self is created at that moment—a new empty self is the term I like to use now—is created at that moment and then it dies and then you’re done. You’re gone forever.

Zach: Yeah, I thought so many things that I was left unsatisfied in Parfit’s book are just made complete sense of with open individualism. But so much of his arguments map over to open individualism. It’s like if he had just looked at it a slightly different way, he would be an open individualist.

Joe: Exactly. I’ll say a few things about that that I do know. Daniel Kolak, in his book I Am You, published in 2004, coined the terms open individualism, empty individualism, and closed individualism. Kolak himself also says empty individualism and open individualism are very close together. They’re both basically true and it’s just a matter of how you think about it. Right?

Zach: Right. Glass half full, glass half empty kind of thing.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. I was looking back at Kolak a couple of days ago trying to prepare for this and I discovered I could not find an actual definition of what Kolak means by empty individualism. As far as I understand it, it’s just whatever Parfit argued for in part three of Reasons and Persons. That’s empty individualism. I take it to be the really austere view that consciousness just comes into existence whenever matter of the appropriate organization comes into existence. In our case, probably we can attribute it to our brains. Consciousness comes into existence when matter organizes. If it just popped into existence right now, you’d have a conscious being for a few moments. You know? That’s kind of what I take empty individualism to be at its ground level. It’s just that idea.

Zach: It’s a bunch of disjointed moments of existence. It’s almost like you could view it as consciousness is an illusion because it’s just a bunch of moments of coming into being. Yeah.

Joe: I guess at ground it is the idea that there’s nothing else to that. There’s like no… Parfit calls it a ‘further fact’ in Reasons and Persons. There’s no further fact to it than that. There’s nothing in the universe that would be a self that continues to exist through time. It’s just consciousness exists in this moment because this brain exists.

Zach: It is a very similar view because it’s… To me, it’s very similar. I can see how similar it is because that’s kind of how I view open individualism, except it’s like the glass half full, glass half empty. As you say in your book, even if that’s true, even if we are a series of disjointed moments of selves or whatever, it’s like we still attain everything we want. What more could you want? You couldn’t imagine another world where all these things…that you wouldn’t be getting what you wanted out of. So even if the empty individualism or open individualism of us being a bunch of series of moments, we’re still getting what we want. Right?

Joe: Yeah. Yeah, the thing you want obtains. I came through reading Parfit, again had a period of depression of how austere that is. But at the end of the day, you read his theory and then at the end of the day you think, “Wait, what have I lost? I still have everything that I always thought I had in existence. I still exist now.” I retreat to the Cartesianism of—Descartes—of the one thing I can’t doubt is that I exist right now. I didn’t lose that. I also didn’t lose the fact that, to me, I still existed when I was five. I have memories when I was five. I existed then. I haven’t lost anything. And again, this is how empty individualism and open individualism are basically two ways of looking at the same set of facts. They’re not really in conflict, they’re just a matter of interpretation. 

Oh, one thing I wanted to say is that Kolak’s argument for open individualism, Parfit read the manuscript, and provided a bunch of comments on it. I don’t know what those comments were—

Zach: They’d be cool to see.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. Maybe Parfit thought the same thing. He didn’t tell Kolak to change the whole book, it’s garbage, you know? So maybe Parfit thought the same thing. Like, this is a different way of looking at the same thing that I argue for. I always wonder if Parfit accepted the label empty individualist for himself, or if he just kind of like…

Zach: Mmmm. Like so many of these philosophical things, it’s like life in general, it’s so easy to take the same idea and look at it very depressingly or look at it positively. I feel like that’s true for so many ideas in general, and it’s like in this case, it definitely seems to be the case where it’s like, yeah, you could use it to be an extremely depressing stark view of the world. But as you argue in your book, everything is still there that we want there to be there in terms of our sense of self seeming to continue over time and us having memories and seeming to be a person. So… Oh, go ahead.

Joe: This thing you talked about of being… I learned it from part three of Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit’s book, which, by the way, anybody can read, I think. It doesn’t require any prior philosophical knowledge. You don’t even have to read the first two parts of the book, which are about ethics, I think. I’ve never read them. Part three, anybody can read that if you’ve read any kind of popular science or something. Anyway, what I want to say is I found that idea that you mentioned earlier about becoming a new person every minute or every second or whatever. I found that in Parfit, and that’s one of the arguments that made me—

Zach: The series person. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah, the series person. That’s one of the arguments that lessened my ability to believe in the soul—kind of dropped my credence for belief in the soul. Because if you think about it all happening once every day when you go to sleep, you might be scared. By the way, did you read chapter five of my book? It’s not included in the main manuscript; it’s an addition. It’s okay if you didn’t. It’s fine.

Zach: I may have, I can’t remember.

Joe: Okay. It’s a separate document.

Zach: I think I might have read that. Yeah.

Joe: Okay, I just reread it. I hadn’t read it in years. I just reread it and didn’t even remember—a great example of this—I didn’t remember writing it. I didn’t remember having these thoughts, and I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, this makes sense.” So if your body’s going to be disillusioned… Disillusioned? Dissolved. No, that’s macabre.

Zach: Destroyed.

Joe: Yeah, destroyed in your sleep and a brand new body that’s the exact same mental content and exactly the same is going to wake up in the morning… You know, you think, “Well, if this body is destroyed, I’m going to die, and it’ll be a different person in the morning,” then you think, “Well, boy, that might be really scary.” But then if you crank the time span down to, what if that’s what happens every second? Or what if me and you—this is back to the thought about my brother, why am I me and not him—what if our empty self—empty self, by the way, is just the raw point of view, not including content like the content of your mind. We have pretty good evidence that the entire content of our minds are physically embodied in our brains. But we still have this idea of an empty self. And so what if our empty selves just swapped every second, would you notice that? If you think it will happen every hour, you might think, “Oh, I’d notice that. I’m going to be over there for that hour. I’m going to be over there where you are for that hour, and you’re going to be over here. And then in another hour, I’m going to come back over here. I’m going to have all to have all the content of your mind. I’m going to think I’m you at that moment. And then when I come back here, I’m going to think I’m me, but I’m going to be here and not there.” But then you think about what if that happened every second, or every 10th of a second, or every microsecond, you would just experience being this human being at that point. If it’s changing that often. And then you realize, “Well…” Yeah. So, what have you lost if you think about… It’s what you were talking about with Parfit: what have you really lost when you accept everything? You still have everything you thought you had in the first place.

Zach: Yeah, I did read that section of your book. Actually, I had pasted a part of that section into something as a good explanation. But I was going to say when I was talking about the fears I had where I was laying awake at 3:00 in the morning, imagining myself flashing in and out of existence every moment and a new self being created, I came to see that when I’m reading more about open individualism and your work too. I came to see that as, “Well, it’s kind of ridiculous to imagine all of these different selves waiting in the wings to be created and a new self coming into existence every moment.” Open individualism makes more sense there because it’s like, well, it’s much more efficient explanation to just have them all be the same self coming into existence. Right? And if that’s true for me in that scenario, then that would be the same self coming into existence for other people. That made a lot more sense of my fears and it put my fears in context of like… Well, a), I always thought your point was true: Regardless of all these fears, everything still attains for me. I still perceive myself as a persistent being over time, I still have these memories, etc, etc. So, worrying too much about it is kind of… No matter what the truth is, too much worry is unproductive. Open individualism did make a lot of sense to me because when it came to the efficiency of just imagining all this string of new selves coming into being is kind of silly when you think about it. It’s related to your points in your work of imagining, like, “Oh, if the sperm had slightly connected in a different way, a new self would have come into being. Where are all these selves coming from?”

Joe: Where are all these selves coming from, yeah.

Zach: Where’s this repository? Some people would be like, “Well, those are the souls waiting to come into existence.” But leaving aside those kind of views, yeah.

Joe: My ultimate knockdown argument, for myself, against… why I couldn’t believe in the soul anymore—this was a big part of it, this series-person thing that’s like, what are all these souls coming into existence? And what difference would it make? But the thing for me was I had this thought—and I’ve told this to people several times over the years, I don’t know if anybody’s ever understood what I’m trying to say, but I still think it’s a good thought—it’s like, if you can imagine God creating souls, and he’s going to create you, he’s going to create Joe Kern, he’s going to create me… What could he be thinking about in order to create a soul that is me rather than someone else? If you take out all the characteristics of me, you know, the genes, the whatever, the content of my mind—

Zach: Just the sense of self.

Joe: Yeah. From an objective standpoint, to somebody outside, what could he think about to create the self that was just me and nobody else? You know? That’s my…

Zach: Yeah, what would it be? There’s nothing distinguishing. It’s just the feeling of ‘I am here.’ Yeah, right.

Joe: And when you talk about an infinite number of possible selves coming into existence, it brings that thought out starkly. There’s no end to the number of ‘I’s. If you believe the closed individualist idea that we’re each separate selves that come into existence and then cease to exist, then there’s no end to the number of those that could be created.

Zach: I think another common objection for people that are new to these ideas and haven’t looked into it much, a common objection to this is basically “you guys are overthinking it. Every creature that comes into existence will necessarily have their own subjective sense of ‘I’, their own sense of self.” I think that’s the most common objection. And I see that when it comes to the vertiginous question threads online, people are like, “You guys don’t get it. There’s no mystery. When there’s an entity that comes into being, it has its own sense of self, and there’s nothing mysterious about it.” I have my own thought and I can tell it, but I’m curious if you want to give a thought about that.

Joe: Yeah, I think that’s the most cogent criticism of my idea of open individualism, and it’s the one I’ve wrestled with the most, kind of led me to a lot of the more in-the-weeds arguments that I’ve made. Chapter three of the book would be that section. I come back to using that idea of, if you had been raised in South Korea, would you be there now? I can’t really reconstruct my argument off the top of my head, but every time I reread it, I become reconvinced. So I think it must be good. [chuckles] Have you seen the TV show Severance?

Zach: Yeah.

Joe: Okay, love that show. Just watched it for the first time two months ago and it’s got me rethinking my whole theory more than anything has in a long time. I still believe my conclusions, but it’s got me rethinking it. And I’ve written some blog posts about my reactions to the show Severance. Anybody who’s seen Severance can read those blog posts, and it’s probably the best introduction I’ve written to the way I think about these issues. 

Zach: I read some of that, yeah.

Joe: If you haven’t seen Severance, you can read them, but I don’t recommend it because I love the show so much and I don’t want to spoil any of it. So just watch the first three episodes of Severance and then you can read the blog post. But yeah, Severance got me thinking about this. This isn’t going to necessarily be a very coherent thought, but just… Derek Parfit talks about what it takes for a person to continue to exist. And this is what the entire study of personal identity is about: what it takes for a person to continue to exist. And this idea that anytime matter forms into the right form, then there’s consciousness. And so there’s consciousness here, there’s consciousness here, and then the only reason that those two consciousnesses think they’re the same person is because there’s a string of memories from one to the other. I think that’s the empty individualism. That’s what Parfit argues for. That’s the empty individualist idea. That’s the most austere, “Those are just the facts. There’s nothing else.” And I think that’s true. Those are the facts. There is nothing else. It’s just memory.

I was rereading Dennett [Consciousness Explained] this past year, and I don’t understand his argument for the pure physicalist explanation of consciousness, but I think he’s right that it is, but I don’t understand exactly why he thinks it is. But I think a big part of his argument is that consciousness is a memory of things that the animal has already done. There’s those studies, like, you think you’re making a choice but actually the choice was made, and then by the time you think you’ve made it, the body already made the choice. And the choice doesn’t become conscious until microseconds later or whatever. That’s like all of consciousness. There’s all this stimulus coming in and it’s all being entered into your nervous system, but you’re only aware of one bit of it at a time, and it’s really external factors or your own mind that triggers you of which part to be aware of. It’s a bit of a tangent. [Chuckles] Consciousness… What was I talking about?

Zach: Well, we started out by saying the objection that, “Hey, you guys are overthinking it.”

Joe: Okay. So, the entire study of personal identity is about what it takes for someone to be the same person through time, right? But nobody ever—

Zach: Yeah, being that persists over time. That’s the normal view of self.

Joe: And nobody else has ever talked about the origins. What I obsess about. I understand it’s a strange thing to be obsessed about for a lifetime, sperm and eggs, but that’s what the belief is, and so that’s what I talk about; the sperm and the ovum joining the origins, what makes a person come into existence in the first place? And I think Parfit walks back a bit on what he concludes in part three, and when he talks in part four about origins. He even says, you know… His phrasing is much better, much more eloquent, much more careful, but basically, that you must believe you would not exist if that sperm and ovum hadn’t joined. Even in a footnote, he says there’s lots of questions we can have about identity through time, but surely no one questions this fact that you wouldn’t exist unless the sperm and ovum joined.

Zach: Open individualism was too much of a crazy thing for him to think of.

Joe: And so to answer, it’s not really a direct answer to that objection that yes, every—I call it the everyone is someone viewpoint—every conscious being is going to be someone. It’s going to have that sense of self. That’s just a basic, easy fact to see. But it doesn’t answer the counterfactual questions of like, “If the world had gone differently, in what situations do I place myself there? Am I there? And in what situations am I not there? What situations do I exist? What situations do I not exist? It’s kind of a roundabout argument against that, but that’s the thought that I return to every time.

Zach: Yeah, I think so many of the objections that people instinctually have are basically manifestations about the normal view… They represent the normal view that we are these things, these beings that have a beginning and an end and then persist over time. So somebody who says something like, “Well, it’s very simple. When a creature comes into existence, it has a point of view. It has a sense of self.” But they don’t realize that that’s just a manifestation of the view that it’s very simple in the sense that there’s this persistent being over time. Because, like you say, you and me or open individualists are not denying that a creature has to have a sense of self, right? An entity has a sense of self. But when you actually dig into the complexity of it and think about it, there’s not the idea that it’s this persistent creature over time. This being over time is what we’re talking about. It’s what we’re debating. And so the objection that an entity has to have a sense of self and it’s very simple, it’s not really solving anything. It’s saying what we also believe. But they believe it’s a good objection because I think they’re seeing it under the hood. It’s like there’s this persistent being over time. So I think their objection is actually representing something under the hood that they’re not even realizing that their objection contains, which is the normal view of closed individualism. Because you and I or anybody espousing these views wouldn’t deny that a creature that comes into existence almost certainly has to have a feeling of ‘I’. We’re not denying that. We’re trying to get at what is that feeling of ‘I’ that is there, right? That’s hard to talk about, but hopefully—

Joe: Yeah, a lot of this is hard to talk about.

Zach: Oh, it’s all extremely hard to talk about. Yeah.

Joe: And I think… What are we? We’re about an hour in now, and I think the whole concept we’re talking about is the empty self idea, right? And we’ve never even talked about what that is. Some people have no idea what that is. Some people are going to kind of have an intuitive idea of it, which is how I came at it. In the first chapter of what I wrote, the perfect doppelgänger thought experiment is this idea of being replaced by an exact copy of me, but that isn’t me. So you can imagine someone sitting next to you right now that is genetically identical to you and as similar as possible to you, but it’s a different person. If you die, you’re gone. That person keeps existing. If they die, you stay here, that person ceases to exist. Their subjective self ceases to exist. And then you can imagine like, okay, so then just make yourself disappear. You never existed. And that person is exactly in your place, atom-for-atom, exactly moving through the universe exactly as you have your entire life and has lived your exact same life the exact same way you have, but is not you. You never existed. That’s how I isolate the idea of the empty self. At first, I framed it as this is what I mean when I say ‘I exist.’ It’s like the thing that exists in this universe but doesn’t exist in the other universe where he replaces me is what I mean when I say ‘I exist.’ If we can, just for the sake of argument, say that everything is atom-for-atom identical in that other universe as in this one, then that’s what I mean when I say ‘I exist.’ And I use that just to talk about what I mean when I’m talking about my existence, to avoid confusion.

Zach: Because there is a lot of confusion. I really like your explanation of drawing out the important distinction between the ‘I’, the feeling of existing, and the traits that we have as humans.

Joe: Yeah, the content.

Zach: The content. Right. Because, like you say, even very smart people… like you start out with Dawkins. And I agree with you, it’s like he seemed to be conflating the two in ways that just don’t make sense, but that represents the normal view that most people have of conflating those kind of ideas.

Joe: Yeah, the empty self and content is how I describe it. The two things people think they’re talking about when they say ‘I exist.’ For the Dawkins quote, it’s from Unweaving the Rainbow, the very first part. He states, more eloquently than anybody, this idea that you wouldn’t exist but for the existence of these gametes joining—the sperm and egg joining. I’ve got to say, it’s the only point I’ve ever disagreed with Dawkins on before, was that one. But I think he states this common belief very eloquently, and that’s the belief that I think is wrong.

Zach: It really gets into this instinctual feeling that it’s such a natural thing to think, because I think we all instinctually know it’s very strange for us to be here. By which I mean it’s very strange for me to be experiencing this. We all sense that instinctually, and so we look for reasons why that strangeness must exist, and we say, “Oh, it must have been the chance encounters of all these things that happened.” Right? It’s understandable why Dawkins and so many people, that that’s the instinctual view. Because we’re looking for an explanation of like, we know that it’s weird for us to to be here. So we’re like, “Oh, it must have been all this…” But getting back to your ideas, it’s like once you start examining, it’s like, “So you’re telling me that everything in the entire universe had to precisely align, and the egg and the sperm had… And all my ancestors had to do all this stuff, and all these things had to line up, and the correct egg and sperm had to meet in exactly the right way for, as you say the empty self, or the feeling of ‘I’ to exist.” When you start examining that idea, it kind of breaks down, which gets you more into the open individualism way of seeing things.

Joe: Yeah, that’s a good summary. That’s good.

Zach: I was going to see what you thought of this. Another way I was thinking of it the other day to try to explain it to someone, I would say, “Another way to see this is I am no more myself in the next moment than I am you in the next moment.” That gets into maybe what you were saying about, it’s hard to imagine ourselves being the same sense of self across the board at the same time. But that’s a way I was thinking of explaining it, where if we were all series people, in a way, it’s like it helps explain how we could all be this communal kind of manifestation of the empty self or the ‘I’ feeling.

Joe: I think it’s similar to a thought I had early on. As I was in the middle of arguing myself into open individualism, I think I had a similar thought. There’s nothing more I can articulate about it than what you said. This is kind of what Parfit does, too, when he talks about if we loosen the connections between myself now and Joe Kern in the past or Joe Kern in the future, if we loosen those connections, then it also takes down the barriers between me and other people. 

Zach: Right.

Joe: And Parfit almost ends with the open individualism conclusion at the end of part three when he talks about—this is one of the most famous passages of that section of the book—about how he used to envision himself as in a tunnel on a journey that was just going to end. And now the walls of that tunnel have fallen away and things are more… When I first read that before I ever thought of open individualism, this was four years before I even thought such an idea was possible, it confused me a bit because it seemed like he had just argued this really—

Zach: Nihilistic view.

Joe: Nihilistic, dismal view about… There’s a better word I’m thinking of, but yeah. 

Zach: Dark.

Joe: The dark view that we are nothing at all. And then he ends with this. Again, I took him at his word that this is how he felt, because I had tremendous respect for him after reading the entire part three. So I took him at his word that this is how he felt, but I had to think a long time about why would you feel that way? After everything you just argued about the self and personal identity and existence, why would that argument make you feel more open to the world and other people and everything? I think I understand it now. I don’t think I can articulate it at all, but I think I understand it.

Zach: Yeah, it gets into the relationship of the so-called empty individualism and the open individualism. Because, yeah, I think he probably did see many of the things we’re talking about. He was just coming at it from a different angle that sounded kind of depressing the way he explained it. But I think he did… If I had to guess, I think he did see many of these points that we’re talking about. It’s like the glass half full, glass half empty kind of thing.

Joe: We’ve got to get Daniel Kolak to release his Derek Parfit notes. I’d love to read them.

Zach: When the world eventually embraces open individualism, that’ll be some of the founding mythology or documents of… [chuckles]

Joe: Yeah, I agree. To be clear, I mean the notes Derek Parfit wrote about Kolak’s manuscript.

Zach: Right, yeah, Kolak’s book. Yeah, totally. That would be really interesting to see. Yeah, that would be foundational. 

Maybe I can pivot over to one of the reasons I’ve always found these kinds of ideas—I’ve been drawn to them, and I would include in there ideas about doubting free will and going down those rabbit holes—I think it’s just because I’ve always had this instinctual, I don’t know, maybe call it low self-esteem in the sense that I see myself as… I think it’s tempting to reach for kind of egotistical ideas of what we are as people, and that we are some persistent entity that has a beginning and end. That we’re this consistent thing. I’ve always been drawn to the views or the ideas where I’m just an unfolding of some processes. I’m just a cog in some machine that I don’t understand. I’m an unfolding of physical or other processes that I don’t understand. So I think I’ve always been drawn to these things because I didn’t think—

Joe: When you say drawn, they’re comforting or depressing?

Zach: No. Well, neither maybe. Maybe depressing. I’ve always struggled with depression and anxiety so I might be drawn to them for a low self-esteem reason. But however I come to them, they make sense to me because I can’t help but see that we tend to overemphasize our amount of control in the world. Like our specialness. We have a tendency to think that we’re special, that we are in control of things, you know? So I’ve always been interested in these things that knock holes in that because it’s like getting back to the… What is it? The Copernicus thing of we would assume that the sun’s orbiting us and it doesn’t come naturally to us too. We tend to think that we’re the center of the world. 

So just to say, I think a lot of these ideas. They can be very counterintuitive, but they can contain a lot of logic and power when you look at them. And then when you start examining them more, they’re not nearly as depressing as they seem at first. 

For example, I would say that about free will too. I think a lot of people are disheartened by the idea that we might not have free will, and I actually think there’s a lot of magic even in that idea, because that means if I don’t have free will, I’m still here experiencing all these things, which is an amazing thing even if I don’t have free will. That means I’m animated by something that is beyond me, right? That’s an amazing idea, too. So just to say, I think a lot of these ideas go against our instincts, but they can be very interesting and non-depressing and even positive to examine.

Joe: Have you ever heard… I think it was Wittgenstein that said it. I don’t know that much about the history of philosophy, but this is just a quote that anybody could have heard. I know it as well as  anybody. It was that people used to think that the Sun orbited the Earth because that’s what it looks like, but they never asked the question, “What would it look like to us if the Earth orbited the Sun?”

Zach: Thinking about how it can manifest the same ways.

Joe: Yeah. Our first impression of how things are, that’s what it looks like. But then you think about what other version of reality would look exactly the same to us from our perspective? I guess that’s the point. 

Okay, so you’re talking about accepting lack of free will, for example. My whole life has been a series of coming to accept things about the universe and myself that I didn’t want to. Number one was Dawkins selfish gene theory.” Number two was Parfit, his tearing down of self, identity, the soul. Number three was eventually the soul, which I think Dennett and a lot of other philosophers really helped. And then the whole thing about the Earth orbiting the Sun, that had already happened before me so I’d already grew up accepting that. But you can see how if you grew up thinking that the Earth was the center of the universe, it can make you depressed. It really messes up your view of your place in the universe and can make you really depressed. And so in my lifetime, I’ve gone through these steps: the selfish gene theory, lack of a soul, and I came through on the other side. Oh, and then lack of free will, that was another big one for me. That can be depressing. I just find that every existential thing that comes up to me like that that makes me really depressed for a short period or a long period, eventually, I just come to accept it from one way or another. Open individualism I came up with in order to deal with the lack of a soul. That’s the only one I ever solved. All the other ones, I just accepted. Lack of free will, I just accepted. And I thought I’d come to all of them. I thought I’d come to every single, “What new fact about reality is going to disturb me next?” I thought I had ended that. I’m like, “Great. I understand reality now and I feel pretty good about it, so life is all right.” And then recently, I finally—

Zach: Oh no. You stumbled across something—

Joe: Another one. I finally became convinced that the quantum multiverse is the correct view of quantum mechanics.

Zach: Oh! I’ve believed that for a long time. We have that in common.

Joe: Did that ever depress you?

Zach: No, no more than the free will. But we should talk about that another time. Maybe we’ll continue that offline. [chuckles]

Joe: Yeah I’ll just tell you real quick my reaction. Yeah, so I read David Deutsch’s first book, Fabric of Reality. Beginning of Infinity is more famous, I like Fabric of Reality better. And I was basically convinced by his argument for about twenty to thirty perc… I was convinced of his argument, but I didn’t feel like I had to think about it too hard. And then I started listening to Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast. He’s a big multiverse, Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics guy. After about two straight years listening to him, it just hit me one day. It’s like, “All right, Joe, you can’t ignore this anymore. The quantum multiverse is probably true.” And it just made me so anxious and depressed for a while.

Zach: Oh, we should talk about that.

Joe: I was just thinking about, I don’t know why, but my grandmother came into my mind. My father’s mother. My grandfather passed away in the mid-2000s, and I got to know my grandmother after he passed away. My grandfather was a preacher. Everybody said I’m so much like him my whole life so I always just focused on my grandfather. Maybe it’s kind of like, you know, male-male female-female thing might do it. But then I got to know my grandmother, and I don’t know why, but I just had this thought about—and I really enjoyed my time with her, she’s just an amazing person—I just had this thought like, “So, all that time we’re spending together,” and this could be with anybody you’re thinking about, “it wasn’t just a persistent ‘us’ spending time together, it’s like we branched a thousand times every second. And so I felt like I lost my garden. There’s a lot of different ways there can be multiverses in physics, you know? There can be infinite space. An infinite number of copies of this world exists in infinite space, infinite time, whatever. At least in those cases, I’m still here now, and this is all there is. And I have my garden that I can tend to. And I can make this space as good as I can for myself and for everybody. But the quantum multiverse, if even this space is splitting millions of times or thousands of times every second and I have no access to any other of my selves or any of your other selves, then I’ve lost the garden to tend to, and it’s like, “Well, what’s the point of caring about anything now? I can’t even tend to my own garden.” But somehow…

Zach: I think you’ll get over that.

Joe: I did. Yeah, I did. I had to take a vacation right away. Timing worked out. I went on vacation. “I can’t sit at home and think about this anymore.” And then I finally just kind of accepted it. I still don’t like it. I still hope it’s not true, but I just kind of accepted it. “All right, that’s what reality is…”

Zach: Yeah, we’ll talk more about that later. I was going to end on something… Oh, I wanted to say we should end on the idea that… If anyone’s still listening, they might think these are all very convoluted, complex ideas. Another simple solution to these mysteries is the one that maybe we do have souls. Maybe there is something special to us. Or maybe there’s some mysterious process by which we are these consistent beings over time. I just want to throw in that, like, even though I talk about this and I talk about free will on the podcast, it’s not that I’m certain of all these ideas I talk about. It’s more like, I think when it comes to logically thinking through things, these are valid theories about how things are. But at the end of the day, I find existence so mysterious and strange that even if I found out that there was a God and a soul, it wouldn’t surprise me that much because I do find all this stuff so astoundingly strange. I just wanted to throw that in. I wanted to throw that in there because I think a lot of times when people talk about these kinds of ideas, people think, “Oh, this guy’s a hundred percent believer in this.” I don’t a hundred percent believe in anything. These are ideas that I find really compelling from a logical perspective. But I just want to throw that in there and get your take.

Joe: It’s epistemic humility. That’s something I try to have about everything, and I have it about this. I feel pretty strongly atheistic. I’m pretty strongly an atheist now, and that was after reading The Selfish Gene, which I read before Dawkins had published The God Delusion. So I didn’t become an atheist because of his arguments against religion, it was The Selfish Gene. I’m pretty strongly atheist, I told you I don’t believe in souls or spirits. I have my reasons for that and I mentioned some of them here. But I want to say that open individualism as a whole, some people who argue for it, Arnold Zuboff in particular, is not anti-soul, as far as I understand his view. I have another friend that I speak with a lot, Mineta Jurášková, also goes by Edralis online, she also says she still believes that souls are possible. But they still believe this universal self idea of open individualism. They just think that it’s not necessarily purely materialistic theory. My version of it is, but it isn’t necessarily. Another thing I should say about Zuboff is that he uses his own word for it “universalism.” He doesn’t use the word “open individualism,” that’s Daniel Kolak’s word. But Zuboff and Kolak are both professional philosophers who have published peer-reviewed work on this idea of universalism in Zuboff’s case and open individualism in Kolak’s case.

Zach: Yeah, I was going to put that in the intro, there’s some real heavyweights… Just to convince people, like, “Hey, it’s not just you and me. It’s some other very smart people who have gotten peer-reviewed things out there. Yeah. I’m just curious if you somehow found out that there was a higher power and there were souls, how shocked would you be on a scale of one to ten? [chuckles]

Joe: How shocked would I be?

Zach: Would it be… How atheistic are you?

Joe: I haven’t thought of that. Actually, I don’t know, maybe not so shocked.

Zach: Because you’ve got humility.

Joe: It depends on how recently I read Richard Dawkins. If I’ve just read Richard Dawkins, I might be really shocked, because I find that guy really compelling and convincing. But in the end, I still find… So, I was a Christian, and I’m still nostalgic for those times sometimes, and I still find that comforting, those beliefs. The community was comforting, for sure. I still find the beliefs comforting. So I still think, actually, that would be nice if that was true. I don’t know. I can’t really answer how shocked I would be. Maybe I would be really shocked, but I think I’m kind of open to…

Zach: Yeah, you have the epistemic humility.

Joe: Yeah, epistemic humility. Because I keep discovering new things that I’m either forced to believe or that I am happy to believe, but new beliefs as I go along, it keeps me thinking, “Well, there still must be a lot that I don’t know, and there may be some reasons around the corner that jump out at me to make me believe something different than I believe right now.”

Zach: Well, I think you’re a lot like me because I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights just laying in bed in the middle of the night thinking through things that really bother me, like, what happens at the edges of the universe? You know, these kinds of ideas that things are you’re never going to get an answer for.

Joe: I remember me and my brother talking about that when I was like six. Like, time. When did time start? What happened before the start of time? What happens on the other side of the edge of the universe?

Zach: Yeah, I think we have that in common. We like to make ourselves uncomfortable.

Joe: Yeah. Do you still experience depression around those big existential kind of questions, or is that something you’ve kind of…

Zach: Interestingly, I think it’s lessened. I still have anxiety and issues about various things, but the big question things, I think, have lessened. And I think that’s related to thinking through some of these things and also reading existential psychology books. My favorite book I recommend to people is Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin Yalom. It’s my favorite book. So I think as time’s gone on, I’ve been less stressed by these big questions. I’m more stressed by more mundane everyday things.

Joe: Yeah, me too.

Zach: Yeah. I think it’s gotten better. How about you? You’ve mainly found peace with it.

Joe: Yeah. Like I said, everything that comes at me, eventually, I find a way to accept it. I didn’t think I was going to ever get comfortable with this quantum multiverse thing, but now I don’t think about it that much anymore.

Zach: Maybe that’s a future episode, and we can talk about that, the psychological implications of dealing with the multiverse.

Joe: Yeah. [chuckles]

Zach: Well, I really appreciate it, Joe. Thanks for taking the time.

Joe: It’s been a blast. I’ve really loved this. Thank you.

The documentary “Bad Vegan” was about Sarma Melngailis’s nightmarish journey from successful New York City restaurant owner to Rikers inmate jailed for stealing millions. How did this happen? Sarma was the victim of a narcissistic con man named Anthony Strangis, who manipulated her into believing (or semi-believing) a number of wild, delusional ideas (like that he might be a non-human being with immense, other-worldly powers). He used this strange hold over her to persuade her to give him large amounts of money (much of which he blew at casinos).

I talk to Sarma about her experiences. We talk about: what led to her being so emotionally vulnerable that someone like Strangis could manipulate her; the factors that can lead someone to believe things that most people see as clearly ridiculous lies; why she dislikes the “Bad Vegan” documentary maker for his editing choices; the huge emotional challenge of trying to rebuild and stay positive after such nightmarish, debilitating events; her new book “The Girl With the Duck Tattoo.”

Episode links:

• YouTube (includes video)
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

TRANSCRIPT

(Transcripts are automatic and will contain errors!)

Sarma Melngailis: “Once he got money out of me, which initially was, oh, let me just borrow this money for this crazy emergency, I’ll pay you right back. Once he got that initial chunk of money out of me, then he is got a hook in me. Right. Because I’m always gonna want it back.

So I, I had resolved, I’m not gonna see this guy again. Like he, this is not right. Something’s, you know, not right. He was able to get back in because he’d say, oh, I’m gonna bring you that money back. I got it and cash, I’m gonna –

Zach Elwood: It creates a tie to him.

Sarma: Right. And then he would do his mind sorcery on me and somehow he would maybe give me back some money, but then he’d get more money out of me. And then I’m in deeper and then you’re in deeper. And then it becomes, you know, they get you in a situation, you’re more and more and more compromised and the loss is bigger and bigger and bigger.

“There are people who, if you let them into your life, are capable of targeted and elaborately thought-out cruelty — the kind we’d like to think happens only in psychological horror films. These people are real, and they are out there in droves. They will study you, figure out your worst-case scenario, and turn it into a plan for a nightmare specifically tailored to you. They will then go to great lengths to make this nightmare your reality.
In the end, it will often appear to have been your fault. The wreckage will be yours alone to repair, while they slip away to find their next target.”

That was from the introduction of The Girl with the Duck Tattoo, a memoir by Sarma Melngailis. You may be familiar with her story, because it was the subject of a popular documentary titled Bad Vegan.

Here’s my copy of the book (if you’re watching this on Youtube, you can see it anyway). I recently moved to New York City so I was able to meet up with Sarma and get a signed copy. She wrote to me “To Zach, with you in exposing con artists, scammers, sociopaths.” I appreciate that, Sarma.

If you didn’t see the Bad Vegan movie or otherwise don’t know Sarma’s story, I’ll read from a Netflix article Olivia Harrison that summarized the quite wild and weird events the movie covered:

“The new docuseries “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” tells the story of Melngailis and the rise and fall of her raw food restaurant, NYC’s Pure Food and Wine. A big part of the narrative is the relationship Melngailis had with Anthony Strangis, a man she met online who told her that he could, among other things, make her precious pup, Leon, immortal.
In the series, Sarma recounts that when she first met Strangis, he quickly recognized how special Leon was to her and realized he could use this attachment to his advantage. Sarma says that this meant that Strangis gradually convinced her that he was not, in fact, a human, but rather existed in an eternal, ethereal realm that could eventually become their shared “happily ever after,” and that Leon could come, too.
According to Sarma’s journal entries from that time, Strangis didn’t just promise immortality to Leon, he also promised her a stake in the power, influence and wealth he had gained as a result of passing all the tests he took to become a higher being. All Sarma needed to do in order to share in the bounty was wire him money to prove her loyalty both to him and the others — “the family” — who could turn Leon immortal.
The kind of intense, psychologically damaging relationship that Melngailis and Strangis had can lead people to believe things that sound, frankly, unbelievable. According to Sarma, this means that she believed her life — and Leon’s — would be in danger if she didn’t send Strangis money. If Sarma didn’t prove herself to Strangis, she stood to lose everything. If she did? She would ascend to what Strangis promised was her fated role as queen, where she’d be accompanied by her beloved dog, forever by her side. Although all this might sound like the most transparent lie in the world to many of us (no matter how much we want our pets to live for decades and decades), in the words of Seinfeld’s George Costanza, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
End quote

Sarma’s story ended with her being arrested, wracking up millions in debt, her restaurant closing, and her being sued by investors. Her mother was also exploited by Anthony Strangis; her mother ended up having sent $400,000 to Strangis before it was all over.

There was also a big media sensation, which was amplified by the fact that Strangis and her were arrested due to him ordering a pizza. A lot of the media buzz was about a vegan being caught by ordering a non-vegan pizza. But this was false clickbait; Sarma hadn’t ordered or eaten the pizza. Strangis and her were staying in separate rooms and ordered food separately. This is just to say that many people, in the media and just in the general public, reacted in rather mean, unfeeling ways about the story; that is something we will talk about.

Personally, I think it’s quite clear that Sarma was manipulated and going through some very tough times emotionally at that time, which made her vulnerable to exploitation. One point that makes that pretty clear is that she got absolutely nothing out of the money that was stolen; she attained no benefit, there seemed to be no end goal for her; at the end she just seemed to be emotionally burned out and tagging along with Strangis as he roamed the countryside staying in hotels. Sarma was hardly doing anything, while Anthony Strangis, aka Anthony Knight, burned through an amazing amount of money at various casinos, and buying lavish items. He was quite clearly the manipulative pathological liar, and to me, she was quite clearly the one being manipulated. I think watching the documentary makes that pretty clear, too, even as I also think the movie was quite irresponsible and unethical in some areas (something Sarma and I will talk about).

If you’re someone who feels for Sarma’s story, you could show her some support by buying her book and leaving it a review on Amazon. It’s also just a very interesting read, and I do respect Sarma for her transparency and bravery in sharing a story that many people would rather just forget and never want to talk about. I agree with her that it helps to share such things; it may help other people avoid being taken in by narcissistic abuse and toxic con men. The truth is there are a lot of twisted, toxic people around us, even as few of them rise to the extreme level of delusion and manipulation as Anthony Strangis, aka Anthony Knight.

In this interview, Sarma and I discuss: the psychological and emotional issues that led to her vulnerability; we talk about how it is that people can go down such delusional and unwell paths, even as it can seem so obvious from the outside that they are embracing completely crazy and absurd beliefs; we talk about her beef with the Bad Vegan documentary, and why she sees the director as having made some unethical choices; we talk about the difficulty of carrying on with life now now, living with the fact that she has hurt a lot of people, including people close to her, and that she owes an absurd lot of money.

Okay here’s the talk with Sarma Melngailis…

Zach: Hi Sarma. Thanks for joining me.

Sarma: Hi. Really, it’s good to be here.

Zach: Yeah. Thanks for doing this. I know, uh, like we’ve talked about, I know it’s probably hard to talk about, uh, such hard things that have happened to you, so I really appreciate you taking the time and being willing to do that and uh, yeah.

Thanks.

Sarma: Well, this feels easy ’cause I’ve been doing a lot of podcasts, um, for my book lately, but we’ve, um, we’ve spoken before and corresponded a bunch back and forth, so it feels kind of like, I mean, I do, I already know you, so this is easy and fun.

Zach: Yeah. And this is pretty, um, you know, low rent podcasts, so not much pressure, uh, to perform for my small audience.

So that must be a easier, easier feeling to

Sarma: No, I bet. I bet you have. I, I bet you have a, um, I bet you have a very smart audience, which I like. Well,

Zach: thank you th thank you for that. Um, okay, so yeah, maybe we could start with, uh, how we, how we got into contact. Yeah. And, um, I, [00:08:00] I could, yeah, you basically, uh, people who listen to my podcast know I’ve done some work on Chase Hughes, this guy who, um, has.

You know, as a sort of a, a guru of behavior and influence and manipulation. But, um, yeah, that’s how, that’s how you got in contact with me.

Sarma: And I, I was fascinated with Chase Hughes initially, uh, after hearing him on the diary of a CEO podcast and as, as one would logically assume that they had done vetting and whatnot.

But I, I was intrigued because, you know, as you know, there’s a lot of conversation online about how to influence people. Um, and of course without them knowing that that’s what you’re doing, that’s the whole point. And all of this behavior analysis, and I find it fascinating in the context of my own story and what happened to me, which involves this colossal manipulation, which very few people understand because they think, you know, you’re reasonably intelligent.

You went to a good school, worked on Wall Street, yada, yada, how [00:09:00] could you be, be. You know, air quotes brainwashed by some guy, or how could you have believed him? So I’m very fascinated in that whole field of, you know, mind control and mind manipulation and the tactics that are used. And I was interested in him potentially.

Being somebody to comment on a, a new docuseries that I’m working on. And so I started, uh, and actually I was about to reach out to him, but I started doing some digging and I came across your YouTube videos and then went, you know, I watched them all in their entirety. I forget you made some joke that made me like, spit out my beverage laugh.

Zach: Oh, was it the inner circle? Um, you know, his inner circle one about? I think

Sarma: so. I think, I think a butthole was involved in the joke, which of course is gonna make me laugh.

Zach: Yeah. That was a, yeah. Now I have to explain that. Now that I said it, it was, it was, it was about his inner circle of people, but it was in, it was in relation to him, uh, recommending people put, uh, melatonin suppositories, you know, [00:10:00] in their butt.

So that was right there, there was, it made sense either way. You had to be there.

Sarma: Yeah, exactly. Whatever it was, it like made me spit my beverage, which I appreciated. And, um, um, I, I just, I appreciated that you did such a deep dive and did all this really thorough work on that, because what’s fascinating about that situation is that, and this is very common, it happens with cult leaders too, where they almost tell you what they’re doing and then they’re doing the thing right to you at the same time.

Zach: Right.

Sarma: And so then you never suspect that he’s doing it to you because he is teaching you about it. Mm-hmm.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: Right. It just, it’s like, oh, it’s weird. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I, I think I recall you did, in one of those videos, you, there was some really good explanation about how people go to. You know, these sort of, um, [00:11:00] you know, when people, I, I don’t know why I’m blanking on like what the word is, these events, right?

Where these people sell tickets to events, maybe transformational,

Zach: experiential, Tony Robbins.

Sarma: Yeah. And, and that people go and they come away and they feel like their life has changed. But there’s something psychological going on where it’s very easy to sort of convince yourself that you feel changed.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: Because that’s what you would, I don’t know. Anyway, I I really appreciated all of that, um, insight. Yeah. That was the,

Zach: uh, that was the video about the NLP neurolinguistic programming element to Chase, which a lot of these people in these spaces have this NLP background, and it ties into the Tony Robbins seminars and the long multi-day seminars.

And, you know, speaking of that stuff, you know, I think the, as you and I have talked about, the, the good thing about, um, if there’s any good thing to come out of your experience, it’s, uh, being able to try to educate people about, you know, these kinds of manipulations, especially people that. May be, you know, to, to people who may be especially vulnerable and, you know, just [00:12:00] drawing more attention to this kind of like weird delusional narcissistic abuse type scenarios, which are a lot more common than people know.

You know, until you run across people, you know, until you experience or, or know people that experience these kind of things, you don’t really realize how common these kinds of things are. Right.

Sarma: And, and most people aren’t talking about it either because most people are, you know, humiliated. If, if I hadn’t been the, the subject of tabloid articles and then a whole big Netflix special, it’s not like if I met somebody at a party, I would blurt out that like, by the way, I was taken advantage of by this.

Mm-hmm. You know, big slob of a con artist and

Zach: mm-hmm. You

Sarma: know, he made me believe crazy things. Like, you wouldn’t go around saying that. It’s, it’s humiliating. And I’ve heard from, I mean, I, I’ve heard from tons and tons of women who have PhDs, even in clinical psychology, and they’ve been completely manipulated.

And I’ve heard from a lot of men too, who tragically tell me, I’ve, I’ve heard this a number of times, where they tell me that [00:13:00] you’re, you know, aside from the, the people immediately involved, he’s like, you’re the first person I’ve told. You know, they don’t

Zach: mm-hmm.

Sarma: They just don’t talk about it at all because it’s completely humiliating and probably a, a sort of a different, sort of a layer on that for men to mm-hmm.

To be, have been manipulated. Um,

Zach: yeah, I think there’s, and there’s also the, uh. People are afraid of getting sued, like way overly afraid of getting sued too. So I also feel like there’s this element of people being afraid to talk about their experiences for that reason. They’re like, oh, that, you know, which is a, which is a legitimate fear.

’cause some of the same kind of narcissistic people will like do litigation abuse, you know, even at a, even at a self-destructive level where you’re like, you know, so that is a legitimate fear. But I, I think there’s multiple levels why people are, you know, afraid to talk about this stuff. So we don’t get a sense of just how common this kind of stuff is.

Yeah.

Sarma: And, and that it, it happens to very bright people who’ve usually accomplished a lot. And, um, [00:14:00] yeah, it’s, it’s more common than people realize.

Zach: Yeah. I’ve been listening to, um, this podcast, uh, out of crazy Town, about, um, basically people going through, um. Narcissistic, you know, uh, post-separation abuse, you know, post-divorce kind of abuse, and some really interesting stories on there.

Um, yeah, I was gonna say, uh, I, I was gonna switch topics and ask you about, you know, your, your, uh, your book. You just got your, your book out and wanted to say, uh oh. Yeah. And I’ve got it right here for people watching on nice video. The Girl with the, the duck tattoo. Does it, does it feel good? Oh, you have one too.

What a, what a coincidence. No, just kidding. Right? Imagine that. Um, thank, and thank you for that book, by the way. Um, and I was just gonna ask how does it feel good to be done? I, I know how, you know, daunting and, and tiring it is to get a book out there, but especially for your, you know, very personal and, um.

Hard to share things. I imagine it was even more, uh, exhausting.

Sarma: Yeah, it, it feels, I mean, it feels really good. It felt really [00:15:00] good when I, you know, finishing the draft finally. ’cause it it something that I worked on for years and somehow just going over the draft and the proofing and the copy editing and again and again was, it was grueling because the story is kind of harrowing and reliving it is gut wrenching.

Um, but I mean, the, the first half of the book is more fun. You know, I have more fun stories. There’s a chapter about, you know, getting to know Alec Baldwin. There’s chapters about opening the restaurant and growing the business that ultimately was destroyed. But, um, the first half was, was a lot more fun to write.

And, uh, you know, and the second half really takes you through what happened, I think in a very. Uh, you know, because I, I was able to recover a lot of our digital conversations as well as a journal of mine was recovered. So I incorporate a lot of that material and along the [00:16:00] way I am reflecting and analyzing throughout the book and the comment that I get most often from people that really, like, I can’t hear it enough, I love it, is people tell me all the time.

Uh, you know, like, oh, I started reading it and I can’t put it down. Oh my God, I can’t put it down. It’s, I love hearing that and mm-hmm. Also, ’cause it’s a long book, so, but it, the, the chapters are short and it moves quickly and I think it’s easy to read. ’cause I, you know, I tried to keep it moving and, um, and I, as you know, in the beginning I jumped back and forth a bit in time.

So in the opening scene, I’m throwing up a small town, Tennessee jail, having just been arrested and, you know, and then I get extradited to New York, to Rikers and then I, you know, would jump immediately back to sort of the height of the glamorous time at the restaurant and my life and knowing, meeting all these people and mm-hmm.

So I go back and forth. So it kind of keeps it keeps it moving.

Zach: Yeah. That, as somebody who recently moved to New York City, it’s been [00:17:00] interesting reading your book for that reason too. Just seeing some of the New York, you know, era, uh, area stories. I, it’s

Sarma: always fun to read a, a book about any place that you’re very familiar with.

So it’s. I enjoy, like if I give, if given two options of books, novels, or memoirs to read, I’d rather read one that takes place in New York versus one that takes place in say, Chicago, where I’ve, I’ve never spent any time.

Zach: Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. The, uh, the book is, is very interesting. And, um, yeah, I was gonna say, uh, oh, let’s, let’s talk about, uh, sorry, I’m jumping from topic to topic.

Sure. I wanted to ask you about, uh, your major, uh, a lot, a lot of people watching this may have seen the Bad Vegan, uh, documentary. Maybe we can touch briefly on what your major grievance with that documentary was. I know you’ve written a very good, uh, blog post. You had written a very good blog post about your grievance with the documentary, which I found very, uh, persuasive.

You know, I, I think you, you make very good points. Maybe you could talk about the, uh, the thing that really bugged you, which is like the last bit of the documentary.

Sarma: Yeah. I mean, there were a couple of the, you know, there are things along the way that what, what the [00:19:00] director did. Was a sort of evil genius on his part because he, he manipulated the story and he edited things in a way where he kind of along the way has some plausible deniability.

Um, but, you know, there were some things in the middle where the way it was edited, it makes me look not good. Um, for example, when I talk about why I ended up marrying this guy, he kind of completely cuts out the story and makes it seem as if I married him for money when there was all this other stuff that happened in between and that wasn’t it at all.

And so that sort of is another thing that would get the viewer to go, oh, she married the guy for money, you know, so that, that’s sort of setting me up. Um, but the most egregious thing was at the end where they, uh, the series, if somebody hasn’t seen it, the series starts out with me on the phone with this guy, the, the guy who was my, my tormentor.

And I’m clearly. Playing a role. Shane Fox. Yes. Or that’s Mr.

Zach: Fox as we Right. His fake [00:20:00] name. But that’s how you refer to him, his fake name. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarma: And um, and, and then it shows me hanging up the phone, and then I say to the camera that I would never normally ever record somebody without their knowledge.

Um, and I think I say, but that motherfucker fuck him like so clearly, and hopefully it’s okay that I curse, but clearly I’m doing this to try in some way just to, it’s even if it’s in the small way to get back at him in some way. Right. And get, and get

Zach: him to admit something or say something incriminating or something.

And,

Sarma: and I’m of course being a very agreeable, accommodating person. I’m also trying to help the, the, the, you know, quote, documentary get material. And so I, I offered to make, you know, I, we discussed making phone calls. I said, yes, I’ll do it. And there are other phone calls that I made that weren’t on camera, but I was using an app, which the director gave me or told me what, how to use it.

I was using an app, um. To record it and from just a regular cell phone conversation. So I had [00:21:00] I think one or two calls like that, that I’d recorded for the series as well. And at the very end of the, the series, they air a segment of one of those calls, but they do in a way that makes it look like I was caught on a hot mic.

And they air in a very deceptive context. But then on, and then on top of that they moved my words around. So, you know, if he like, basically they take apart where I might have said the like yes somewhere else when I really said no. And they moved the yes over to replace where I said no. Oh

Zach: geez.

Sarma: Um, and I mean, it was bad enough just airing a phone call like that out of context because Yeah, out of context.

Yeah. They have me laughing and they’re not sitting there, there, there’s not something underneath it saying Samra was playing a role here to get, you know, this guy Anthony Strange just to say cuckoo stuff on the phone. Yeah. They air it and then people think that after everything that happened, I’m like joking around and laughing with this guy.

Yeah, no, totally. No, it’s,

Zach: it, it [00:22:00] struck me. I mean, so often when I watch documentaries, I mean, these are the kind of reasons I basically don’t trust any media. I see like a documentary because so often there’s some, they’re trying to create some exciting narrative and you could see the motivation for them to want to end on some kind of like mysterious note of like, is she still being controlled by him?

Does she still love him? You know, they, they wanted to end on this kind of note. I felt like. At the, at the, you know, leaving aside that context is, is hugely irresponsible for, to me, you know, and I thought that even watching it at the time, because I thought, oh, why would she be talking to him? She probably was like talking to him to get information for, you know, some sort of Right.

A lot Get ’em to get ’em to admit something or, you know, that was my thought at the time. And like, but I can see how a lot of people would just be like, oh, you know, the surface level that like, she still is having pleasant conversations with ’em and that’s really irresponsible to me.

Sarma: Well, I mean, but even worse is all the people.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard variations of this, you know, I was, I was, I felt bad for you the whole time until I got to the end and realized you were [00:23:00] in on. Yeah. Which logically doesn’t even make sense, but, you know, nowadays people,

Zach: yeah,

Sarma: they’re watching it while they’re doing the dishes or they’re watching it while they’re fiddling on their iPhone and they’re not paying that close attention.

Maybe they watched the first episode a week ago, so they don’t even remember the first part. Either way, it was clearly deliberately misleading and yeah, that’s, there’s a, that’s a problem. There’s a docuseries, I think it was called The Jinx with, uh, Robert Durst, where at the end he’s caught on a hot mic.

And that, I believe, I never saw it, but I was told that, that, uh, when that documentary or docuseries came out, it, it created a huge buzz and everybody was talking about it. So it seems like this director wanted to do the same thing. Yeah. Um, really, I think, yeah, it was

Zach: Irresponsible

Sarma: Revealed himself to be, I think it was more than irresponsible.

I think, you know, I, I think there are certain types of people out there that lack empathy. And there are words for people like that. And I think he’s one of them.

Note: This is just a little note that I added after this episode went out. I wanted to point out that, despite Sarma’s strong dislike of the documentary, I will say that after watching it, I thought Sarma was clearly a victim. And I’d add that two people I watched it with thought the same thing. So I just wanted to point that out, as something in the documentary’s favor. For Sarma, of course this is a hugely serious and personal matter – how her story is depicted. And I think she makes valid points; especially about how audience members who aren’t that savvy about psychology or who are prone to snap judgments can arrive at very distorted views based on choices made by the filmmaker. So I do agree with her that the documentary should have been more careful and responsible and explicit about some things.  But because in this talk with Sarma I largely supported her in her criticism of the documentary, I wanted to add in this note that I think most people did come away thinking that Sarma was the victim. I don’t pretend to know what was in the mind of the documentary filmmaker, so I kind of regret using the word ‘unethical’ at several points in this talk, as I don’t know his side of the story, and its possible he’d be able to defend himself. Okay, back to the talk. 

Zach: I have a friend who, you know, he, he’s told me, he’s like, I don’t, I won’t even watch documentaries even anymore because there’s always some narrative and it’s so hard.

You, you basically have to go afterwards and do the research yourself to even see what happens for a lot of these documents. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like Ken

Sarma: Burns should be on some kind of, like, you need to, you, you ought to, I made the argument in the essay I wrote online that there should be a new category called Docu.

Mm-hmm.

Zach: Mm-hmm. Like, don’t

Sarma: call it a documentary. And, and maybe there needs to be somebody, like, some kind of, I don’t know. I just brought up Ken Burns. ’cause he’s like the, the original documentarian that, you know, it’s like somebody should have to go, okay, this is legit.

Zach: Yeah. They do some, some organization rating documentaries, like in

Sarma: order to be called a documentary.

Yeah. You have to qualify and you have to,

Zach: that’s a good idea for a rating. Your fact

Sarma: checking has to pan out.

Zach: Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. There’s just so much bias in a lot of these shows. Yeah. Looking back now with the, uh, benefit of more hindsight about how you met Mr. Fox and how he was able to manipulate you [00:25:00] and worm his way into your life, what, what do you see as the major, uh, you know, clearly you were emotionally vulnerable at the time, and, and what do you see as the, as the major factors at that time to that, that led you to be so vulnerable that he, he could, you know, get it work his way into your life?

Sarma: Um, I, I think that these people tend to find their targets exactly the way that cults usually find people very often on the other side, you know, at a time of transition. So I think cults are known for very often grabbing kids off college campuses when they’re in a brand new setting. They’re on their own for the first time.

They’re, they’re maybe like, they haven’t attached themselves to any group yet, so they’re, they’re in this somewhat vulnerable state. And for me, I had. Broken up from a, a very healthy, good relationship. I certainly had a dysfunctional one before that, but I’d been in this good relationship. I was heartbroken for the first time.

[00:26:00] And, um, and just feeling overwhelmed and overworked and wanting some kind of relief. And either way, these people are very, very skilled at what they do and, uh, and, and they know how to target people and, you know, get them mm-hmm. Know what things to say, what buttons to push, and how to reel people in and get them.

Zach: Yeah. It struck me that the, you know, the, the, the isolation, the, um, you know, the, the heartbreak, the isolation, the, the loneliness. And then, I mean, correct me if, if I’m off base here, but mm-hmm. Your description of, you know, going through the thing with, um. Matthew Kenny and how stressful that was. And then also like the debt that was involved in the Yeah.

The exploitation. You had already been basically exploited, you know, hugely, already, hugely emotionally and financially by that situation. And, uh, I mean, I I, I just imagine like the [00:27:00] stress of running the businesses, the, the loneliness slash heartbreak, the fact that you had this debt and abuse pre from the previous relationship.

I mean, man, that just, that just seems like a, a recipe for being extremely vulnerable and, um, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m curious if you agree with all that.

Sarma: Yeah, definitely. And, and I think there’s certain things about me that kind of generally exist that make me a good target, which is that I am by nature, uh.

Introverted, even though, you know, therefore being in the restaurant, having to sort of schmooze with guests and talk to lots of people and be on socially. I mean, it was fun at times, but it was also completely wiped me out in a way that I didn’t even understand at the time. Certain things about me and the way that I’m wired, that that would make me especially exhausted and [00:28:00] drained.

And it was always often very confusing to me back then because I thought, I exercise, I eat the best food. I eat so healthy. I eat so clean. I wasn’t like, I mean back then I, I drank socially, but not a lot. I don’t drink at all hardly. Basically. I don’t drink at all now, but I, you know, I’m taking the supplements, I’m doing all these things right, and yet would be really exhausted and probably had a, probably had.

Most of my life was sort of level of depression too that never really went addressed or not really diagnosed or addressed. And I think when you’re that busy and there’s that much going on, you’re not, you know, I certainly wasn’t meditating and reflecting on my life and thinking about myself and my, my own emotional vulnerabilities or triggers, or I just wasn’t thinking about any of that stuff.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, [00:29:00] mm-hmm.

Zach: Yeah, I, I, I do think the, um, I mean my, my view of, you know, when it comes to mental struggles and. Delusions and, you know, unwell pathways we can go down. I do think, you know, the loneliness and isolation is at the root of pretty much all of that is, is my view when it comes to that.

Yeah.

Sarma: Well and and what they do once they get in, you know, once these people get to you is they deliberately isolate you from your close contact. So if you’re already have a tendency to be kind of an introvert, it’s

Zach: compounding. Yeah.

Sarma: It’s that much easier to isolate you. ’cause they’re not, you know, it’s not like I had a gaggle of girlfriends that I hung out with all the time that were all up in my business all the time.

So it was easier. And then, you know, I also wasn’t aware at the time, but I, I subsequently, I mean one of the really interesting, totally unexpected things that happened after Bad Vegan came out, you know, amidst the fire hose of half, um, [00:30:00] you know, this sort of really. Angry, brutal comments coming at me, whether they just yell, like, call, calling me stupid, or, oh my God, you’re a criminal.

You are in on it. You should be ashamed of yourself. You hurt all these people. And, and then also getting a lot of sympathy from people who did, did understand what happened. Uh, there were, there was like also amidst that there was this steady trickle of people telling me that, asking me if I’d ever been evaluated or diagnosed with autism one or Asperger’s.

And they were people telling me that they’d been, this was coming from people that had themselves been diagnosed at some point in their lives, but very often late in life. And recognizing those qualities through the docuseries or the show, I call it the show. I don’t like to call it a documentary. So recognizing those things in me and reaching out to ask me about that.

So many people said that, that I eventually did go for a very [00:31:00] extensive evaluation and then got that diagnosis, which was another factor that was useful in helping me understand how I would be more likely to, I was more easily manipulated, say than I don’t know, the next person over potentially. Mm-hmm.

Just because of that, having that type of wiring, it’s almost as if my, I just, my default setting is to take people at face value. So, you know, I just remember when I was younger and kind of throughout life, sometimes not quite getting people’s jokes or. Sarcasm, which is weird because I employ sarcasm as well as hyperbole.

Liberally, sometimes just, but sometimes not quite. Getting it when people are not, not, and being able to accurately interpret somebody’s intentions and very often getting myself into trouble. Sometimes just a bit of [00:32:00] uncomfortable, harmless trouble where I’m just too open or, you know, somebody would approach me and instead of throwing up a wall and telling somebody to fuck off and go away, I’m, I’m sort of open and nice and I’ll respond, and then maybe I get myself into a bit of trouble.

So, either way, it, it just was another factor that seems to me relevant and I think based on what I’ve learned as about that having, being somebody who would get that diagnosis. And I think a lot of people would, and it’s, you know, a spectrum. That’s why they call it being on the spectrum. But it also turns out that.

Those qualities are qualities that I admire most in other people. And I feel safest with other people who I think have those qualities because there’s a, there’s like a no bullshit thing, you know, somebody might be a little awkwardly blunt or a little bit socially awkward, but there’s no manipulation or bullshit.

You know, there’s no passive aggressiveness, there’s no something else [00:33:00] going on. Um, you know, they’re pretending to be, it’s,

Zach: yeah. Yeah. I can, it’s very

Sarma: reassuring to know that mean, that’s why I feel most comfortable around people like that.

Zach: You know, I think if you have that personality type, it’s, it’s also, you know, it, and you talk about this in your.

In your writing, uh, you know, if you’re very, if you have that personality type, it’s really hard. It puts you more at risk of being exploited because it’s just really hard for you to understand the kind of deceptive, you know, narcissistic mind that will just lie about literally everything. Right. It’s like it becomes that much harder to, uh, wrap your head around that and makes you more, more, more vulnerable a bit.

Um,

Sarma: yeah. Yeah. And, and also interestingly, I mean, it’s interesting that it happened to me with that relationship with Matthew, which I write about in the book.

Zach: That’s a wild story in itself. Yeah,

Sarma: right. I mean, what’s so interesting is at, you know, that that story is even wilder than what I was able to write in the book.

[00:34:00] I tried to cut it down and, and keep it as short as I could. It’s just a couple of short chapters. But after that happened, um, I, I felt like, I think I must have had a feeling like. People don’t get struck by lightning twice. And so it’s not gonna happen to me again. So I wasn’t, I hadn’t, there wasn’t enough written about this stuff.

I didn’t know enough about it. And now I, I really make the point to tell people that if it’s happened to you before, don’t think it’s that now, now you know, it’s not gonna happen to you again. No. You need to really stop and analyze and go forth and be extremely cautious. Extremely cautious. Because I, you know, it’s happened to me multiple times and I’ve heard from a lot of people who’ve reached out to me that it happens to them mm-hmm.

Zach: More than once.

Sarma: Mm-hmm. And sometimes in, not even, uh, like a personal, romantic relationship, but in a, in a business context business. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, it [00:35:00] could be a colleague at work or even a friend that mm-hmm.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: Takes advantage of you in a certain way.

Zach: So, yeah. The, uh, you, you touched on this briefly, but, uh, I, I wanted to talk about people’s lack of empathy for this, because I do think.

There is this element of the experiences that you’ve gone through are just really hard for pretty much almost everyone to understand because A, I think you’ve got the fact that in general, people just have a really hard time understanding mental struggles and in general, like, you know, yeah. Depression, anxiety, these kinds of things.

So people at a base level are, are generally, you know, unempathetic or lack of understanding these kinds of things. And then on, you’ve got on top of that how combining, you know, anxiety, depression with being in the orbit of somebody who’s a, you know, narcissistic abuser, uh, can really ramp up the craziness and take that to the next level.

So, and, and a lot of, you know, so you’ve got the fact that hardly, you know, most people can be [00:36:00] unempathetic or, or not understanding about the, the depression and anxiety. And then you’ve got the fact that hardly anyone has, you know, very few people have dealt with the kinds of. Abuse and manipulation that you’ve dealt with, and that that adds another level of people just really having a hard time wrapping their, their minds around how your, your mind, your mind can get warped and manipulated in ways that, you know, strike other people who aren’t having those problems or that that manipulation.

It strikes them as like, well, how couldn’t she see this? She, you know, and, and then they’re, they become very judgemental. Uh, so I just think it’s this unfortunate thing where, you know, I, I, I just think the, there’s a really huge lack of, of, of empathy and then. You add in the, the internet, you know, culture we have where people are witnessing this stuff from afar and just making snap judgements about you and about many other people, which leads to the, you know, just a, just a real lack of, uh, empathy for you and mean messages to you and these kinds of things.

And cur curious if you agree with all that. [00:37:00]

Sarma: Yeah, and I mean, another failing of, of bad vegan, I mean, the title itself was

Zach: exploitative. Yeah,

Sarma: yeah. And, and I thought that, of course, I just thought, well, first of all, I just never anticipated they would, that it was gonna be such a betrayal, like could not have imagined, but they, at my urging or I helped.

Get a, you know, the leading psychologist in this field of what’s known as Coercive Control. The man who actually wrote the book on coercive control, this Dr. Evan Stark, who sadly passed away since, but they spent a, an entire day interviewing him. They spent an entire day interviewing this other guy, um, named Hoyt Richards, who’s this really lovely person, a Princeton graduate, was a male model who was sucked into this cult for 10 years.

Totally understands my situation, I understand him. And both of those interviews I was told were really good and really useful, really compelling. And Dr. Evan Stark had said if I had [00:38:00] had any involvement in her case, she never would’ve gone to jail.

Zach: Hmm.

Sarma: And they didn’t use any of that. So there was a zero explanation of what I think is the most fascinating part of these stories.

Yeah. Is how, yeah. How does somebody who, yeah. Whatever has all these credentials and this background and is clearly not a dodo, how does somebody get manipulated like this? I find that fascinating. And they didn’t include any of that, and that’s will be much of the focus of the next docuseries that I’m working on.

I love how we can hear the thunder through my Yeah. Headphones and I can also hear it through you. So it’s like this cool thunder echo is happening. Yeah. This

Zach: is really adding, you know, adding, it’s a good vibe. Yeah. Some good vibes, some good, uh, mood to the, to the interview. Um, um, yeah. But,

Sarma: but I also, I agree it, it’s, it is similar to the way that people who’ve never experienced any struggles with depression, and I frankly, have a hard, you know, like if somebody’s told me they’ve never been depressed at all in their life, or [00:39:00] struggled or questioned reality or, you know, I, I’m like, who are you?

Zach: I have a hard time. How do you even

Sarma: relate to somebody like that? And I, I’ve written a lot of. I probably have snippets of unpublished blog posts and substack posts all over the place. And I’ve written some about depression, but not as boldly as I would want to. But I really, I feel, I really feel for people because I’ve been through a lot of it myself too.

Mm-hmm. But

Zach: it does make you more empathetic. Yeah. That’s, that’s one nice thing about the suffering. Yeah.

Sarma: And, and it’s just, it’s really agonizing and isolating because you might feel like the way that you feel is, and I might’ve written this somewhere, it feels to you like you’re walking around and there’s blood shooting out your eyeballs, and it’s that level of pain that if people knew that, that’s what you felt like they would all rush.

[00:40:00] Oh my God, how can we help you? What can we do? But they can’t see that. And so you’re walking around feeling that level of pain, but nobody sees it and they’re just ignoring it because they don’t know. And if you tried to express it, they’d be like, what? What do you mean? You know? And it’s just very, I find it very painful that it’s so hard for people to talk about.

And so often people are discouraged from expressing it because when you do, it’s seen very often as weakness. Like, oh, just, you know, get it together or get up. Right, right. Go, go do some yoga. Like get your shit together. They don’t understand, um,

Zach: yeah, what

Sarma: an impact it can have.

Zach: Um, that was, that was another, yeah, that was another big failing of the documentary, uh, unethical thing I think of like, they should have had more about how these things happen in there for sure.

Like, yeah. That, that, that really stood out.

Sarma: They, they also, um, you know, now that I know more about the process. I shouldn’t have been thrown in that interview chair for 12 [00:41:00] hours without any support, without anybody who’s informed about these types of things. Without an advocate, without somebody there.

Zach: Yeah. Um,

Sarma: and it was two interviews. They were a year apart, even though I’m back in the same dress. I can tell which part is from which interview, but both days were really long days. And the first very first interview I did, it was a 12 hour day. And it wasn’t until the end of that day that they asked me, there’s a whole really icky sexual abuse component to what happened.

And there’s a rather explicit chapter about it in the latter half of the book. And I was asked about it at the end of that 12 hour day. And of course, that’s when I break down finally and start to cry and, you know, explained and answer the questions about what happened. And I’m thinking, I was told afterwards that it was really compelling and everybody gave me hugs afterwards and.

Uh, you know, it was very, really painful to do that. [00:42:00] And so I was really surprised I was stealing myself to be embarrassed that I was ugly crying on this Netflix show. Right. I’m thinking, oh my God, I’m gonna be like ugly crying and that’s gonna be embarrassing. But then instead, when I saw it for the first time, they just cut it out completely, which cut it out as if it never happened.

And again, if they’d left that in the viewer wouldn’t have then been able to conclude, oh, she was in on it. ’cause at that point they would’ve gone, oh my God, this is horrific.

Zach: Yeah, it’s a good, it’s a good example of how one little choice can cause change the perceptions of the audience in such a big way.

Like, you know, without that, without any crying like that in the movie, you come across as cold and maybe calculating Yes, but with even a little crying, which is changes perceptions completely. Right?

Sarma: Yeah. I mean, I, I, that’s another thing that people have commented as sort of comment to this sort is, um.

You know, it’s a little bit spectrum to come across as unemotional and I, yeah. I [00:43:00] can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, you took no, you, you expressed no remorse in that. You showed no remorse in that show. And I’m like, you have no idea how horrifically bad I feel and felt and what’s going on inside.

But just because I come across as a bit cold and

Zach: Yeah. You

Sarma: know, I’m not showing that much the, the types of emotion that people would expect. Yeah. And, and again, also it was edited, you know, I mean. Probably 20 hours of footage and he’s selectively grabbing what he wants. And there were parts where, I mean, I don’t wanna turn this into a bitch session about Chris Smith, the director, but also, you know, fuck that dude.

Too late for

Zach: that. No,

Sarma: just kidding. Yeah, exactly. No, it’s,

Zach: it’s fine. It’s fine. But,

Sarma: but I mean, it’s, people are

Zach: curious. They’ve seen the movie, they wanna hear, there’s like,

Sarma: there’s very subtle, like I give him credit for being kind of a genius because there’s parts where I can’t prove that [00:44:00] he like the, where I know he moved my words around.

I can prove, because I made the recording, I have the original, I can show that he edited what I really said and what he showed. But the interview that they recorded when I’m, you know, on camera with all the lights in the chairs, um, in the chair, uh, there’s places where, you know, he asks me a question and I say, I don’t remember or.

I’ve worked with another director who’s like, can tell you can tell when something’s edit a certain, my point is I think there’s little subtle things he did, and there are places where I say I don’t remember, which is genuine because anybody, if anybody’s been through a sort of mind bending traumatic thing where you’ve been dissociated in a state of fear and you’re not, you’re, it would be weird if you remembered everything.

Mm-hmm. Like, you’re not gonna remember stuff. You

Zach: were in a bad

Sarma: place. Yeah. So that was a very normal response to say, I don’t remember, but [00:45:00] he, it would be presented in a way that made it look like I was lying, or, or I didn’t wanna say something and then well just the,

Zach: oh, go on.

Sarma: And then there was just one part where, one part where he asks me why I fired a particular person and I don’t wanna say anything negative.

I’m not gonna reveal something. So I, in that moment I was like, um, I don’t really remember. ’cause I, I was put on this, like, I, I didn’t wanna say anything negative about somebody or reveal anything. Um, so anyway, whatever.

Zach: Right. Yeah. Then it made you look like, oh, she, she fired that person for completely unethical reasons.

’cause, or, or she, she’s feigning that she can’t remember. Yeah, she’s, yeah. Uh, that kind of thing. Yeah. Uh, just, you know, just at the base level of like the, the documentary’s name alone tells you what kind of documentary it will be. I mean, bad vegan is a very exploitative choosing of a name to me. I thought that even before watching it, because I was like, this, this name has, you know, the vegan aspect really has nothing to do with your story.

It’s just a, [00:46:00] a way to, to entice people about, there was a bad vegan, vegans are so morally superior. This was a bad vegan. But I’m sure he could, you know, he can justify it in the sense that like. He’s just choosing it to get eyeballs on it. Right. But like to me it’s, to me it’s a, it’s an, it’s another unethical choice.

Sarma: Yeah. Well I also thought, I mean, I didn’t love the title, but I thought, okay, I get it. They wanna entice people to watch it. Yeah. And my thinking was that because the tabloids had been, because the tabloids had made me look really bad.

Zach: All the pizza stuff.

Sarma: That

Zach: false pizza stuff. Yeah.

Sarma: Right, exactly. The tabloids had made me look bad that it, it, my thinking was that, and I think I was even told this, that, you know, the title is gonna be bad vegan, but of course the whole point is you’re not.

And so that’s, that’s the reveal in the story is that I’m not the bad vegan, but the tabloids portrayed me to be. And um, and you know, either way it, it’s, even when I do podcast interviews and I talk about this stuff, [00:47:00] inevitably there’s people in the comments that are like, oh, she’s good at making herself the victim.

She’s not taking your responsibility and. That’s where I just, I can’t force anybody to read my book, but if somebody wants to read my book and then make accusations or come at me for something,

Zach: yeah, I think you,

Sarma: like I can back up everything in my book. I have all the receipts for everything. I mean,

Zach: you’re, you’re, you and I are kind of like, because I think we’re both overs shares like you.

Yes. I feel like you don’t, I think you, you hold no, uh, you know, you’re, you try to be as I do believe you try to be as transparent as you can, even when it, you know, hurts the perception of you. Yeah. Which I, I really respect that. ’cause that’s something I try to do. You know, I’ve talked about my mental struggles and on this podcast, and I want it to do a episode about my, my wife leaving me, which I might get out one of these days.

But just to say I do, I respect your, um, I do sense. When you’re in your previous blog work and your book now, I do feel like you are saying, [00:48:00] trying your best to say, here’s. How it went down and even to your own detriment, you know, like you’re, you’re not, you’re not dodging responsibility, you’re just trying to understand how it happened to you.

Sarma: Yeah. And actually, what, what’s really interesting, and I is still something that I’m sort of fascinated by what the response might be from anybody who really studies this kind of thing. But I include, as I said, a lot of original dialogue between him and me that I was able to recover digitally and in so many places, I’m pushing back at him and insulting him.

And that at least is a part that I think provides some little bits of comic relief for people. ’cause people will tell me that they’re reading it and they’re really stressed out, and then I’ll lob some ridiculous insults back at him. But my point is that a, a friend of mine said, you know, I’m not sure you wanna include all this stuff where you’re, you’re pushing back on him so hard because it doesn’t really make sense.

You know it.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: It’s hard to reconcile how you were manipulated when you’re calling him. [00:49:00] You know, a liar. And I had to qualify too, like it’s somewhere. I was like, I don’t, I have enormous amounts of sympathy for people who are challenged with their weight. I’ve never found it easy to remain the weight that I am.

And so I have enormous amounts of sympathy for that. But because this guy, while I was with him, gained so much weight and made it seem like he was doing it on purpose for this bizarre series of tests he was putting through the meat suit.

Zach: Yeah.

Sarma: That so many of my insults are like calling him a fat fuck.

And some of them are anyway, so I’m making the, but the point is that it seems you’re willing to put it out there. I don’t, I don’t appear like a person being manipulated when I’m calling him a fat liar or, or making fun of him. And then, but, but what’s so fascinating about that, I, I mean, I included it because it is very fascinating part of the story and

Zach: it’s true.

Yeah. And you’re, you were even at the risk of it changing, you know, not being optimal for your perception, you’re willing to put it out there. And that’s respectable to me because. I wanted to say more about that, [00:50:00] but go ahead.

Sarma: Well, what’s interesting is it really all I could recover is a, is that portion of our digital correspondence.

It would be amazing if somehow miraculously every interaction with him I had is on camera. Which, you know, if Chase and those people are right, and we really are living in the Matrix, maybe there is a camera Oh yeah. Maybe we can download it from, we can download it, it from the

Zach: matrix later. Yeah. We’ll just

Sarma: take DMT and get the red lasers.

Yeah. And we’ll exactly go to see what happened, but Totally. So yeah, so maybe at some point I will get the video footage, um, in which case that would be fascinating to me because that’s where I think. All that mind fucky happened where, ’cause I’m pushing back at him, I’m pushing back at him, and then, and then our conversation ends and based, and then I know that he came home or what, or whatever happened.

He’s either calls me on the phone or he’s in my presence. And then I’ll, according to my records, you know, the following day or a few hours later, I [00:51:00] send him a wire for some obscene amount of money that he was pushing me for. And I had been pushing back on him in writing. But then somehow when he’s in person, when he’s gets to me in person, then the thing that he wanted me to do, he gets me to do.

And I don’t really know how he did that because I don’t remember it. And also, I don’t have that camera footage. Uh, you know, I don’t have that stuff recorded.

Zach: Yeah. I think the, uh, I mean, I think what you’re, some of what you’re saying relates to people’s lack of understanding of how complex these kinds of situations are.

Like for example. Just because you push back on something doesn’t mean that you’re not being manipulated, right? Like there’s a very, even even someone who’s having a full blown delusion, they don’t necessarily fully believe their own delusions. It’s kinda like, is this world true? Is this narrative true?

Is it not true? They’re, they’re testing it, they’re like living part in it and part out of it. So that’s just to say like, you pushing back on things doesn’t, doesn’t take away from the fact that you could be also believing or semi believing in other things. [00:52:00] There’s a complex thing there about delusions and like, weird, magical thinking, right?

Like when you, when you examine like, you know, extremely narcissistic, malignant, narcissistic people, like, you know, the guy I was telling you about in, in, in my, yeah, in my world, it’s like, it’s really hard to, even for an individual to separate, like, do they really believe this stuff? Are they, are they lying or do they not?

Are they not even sure where the lines are drawn? So that’s just to say for you, being manipulated. You’re, you’re like, at any stage, you’re kind of like semi buying into things. You’re buying into some things, questioning others. So just you pushing back does not, you know, it may look bad and it leads to people who are unaware of that complexity to be like, oh, she’s questioning it.

Therefore she must, you know, she, she isn’t a sap. She must have been questioning everything. She didn’t really fall for it. She must be in on it. But that, I think it just gets back to most people’s, you know, unfamiliarity with how complex these psychological manipulation situations are. Yeah. And,

Sarma: and what they do is they, they create, I mean, there’s an intense amount of fear and confusion, [00:53:00] which is, I think confusion is a really important element.

Confusion. Yeah. You’re like, what’s going on? Yeah. Able to manipulate somebody. Yeah. And I, as I write throughout this whole situation, it’s not the Netflix show and some articles that were written. Sort of exploited this idea that he made me believe my dog would live forever and therefore I must be cuckoo.

But, you know, he didn’t make me believe all of these things necessarily. He just kept me in this state of absolute confusion. And also, you know, I am very open-minded, I guess you would say spiritually, right? So I, I, I had this experience adopting my dog that a lot of people will say this. And so it’s not, it doesn’t make me by default D Lulu, but when I got my dog, it.

I, I never felt this before. I’d never felt propelled by some force beyond me. It [00:54:00] was like this dog, I wasn’t trying to get a dog. You know, there’s a short chapter on adopting Leon. And originally I was trying to convince Alec Baldwin to adopt a dog. And that’s why I was looking at dogs. And this one dog struck me and I forwarded it to Alec and I was like, oh, this is the dog.

You have to get this dog. I don’t, this dog. And then he wasn’t interested in getting a dog. And I got obsessed with this one dog. And I, I had not been thinking that in any, there was no scenario where I was thinking of adopting a dog, but this one dog got stuck in my head and I was crying and I had to go see him.

And like, I, it’s hard to explain, but I felt like. I had no choice, no matter how irrational it was for me, being a really busy person running my own business. I lived in my office with other people with tons of inventory, computer cords everywhere. Me adopting a five month old pit bull was not a rational thing to do, but I had no choice.

It was like I had to go get this dog. [00:55:00] And I wrote about that experience very openly on my website in a blog post. And so he knew that, and so he knew how to kind of get in my head using that and all of the other things that I was very open about online. Yeah, like using like,

Zach: uh, indicators of the universe, giving you signs kind of Yes.

Things. Yeah.

Sarma: Yes.

Zach: Yeah. Which I was gonna ask you that too. You, it seems like, uh, in the, in the documentary and, um, you know, sometimes in your, in your book you talked about, uh, sometimes you felt like there were certain signs from the universe adding up, you know, you talked about. Feeling like, uh, Alec Baldwin met his partner at your restaurant, so maybe it was fitting that you might meet your partner through Baldwin, through the Twitter association or a realtor that handled, that seemed to have handled, uh, Mr.

Fox’s stuff also handled Baldwin’s. But I think, uh, you know, one thing thing that stood out to me, and I’m curious if you agree, is, you know, when we’re, when we’re stressed out and like basically existentially stressed out and we’re like looking for meaning to

Sarma: yes.

Zach: Clinging onto that, it can be very tempting to be like, well, I don’t know what I’m [00:56:00] doing, or, you know, what I should be doing and I’m stressed out about that.

And it’s, I think it’s very tempting. ’cause I’ve, I’ve gone through this too. It’s like, uh, you, you start looking for like, well I want, I want someone to tell me what to do. I want the universe to tell me what to do. So you start looking for signs about how should I live my life? Or where should I direct

Sarma: Right.

My attention. Right. And like where you’re looking, you can usually find something and you

Zach: can find something. Yeah. Yeah. And

Sarma: there’s actually a quote in my book. From Andrew Huberman that stood, you know, I, I include it in my book. Something he said on a podcast once that stood out to me and I wrote it down and included where he said, the more, uh, I’m paraphrasing, but the more intense fear.

And I think he says, a human or animal experiences. I don’t know how you would know if an animal was, basically says, the more, the more intense the fear you’re experiencing, the more prone you are to delusional thinking.

Zach: Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, so it makes sense. Yeah.

Sarma: I’m paraphrasing. I have the exact quote in my book, but that’s also why.

These people will go to great [00:57:00] lengths to keep you in a state of fear, overwhelm, confusion, exhaustion, and, and so it’s just, you’re already completely worn down and then it’s that much easier for them to wear you down and wear you down and wear you down until you go fine.

Zach: Right? Like

Sarma: fine, okay, fine. We will get married.

Like that’s, he just wore me down and convinced me that there was some reason we had to get married and I would be protected and blah. And I was like, ah, fine. Like, right,

Zach: you’re destroying, you’re constantly discerning ’cause creating so much

Sarma: stress that the only what ends up happening is you feel like the only way to relieve this tension that feels increasingly unbearable is to just go, okay, fine, I’ll send you that wire that you’re promising is the last wire ever.

And then I’ll get it all back. Like, okay, fine, I’ll just do it. And then you get relief. Um, but of course you’re just digging your own grave that much deeper.

Zach: Well, the thing that struck me there too was, uh, you know, reading your. Uh, book yesterday, [00:58:00] and you talk about it in a documentary, I think too, uh, there’s this element.

I think the thing that’s hard for people to, another thing that’s hard for people to understand is with these kinds of situations, you know, whether it’s somebody, you know, being delusional on their own or, or being manipulated in such ways, it’s, it’s like there’s, there’s like a compounding thing where you go down these pathways.

Like once you, once you live through or involve yourself with one kind of crazy thing, it changes your perception of yourself. It changes your, you know, you’re, and, and you’re kind of invested in it too. You know, it’s like you, you mentioned being, uh, like having financial investment. I think in, I think it was in the Matthew Kenny thing and how that led to a situation where you felt like you’re investing in it, so you have to keep going.

But there’s also, there can also be like emotional investment, like you’ve gone this far. So it’s like you’re more open to keep going further. And there’s also like a cognitive dis dissonance thing where it’s like. Once you have gone through such things and you have been involved in some crazy things, [00:59:00] it’s like it’s hard to turn that around because that would involve like having to create a narrative where you were so wrong and, and, and, uh, that, that requires a lot of strength because you have to basically be like, oh, everything I’ve done for the past, you know, months or years has been completely false and I’ve been completely misled.

And that’s, so it’s kinda like this compounding thing where you get led on this pathway and you, it’s hard to get out of that pathway once you start going down it, which I think is true for manipulation, but I think it’s just also a true thing about how we can go down like delusional pathways on our own, where we’re like, start being like, well, once we do and think this, we’re more open to this other thing and et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah.

Sarma: Yeah. And, and there’s just the idea that he’s, you know, he, once he got money out of me, which initially was, oh, let me just borrow this money for this crazy emergency, I’ll pay your right back. Once he got that initial. Chunk of money out of me, then he is got a hook in me. Right. Because I’m always gonna want it back.

So I, I had [01:00:00] resolved, I’m not gonna see this guy again. Like he, this is not right. Something’s, you know, but Right. He was able to get back in because he’d say, oh, I’m gonna bring you that money back. I got it and cash, I’m gonna, it creates a tie. Just tie his, it, it creates

Zach: a tie to him. Yeah.

Sarma: Right. And then he would do his mind sorcery on me and somehow he would maybe give me back some money, but then he’d get more money out of me.

And then I’m in deeper and then you’re in deeper. And then it becomes, you know, they get you in a situation, you’re more and more and more compromised and the loss is bigger and bigger and bigger. Right. But they’re promising that it’s all gonna be turned around and then some.

Zach: Yeah.

Sarma: So in order, you know, they set you, they put you in this impossible trap because for you to go, you know what, you must be full of shit.

You’re a con artist, therefore you have to accept that I am a colossal fool. I recklessly gave this guy so much money, which now I’m gonna have to accept that loss. Yeah. I’ll never see it back.

Zach: Yeah. I’ll have to just accept it it off. I’ll never get it back. Yeah.

Sarma: And I don’t [01:01:00] know how to explain it to anybody, so it’s gonna be humiliating.

And I really want what he keeps promising me, and I’m never gonna get answers. So I’m gonna have to live with the fact that he’s gonna claim that I screwed it all up. And if I just stuck out a little bit longer, this magical utopia that he keeps talking about is gonna come to a fruition like that I missed out.

So it’s this combination of wanting the answer and the explanation is what you’re kind of holding out for and the

Zach: happy ending of some sort. Yeah. And

Sarma: and not wanting to, not wanting to accept and face this big humiliating loss. So psychologically, you’re just gonna be inclined to keep. To keep going. And, and every, you know, all along the way, as you, as you’ll see when you get into the second half of the book, it’s like this one more, just this one more wire.

And then it’s all over. It’s all over and all it’s all gonna come back and this is all gonna make sense. And he would say things to me like, you’re gonna feel like a [01:02:00] big giant asshole when, when you, when you see what’s really happening here. Mm-hmm. As if

Zach: mm-hmm.

Sarma: And I’m going, well wait, what does that mean really?

And I don’t understand what that means, and I wa

Zach: Right.

Sarma: So yeah. I mean it’s complex.

Zach: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s very complex and mean. And meanwhile, meanwhile, his involvement, your involvement with him is making you more distant from your other support, you know, support system and, and people. And you’re becoming more and more, more isolated.

And they

Sarma: create, they create secrecy. I mean, it’s like, uh, any, you know, it’s like any child molester is gonna say, oh, this, this is our special relationship. You can’t talk to anybody about it. It’s just between you and I. Like, anytime somebody creates, it’s, our secret creates a, a level of, of secrecy. Uh, that’s, you know mm-hmm.

That’s, that’s kind of another red flag.

Zach: Yeah. And the, and the tie in, uh, there’s a tie in there with, makes me think of the, the gambling poker world, which I’m pretty familiar with from being an ex poker player. There’s instances where people will, you know, come out and say, this, this poker player owes me like a million dollars.

Right. And they’ll be [01:03:00] like, and, and, and how could the people will be like, how could you be so stupid to have loaned this guy money? But it’s a similar thing where, where they started out loaning him, you know, some smaller amount and then, you know, it kept compounding like the way you said, where they were, had to face this decision of like, well, if I cut ties with him and call them out, I’m not, I’m never gonna get it.

I’m not gonna get my money back. And, and also there, there, there might be an element of like, I’m an idiot, you know? So it’s like there is this emotional and financial incentive to be like. Oh, maybe if I just, you know, give him a little bit more and we stay in contact, maybe he’ll be good for it. But then it just keeps adding up and eventually it leads to them, you know, telling people publicly and facing that they’re never gonna get the money back and they can out them and everyone’s like you, why were you such an idiot?

What is wrong with you? And these are, you know, these can be very smart people, obviously. Yeah. Uh, so there is some, there’s some similarities that, that map over to just financial debts in general and

Sarma: Yeah. Or, you know, you got, you got

Zach: emotional stuff next year or not selling

Sarma: a declining stock.

Zach: Hmm. Yeah.

Right. Your emotions get involved and you, there is, yeah. There’s a, the thing where you don’t wanna take

Sarma: [01:04:00] the loss, so you just, but it keeps going down.

Zach: They say in poker, yeah, don’t throw good money after bad. But when you’re in that situation, it can be very hard to, you know, you do, you do instinctually feel like, well, I want to keep throwing money at this, at the, at this thing.

Right.

Sarma: You wanna get it back.

Zach: Yeah. Um, so I want, I wanted to ask you, um, you know, uh, obviously the, uh, you ended up owing a lot of. Money, and that’s obviously a really hard thing to deal with. And, um, and you’ve been through a lot of hard things and dealt with some horrible people. Um, how do you, how, how do you, what, what, what brings you hope and, um, do with the, with regards to the financial debt?

I imagine it’s like you just have to view it as like, it’s almost like imaginary in a sense because there’s like, it’s so hard to dig your way out of it, so you just have to accept that that’s, I guess, bankruptcy, uh, helps in, in that sense too. But it’s like, it’s [01:05:00] such a hole. It’s like, I’m curious how you, how you deal with that, that, that, that reality.

I

Sarma: think, and I’m very aware sometimes that a, a level of dissociation is almost necessary.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: Sometimes. Mm-hmm. And, and I’m also very aware of the stress of everything, including recent events. Making me susceptible to wanting to believe that there’s some greater purpose here, or like I’m being te you know, I’m very, I’m very aware of my own tendency to wanna clinging on to certain beliefs.

Right. Um, you know, I came back here to rebuild my business in the same space, which is available. And a lot of things went a bit sideways in a way that really does feel like, okay, that it, it’s, it hasn’t been the right time yet. And you know, when you get that feeling where something not working out, you feel like you were [01:06:00] protected because if it had worked out, you would’ve gotten stuck into another bad situation.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: Um, I, I mean, I’m aware I, I feel some of that now, but it’s, it’s stressful because there’s all of the debt from what happened and then. Since moving back here, I’ve just racked up credit card debt. People are like, how do you live in New York? Well, I, I’m, it’s painful. And I would leave if I wasn’t, I mean, I’m at a point where I need to make certain decisions and figure out what’s, whether I’m gonna move forward with certain things or not.

And if not, then I need to get outta here and go live in a cabin somewhere. Um, but it is very stressful. And sometimes a certain level of deliberate dissociation is, is just useful in terms of getting up and continuing to function every day. Because there’s certainly a lot of days where I don’t wanna get up and I don’t wanna function.

[01:07:00] And, um, you know, I, I, I, I think people don’t, I mean, there’s.

I feel like this rainstorm is providing, is providing like a, a, an atmosphere that’s spinning. Sorry. It gets so

Zach: dark,

Sarma: but I literally

Zach: and metaphorically. Yeah.

Sarma: Right. And I, I’m, I don’t know if this is gonna be audible to your audience, but the noise of the rain, I can

Zach: hear it

Sarma: on my end is pretty loud. So maybe it adds, maybe it’s like adding a cool vibe to this whole conversation.

But what I was gonna say is that I think, um,

yeah, I, I mean I feel pretty, I in a lot of pain a lot of the time and a lot of times I do think, I don’t, I don’t want to be here. I’m done. I’m exhausted, but I am always gonna keep up, keep getting up and keep up alive.

Zach: Yeah.

Sarma: Working towards. [01:08:00] If, if the, if I didn’t owe people money, it would almost be more dangerous because then I might be more likely to just be like, yeah, I’m out.

But because I owe people money even more recently. And, um,

one of the qualities, it’s giving you some sort of

Zach: motivation, even if it’s a negative motivation. Yeah.

Sarma: And, and, and one of the qualities that these people exploit very often in cults too, is they want people who work their asses off. They want people who aren’t gonna give up who are very determined. Yeah.

And I’m one of those people, people that’s like, I’m not gonna give up. I’m gonna keep going. I’m gonna keep getting up, I’m gonna keep, you know, I’m always gonna work my butt off at whatever it is, um, that’s in front of me. So, you know, I’m still here for it. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not really painful in the meantime.

And that I don’t sit there and, you know. Think about what if I, you know, had an easy exit? I mean, I, [01:09:00] I think, I think it, it ought to be easier for people to talk about that without Oh yeah. The threat of somebody, you know, coming in white coats to cart me off. Uh, because I, that’s precisely why people don’t talk about feeling that way is ’cause, you know, somebody’s gonna call

Zach: and they’re afraid.

I think people are afraid of sharing such things too, because it makes other people weird in interacting with you. Right? Like, I was gonna, I was gonna share something about my wife leaving me and how I went through some mental turmoil about that for an episode. And, you know, I was gonna talk about how there’s like many incentives to not talk about that, right?

Like, other people can just view you as weird for oversharing and feel weird that you’ve expressed such vulnerability and it can impact how you interact with other people, you know? And so I think there’s multiple levels of why people don’t do things like that. But, um. I did wanna say thank you for, uh, sharing that because I think, I think a lot of people feel that way, you know, for, [01:10:00] for things that have happened to them, including things that are, you know, much less horrible than your, than than what you’ve dealt with.

I think there’s a lot of people struggling with, you know, how do I, how do I make my way in this world when it seems so tough? You know? So, um, yeah.

Sarma: I think another reason why people don’t talk about it so much is very often the, the response, especially with people that you’re very close to, because the response can be so gut wrenchingly devastating when, you know, if you say something around family or whatnot, you’ll get shot down with like, oh, you don’t mean that.

And, and Right, they, they brush it away invalidated, right? Like, oh, you don’t mean that. Don’t say that. Oh, you’d never do that. Or, um, like, oh, you couldn’t. You would dev, think of how many people would be devastated if you did that, which is also hard to hear because it basically implies that you could be in such extreme pain.

The [01:11:00] extreme pain that you’re in doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you don’t upset everybody else. So you gotta just suck it up and it’s not very helpful pain.

Zach: Yeah. That’s not a very helpful thing. It’s, yeah,

Sarma: it’s like all it does is it’s more painful to hear those things. Right. And so people tend to keep it to themselves.

Zach: No, totally. Yeah. I mean, getting back to the lack of empathy people have about, you know, mental health issues and suicide and stuff. It’s like, you know, people are dealing with very hard, painful things, and that’s, you know. I think there’s just a lack of empathy for how hard life can be to deal with, like you and I, you know, like you were saying, it’s like it’s hard for people that have never dealt with that to understand like people like you and I, it’s hard for you and I to understand people that say they’ve never dealt with those things.

So the, it goes both ways, but yeah, I do, I do think it’s the more, the, the more empathy we can have for just how hard life is to deal with the, the, the better things are. Yeah.

Sarma: Yeah. And it, and it’s, it’s funny because I’m very aware that like [01:12:00] very often I have to, I talk myself into, you know, I think, okay, I’m healthy, I’m, I, you know, I’m, I’m not homeless.

I’m not in a war zone. Mm-hmm. All my limbs are attached.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: Like, I’m, I’m bright. I, I have support systems. I, there’s all these options. I have a platform I have. A bunch of follower, like, I have all this opportunity and all these good things going for me, and, you know, including being very health, like I’m, I’m healthy.

So I’ll sit there and say like, what, you know, like, what’s wrong with you? Stop feeling so bad. But as everybody who’s felt that, you know, really badly knows it’s not, you know, it’s not about that. Right. Um, or, you know, that only helps so much. And that’s another thing people will say is, oh, you have so much to be grateful for and you should just work on your gratitude lists.

I’m like, yeah. I write the fucking gratitude lists every, every day and still wanna die. Sorry. That only goes, that only

Zach: goes so, [01:13:00] so far. Yeah. That’s, um, I, I mean it’s what, it’s what you must do, but it’s like, it’s still, it’s not easy. All of that stuff, it’s not easy to do helps,

Sarma: but it’s not gonna solve the underlying issue.

And so I think having a lot of, um, you know, taking the time to really look into. Your underlying stuff is, is useful. And, um, kind of digging deep and digging out all that emotional stuff is useful.

Zach: Yeah. I will say, I mean, one thing, I mean, I’ve dealt with a lot of mental struggles in my life. Like, I’ll say, you know, I’ve talked about this in the podcast, like I dropped out of college due to some, you know, basically a nervous breakdown kind of scenario.

And for most, you know, like I’d say like most of my twenties and thirties, I’d say like most of my twenties, part of my thirties, I felt like, you know, if I could push a button to, to kill myself, I, yeah, I would’ve, you know, I, that’s how I felt. Um, I do think there’s something about like, living [01:14:00] through really tough experiences like that, that, um, you know, if you can, if you can get through them, if you can, if you can, uh, process them, it, it makes you more appreciative of things that really matter, I think, and, uh, makes you a real more.

Down to earth person and also a more empathetic person, and it makes you really appre, you know, it makes you appreciative of the, of the things that, that go well in life. There is, there is that side like, but I’m not, but you know, clearly like getting, getting to that point past the pain is like the hard part, right?

I’m not like saying this is good that this happens. I’m just saying like, if once you get through it, I, I think you’ll, you know,

Sarma: I also, I also think there’s a tendency, I mean, I think there’s a strong correlation with, and I’m struggling with like, how to say this without sounding like I’m, I’m, I’m complimenting me and you, but I’m thereby probably also complimenting most of your listeners, which is, I think that, I mean, have you ever seen like a super depressed person who was just also [01:15:00] not bright?

I think that if you, if you have a certain level of thoughtfulness and I, I call it thoughtfulness, but a certain level of thoughtfulness and. Basic intelligence and inquisitiveness about the world, it’s almost inevitable that you’re gonna at some point struggle with depression because kind of how could you not in this strange and confusing, tragic world that we live in, which is also beautiful.

And I mean, it’s why so many creative people have also struggled with depression. But my point is, at least we’re not dodos, but you know what I mean? You know what I’m trying to say? It’s like I think that a lot of very thoughtful people Sure. Struggle with these things. Yeah. And I would at some point in life

Zach: and I would add, yeah, I, I think, um, I mean, I think you’re, you know, I think, I think people in general struggle, but I think it plays out in different ways, right?

Like if you’re a less intelligent person, it might play out in more like [01:16:00] clearly self-destructive ways, whereas like, you know, you might just do something completely. I think it helps explain a lot of like really outlandish or violent or weird things you hear about. For some people where it, it just to say, I think the thing, the things that you’ll struggle with and how you’ll function with it play out and can play out in very different ways.

Whereas like people that are more thoughtful and introspective, it will play out and, you know, also more thoughtful of introspective ways and Yeah.

Sarma: And being, you know, the opposite of the, the sort of sociopathic, malignant narcissist. The more you’re on the other end of that spectrum mm-hmm. Where you’re high in empathy, which is you blame yourself for everything.

Zach: Yeah, yeah.

Sarma: But also when you’re just, you know, all these things are correlated, like getting that diagnosis, being high on the empathy scale, I score super high on the, you know, are you a highly sensitive person? Quizzes, you know, yes. I, I’m not like a most of those questions, I’m a hell [01:17:00] yes. So I think being a, a kind of a sensitive, thoughtful person.

Um, it, it almost makes it inevitable that you’re gonna at least go through some periods or bouts of depression question. Yeah. Because you do more, you do

Zach: more, you do more introspection, more, more aiming at like, what’s wrong with me and you kind of things. Yeah. Feeling

Sarma: right. And also just feeling, feeling the tragedy of things.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and feeling more sensitive, feeling it deeply. Yeah. So,

Zach: yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. Yeah. Uh, well thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I know, um, it’s hard to talk about, but I do hope that you, uh, find all the positives in life and, you know, see that, um, there’s, uh, you know, there, there, there are good things and um,

Sarma: yeah, there, there, there is that sort of, I mean, it’s a bit cliche and it’s sometimes annoying when people say, you know, the whole, like, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Zach: Yeah. That’s [01:18:00] such a, that’s such a cliche. It’s a massive, because it might kill you. Massive cliche.

Sarma: Right. But it might, it’s like it’s, but at the same time, there is an element of, of, uh, of like, yeah, I got through some pretty intense stuff,

Zach: right. Sometimes

Sarma: people read my book and they say, I can’t, I don’t understand how you’re still standing.

And they don’t even know what I went through subsequently or what I’m going through now. But there is, you’ve been through a lot of shit of like, of, of, of, you know, I think that I’m the kind of person now that you would want me on your team because I’m, I’m gonna stand up and like, I’m gonna keep getting up.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Sarma: If you knock down, you’ve through. So I’m gonna keep getting up, I’m gonna keep getting up, I’m gonna keep getting up and, and I, and I think I’m, you know, I certainly know how to handle myself better and better and I’m, and I’m a lot wiser, so, you know, I, ideally I can rebuild with that foundation.

Zach: No, it is, it is really impressive that what you’ve been through and that you’re, you know, you’re still, um.

Maintaining [01:19:00] a, a work ethic and a, and a positive attitude or, and trying to, it’s, you’ve been through a lot. It’s quite, um, it’s, it’s quite sad. And I, I feel for you. Um, do you wanna mention anything else about what you’re working on? Obviously you’ve got your, your book. Do you wanna promote anything else?

Sarma: Um, I’m writing more on Substack now and a combination of, yeah, I mean, very open stuff. And I’m also writing a bit about what’s been going on in the last couple of years. And I’m mostly on Instagram. I do answer all my dms for the most part, unless people are creepy. But, um, yeah, I’m on Instagram and I’m open to connecting to people that way.

And I love hearing from people who are reading my book. It’s, it’s one of the, I mean, the, it’s hard to explain how it feels. It really feels like. I feel honored when people read my book. That’s the only way I know how to [01:20:00] explain it. And, um, and especially, and then also I, I, I didn’t go through a big publisher, which we’ve talked about, and you know all about that.

It’s, it’s a very different story. You’re giving away so much control, but on the flip side, it’s harder to promote the book and there’s a lot of, um, I dunno if stigma’s the right word, but there’s like this assumption, especially among the people who are part of big publishing that. If you didn’t go through a big publisher, that means you tried and you weren’t able to, and it’s like, no, that’s not the case.

You know? Yeah. Um, but, but it is harder to, you know, promote the book initially. And, um, but I, I mean, I’m really glad I did it the way that I did it. I don’t think they would ever have let me include a lot of the stuff that I included, or they would’ve made me shorten it and it, it wouldn’t be the book that it is if I had gone through a big publisher.

But, um, I did make a website for the book where like, if people want a, a signed copy or they wanna get it from the [01:21:00] printer and not Amazon, which also is really much better for me, or if they wanna get it from Amazon, it’s all of those links are there. And, um, what’s the site? And then it’s just the title of the book, the Girl, the duck tattoo to.com.

And, um, and I’m on Instagram and I’m on Substack. And because I’m the only person in the world with my name, I’m easy to find. So,

Zach: yeah. I was gonna say, you’re, yeah, you’re a very good writer and you’ve done a lot of writing on your, um. Your previous, uh, blogs and such. And yeah, you’re very strong writer in my humble opinion.

Sarma: Thank you.

Zach: Okay, well thanks Sarma. This has been great. Uh, I really appreciate you, uh, sharing all these things and uh, yeah, best of luck with everything.

Sarma: Yeah, thanks.

In the summer of 2024, I went on a five-day solo retreat in the mountains of New Mexico. It was the first time I’d ever really committed to meditation, and to my surprise it turned out to be a deeply meaningful and lasting experience. In this episode, I talk about what led me to try it, what those days of fasting, solitude, and meditation were actually like, and the unexpected effects I noticed afterward in my everyday life. I also share some of the doubts and anxieties I carried into the experience, why meditation had always felt out of reach for me, and why this retreat nevertheless managed to shift something fundamental in how I relate to myself and to stress.

Episode links:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Related resources and recommendations:

• My episode with Brian Koppelman, where he talks about his experiences with transcendental meditation
• Alan Watts’ book The Way of Zen
• A playlist of Alan Watts’ lecture clips
• Sam Harris talks about how meditation helps

TRANSCRIPT

About a year ago, I went on a 5-day solo retreat in the mountains of New Mexico, where I meditated several hours a day. It turned out to be a life changing experience, which was definitely something I did not expect; so I wanted to share about it here. I’ve had a few friends ask me about it and what I did on that trip, and I kept telling people I’d eventually talk about it on a podcast episode, so I’m finally getting around to that. 

That trip was basically the first time I’d really meditated. I’d tried half-heartedly over the years a few times, for a few minutes at a time, but I had never really focused on meditating, and never done it for more than a day in a row. I’d always liked the idea of meditation, and I’ve always been interested in Buddhist philosophies and practices, since I was young. Part of the reason for me having a bit of a mental block for that is due to some experiences I had when I was younger: back when I was struggling with some mental issues and dropped out of college due to those struggles. Part of the manifestation of my mental unwellness back then was me being a bit obsessed with Eastern and Buddhist philosophies; I thought I was possibly reaching some state of transcendence. I was also smoking too much marijuana, which definitely does not help you when you’re depressed and anxious. There are studies showing links between marijuana use and psychotic/delusional types of experiences. I talk more about those experiences in a previous episode. But those experiences were why I had a bit of anxiety when it came to trying to meditate; I would have associations with that unhappy and stressful and strange period of my life, and obviously anxiety like that isn’t really condusive to the relaxing state you want to achieve in meditation. And I’d also add that in general I’ve always been a highly anxious person, so meditation doesn’t come easy to people like that, even subtracting my early experiences. 

There were a few recent factors that led to me wanting to try meditating more seriously. 

The main one was a talk I had for this podcast in February of last year with Brian Koppelman, the creator of the poker movie Rounders, and the show Billions, and other shows and movies. He talked about his life changing experiences with transcendental meditation. His personal story of how meditation had hugely reduced his anxiety got me thinking, “I need to try this.” I’ll play the clip from that episode where Brian talks about this. I debated including the long clip from that episode but in the end I decided to include it because it was what got me down this path, so I figured it might be persuasive to you, too. But if you want to skip ahead to my experiences, just keep skipping until you hear only me and not Brian. 

Zach: Do you mind if I ask you about transcendental meditation?

Brian: I’m totally happy. I love talking about it. Yep.

Zach: I know that you’re a big proponent of that and I was wondering, if you explained it to a lay audience, how would you pitch it? What are the benefits that you get from it?

Brian: Like Tim Ferriss says, I think he said something along these lines– I’m paraphrasing, I’m not quoting him– that it might be the thing that is most in common among the guests that he’s had on his show is that they do some form of meditation. I think I started meditating in 2011. And I want to say this succinctly. For me, the benefit is it reduced the physical manifestations of anxiety by something like 80% or 85%.

Zach: Wow.

Brian: One of the things is that when people want to sell stuff, they’ll say it makes your anxiety disappear. And we as human beings go, “Well, that’s bullshit.” Because nothing can. Because we’re humans and we know we’re mortal, so we have anxiety. But it just made the physical manifestations– the stomach or the heart– suddenly quickly. A month in, that stuff just went… The [line] just went way down on it. And that alone is enough. Then clarity of thought, peacefulness, sense of wellbeing. Look, I’m talking about lifting, but I’ve always been someone who exercises a lot. And part of why I started lifting and stuff is because as you get older, if you let yourself stay out of shape and you still play sports really hard, you can just hurt yourself all the time. And if you’re fat like I was, it’s just bad. So I had to start. Then you throw the cardio piece and you’re like, “Well, I got to do the other thing too.” So exercise has always been meditative, too, for me. I can get to that sort of alpha state that they call it, you know? Meditation is 20 minutes. The way I do it, Translated Meditation TM, there’s a book by David Lynch, the great filmmaker, the book is called “Catching the Big Fish” and he talks about it in a way that I find incredibly compelling. But essentially, you’re repeating a nonsense word to yourself quietly in your brain for 20 minutes twice a day. It’s very easy and it’s very calming. I just feel better doing it. I had a lot of questions going in. I had read all the sort of negative things about TM and I was very aware of it, I had very clear rules for myself about the ways in which I would engage. I would go take these lessons and then that’s the extent of my involvement. And it’s been, by the way, the extent. I’ve never gone on some retreat or thing. It’s just that I find this technique useful. And I’m just always after. It’s hard being a person, and so whatever makes being a person a little bit easier, I’ll take it. It goes back to the thing I said about mortality. We understand people are fragile, that means the people you love are fragile. And that stuff scary sometimes. So, anything that’ll help I’m interested in. Exercise is a huge one. Walking, not just as exercise, but walking is really helpful. Journaling is helpful, I think. And I think translated meditation, for me, is just very useful.

Zach: The form of the meditation, is it always the same? So, it’s 20 minutes of repeating the mantra and it doesn’t vary from that?

Brian: But the thing is, when you learn TM, it’s not rigid. You’re not forcing yourself to say this mantra over and over again. You’re allowing this mantra to surface and you’re kind of engaging with it. And then sometimes your thoughts come in. It’s like other meditation you’ve heard of. Your thoughts come in and then your thoughts move out and the mantra resurfaces. It’s just being in that space. And I’ll say I will not play. I do the morning meditation every single day in my life. I haven’t missed one since 2011. And I’d say I do the one in the afternoon 70% or 80% of the time, depends on the period. Right now I’m in a period of time where I’m doing it every day, but sometimes life makes it hard to the second one. But I will never play poker at night without doing this. Never. It’s a zero for me. Maybe I did it twice. And I just know. Like, I will meditate this afternoon before I go play poker tonight, for sure. And that will be useful. It will reset me in a way. It doesn’t mean I’m going to win, by the way. I could still lose.

Zach: And you said it’s something you say internally, you don’t say it out loud? Is that right?

Brian: Correct. You never say it out loud.

Zach: Is your mantra a secret? Or can you say what it is?

Brian: No, you don’t say what it is. And the reason is, you don’t want to attach anything to it. Really it’s a word sound noise. You don’t want to attach someone’s reaction. You don’t want to attach that moment. It really is just something to break the cycle of the pattern of thoughts.

Zach: You don’t want association.

Brian: No, you don’t want any. And no one knows it. In fact, because it’s like some state secret. It’s not special, it’s just because it keeps it pristine.

Zach: Do you have your own thoughts on what the mechanism is by how it helps you? Is it basically like… Because you said these other thoughts come in and you basically are able to kind of brush them aside, do you think it kind of sets you up to be more easily able to brush aside things?

Brian: Yeah, I don’t know. I was reading a book– this is not translated, this is a way to get to the answer– I was reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, he’s this amazing Buddhist. He had this phrase that he said he repeated to himself and he found it very useful. And I’ve done this not as TM, because it’s not TM, but I’ve done this sometimes to go to bed at night if I somehow am not able to fall asleep and my thoughts racing. He says, “I am not my body. I’m not even my mind.” By repeating that to himself, not out loud, it’s a reminder in a way that the thoughts you think aren’t necessarily valid. We all have thought things that we didn’t put into action or that turned out to be wrong, right? So just reminding yourself, yeah, you might feel a twinge in your knee, but you are not the twinge in your knee. It’s useful. Anything to create a tiny bit of separation from the thoughts that kind of own us most of the time and our essential nature, anyway that we can sort of separate those slightly, I think has tremendous benefit. And I think TM, though I don’t know, I really don’t know the answer to this, but what it feels like to me is that there’s probably a cycle of counterproductive thoughts that we all have. Who knows where they’re from? Who knows when we took them on? Whether they’re worries, fears, self-criticism, whatever the thing is, the mantra has a way of like if that thing is a circle that’s just going and going, maybe the mantra just kind of takes us somewhere else away from that and breaks it so that you have a minute to just have some peace.

Zach: Yeah, that makes sense. It’s like breaking the rumination or the ruts that we get into our normal—

Brian: Yeah, exactly right. Ruts. People should look at— I mean, there’s a lot of EEG studies and stuff, brainwave studies, and they’re doing more and more. There’s a lot of science now on this question. I was even reading recently… Recently, I put into two different AI engines a bunch of questions about meditation and the various forms, and about what the science said. And I was really prepared to be told that it’s all been debunked, but it just hasn’t been. The science really stands up for its benefits and you can just find that out. That’s just out there, people looking at the brainwaves and stuff.

Zach: Yeah. And like you said, there’s some understandable mechanisms by which you can see it helping you. And it’s now like some things you hear about you’re like, “That makes no sense.” You can see the logic there. 

As soon as Brian said it had reduced his anxiety by like 80%, I decided I needed to get into it and give it a try. 

** 

Another factor there was that I was going through some hard things in my personal life. When i talked to Brian last year, my wife was in the process of leaving me; she had left once, suddenly, a year earlier, and then had come back a few months later and we were trying to work things out, but it wasn’t looking good, and I did not think it was going to work out. So I was more anxious and emotionally fragile than I’d been for a long time. (And I actually have an episode I’ve written about some of my struggles during that time, with the hopes that it might help other people dealing with similar struggles, but I am still sitting on it to make sure I feel good about sharing it, as it is so personal.)

So a few weeks after the Koppelman talk, on a road trip with my wife, we listened to some of David Lynch’s book Catching the Big Fish. I didn’t really like it and didn’t listen to much of it. I couldn’t relate to Lynch saying he had an immediate feeling of immense joy when trying transcendental meditation. I still can’t relate to that now. Everyone is different, of course, but his description of his experiences made it clear that he and I were very different people, and I didn’t get much out of his descriptions. I mention that just in case it’s interesting for anyone who has listened to that and had a similar reaction, and maybe because of that thought that meditation wasn’t for them. 

In August of last year, I went to a place called the Lama Foundation in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico. I used to live in Albuerquerque, and I’d been there a couple times before. My wife had once had a three day solitary retreat there, what they call a hermitage, and she had enjoyed it. The Lama Foundation’s main claim to fame is that it was where Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, wrote the well known book Be Here Now. I’m not a fan of that book; I found it quite silly, to be honest. I’m skeptical of almost all metaphysical and spiritual writings, and that specific book I found to be especially silly. Basically it involves Alpert doing a bunch of psychedelics, and traveling to India, and believing he’s witnessed amazing, magical acts, but he’s also doing so many drugs he’s an extremely unreliable narrator about what’s real and what’s not. But leaving aside any metaphysical or spiritual beliefs, the Lama Foundation is just a great property, and they have these two hermitage cabins there, where you can spend your days uninterrupted, without seeing anyone else if you don’t want to, and they bring you foods you request and leave them in a box where you can get them. The area is just very beautiful and surreal and intense-seeming, also; especially at night when the sun is setting and the light is a bit strange and the old fire-charred snags look other worldly; it does put you in a spiritual frame of mind, I think.  

I’ll just give you a description of some of my decisions I made on that trip, regarding how I approached trying to have a meaningful meditation experience. 

First, I decided to fast for four days. I’d fasted for five days before, years before. I’d also read about the idea that fasting puts you in a state more conducive to spiritual practice and inward focus. I had observed that myself when I fasted before; there was an interesting mental state, where things felt more intense, but calm. It might just be light headedness, I don’t know, but I do think there is something to that. 

I also decided to practice a mix of transcendental meditation, with the mantra repetition, and just breath-mindfulness meditation: breathing and focusing on your breath. I printed out some instructions and tips for both of these kinds of meditations to bring with me. 

Another decision I made was to not have any devices or books with me. The only things I took with me to the cabin were a few articles of clothing, and a pen and some paper. I locked up my computer and phone at the Lama Foundation lodge. 

My general schedule while there was something like this: 

Wake up when the sun rose, which was around 6am. 

Try some meditation for an hour or so

Go for a long walk on the mountain trails or on the long winding roads near the foundation 

Try meditation for another hour around noon or afternoon

Walk around some more

Try meditation again for an hour

I also made the decision to not read much or write much. The first three days I didn’t read or write anything. I was trying to embrace pure experience as much as I could. I broke from that the fourth adn fifth day, writing down some observations I’d had, and reading some books they had in the cabin (including some of Be Here Now). 

One thing I struggled with was my back. I’ve never been very good at sitting in the traditional meditation position. I often just sat in a straight backed chair they had in the cabin, and this was my usual position. As many people will tell you, you can meditate in any position.  I mention this in case anyone thinks that you need to be in a certain position. The important thing is that you’re comfortable. Although you shouldn’t be too comfortable as then you might just end up falling asleep. 

For most of the time there, I felt like I wasn’t meditating correctly, that I wasn’t quote “doing it right.” I was having the often described experience of trying to clear my mind and just observe and be, but constantly having the usual trains of thoughts and random observations and random thoughts about tasks I needed to do, all those things flood my mind. But as I learned from my own experiences and from reading more later, it’s important to embrace the idea that there is no “doing it right.” That one should try to recognize that you are entering the process; that you are trying to observe experience, trying to calm your mind. One should try to not add insult to injury by thinking that one is not doing it right; one should try to embrace the idea that you are just learning about yourself and about your existence. 

And I think once you start having an experience that you are part of the universe, that kind of cliche, it becomes easier to forgive yourself for not “doing it right,” or missteps you seemingly have. 

[Alan Watts clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mimR10eAlPk]

That was a clip of Alan Watts talking about how he views the nature of meditation and its importance. After my meditation experiences, I became a big Alan Watts fan. His book The Way of Zen is great. If you’re curious about more resource recommendations, I’ve put some on the entry for this episode at my podcast site behavior-podcast.com.

So in the first few days of the retreat, I had a few minor positive feelings, moments that felt meaningful. Some of that enjoyment was in the form of just having more time to think, to be free from the usual things, like tasks and phone messages and internet stuff. Some of that was just the ability to let my mind wonder and think of more meaningful, existential things. Some of it was intellectual; logical aspects of Buddhist-related thought, about the fact that I am a part of the universe, and the universe is a part of me, and that I am a part of the universe unfolding. Some of the positive experiences were feelings of peace and connection, even as they were interspersed with feelings of frustration, doubts about what I was doing; skepticism that I was just too desperate to have a meaningful experience, which maybe is self-defeating. 

On the fourth day, I had a highly meaningful feeling after I’d been meditating in the afternoon about an hour. For a few minutes, I felt filled with a glowing, peaceful feeling, a feeling that everything was right with the world and me, that I was tapped into something meaningful. I finally understood what people were talking about when they talked about the peacefulness and joy of meditation. 

A little later that day, and the fifth day, I had less intense but still peaceful and nice iterations of that. It was all enough to make me feel like I’d at least tasted and touched what people mean when they praise meditation. I had had the experiences that would be enough to lead me to want to do it more, and to go down that path.  

But these experiences weren’t life-changing. What I consider life changing was noticing how I felt when I left and got back to my regular life. It felt like a huge weight had lifted from me. It felt like there had been a heavy, anxiety-producing weight on my heart, around my heart, and that now I felt light. Something i wrote a few weeks after the experience was that I felt that my heart had been encased in some protective armor; that the things that usually bothered me and caused me pain were not reaching me now. I’m talking everything from very small things, like loud sounds that might usually make me jumpy and lead to anxious thoughts, to more major things, like the stuff going on with my wife and in my work. 

And this was entirely unexpected. It was surprising enough to me that I’d even had the joyful, intense experiences I’d had a few times during the retreat. I was entirely prepared for the retreat to be just me mainly feeling frustrated, like I wasn’t able to meditate like others were. I definitely didn’t expect such a relatively small set of experiences to translate to such a big change in mood and feeling. And again, it’s possible that the two things weren’t directly connected; it’s possible I could have had the long-lasting effect of the meditation without ever experiencing the joyful, blissful state; I don’t really know. 

And it’s been a quite lasting change. It has faded a bit, especially because I haven’t kept up the meditation, due to a lot of changes in my life, including my wife finally leaving me, me starting a new relationship, my moving to New York City, my starting a new job, and more. So it’s a little hard to track my state of mind across all these recent changes, and what’s due to what, but I do think that that experience changed me in a fundamental, lasting way. 

I should mention that it’s not like all my anxiety is removed. I don’t want to paint a too rosy portrait of my life or what the meditation did for me. I’m still often a quite anxious person, just as I always have been, and that’s something I want to work on more. I want to meditate more, for one thing. But in major ways the anxiety is decreased. So I had a similar experience to Koppelman; I’m not sure if it was 80% like he said, but it was significant. I think the meditation experience built some stronger mental foundations; gave me a better base of calmness from which to operate and to which I can partly return.  

For anyone who wants to try something like this, I’ll now list a few tips and observations I had, which might serve to help you. 

• Again, don’t worry too much about the position you’re in. If a cross-legged or lotus position makes you uncomfortable, get a comfortable straight-backed chair. 
• Try not to beat yourself up with thoughts that you’re not doing it right, or that you’re somehow ill suited to practicing meditation. This is normal. Keep trying to return to what you’re trying to do, depending on your meditation style you’ve chosen. Keep trying to return to observing your breath, or observing your thoughts. It’s entirely natural to have all sorts of intrusive thoughts; I would think that even the best practitioner of meditation would still occasionally have random thoughts. You are there to learn about how your mind works, and to observe it, so as to understand yourself and existence better. 
• If you’re really having trouble just being, and have a lot of intrusive thoughts that are bugging you, i think it’s okay to just let them go like that for a while. If you can’t beat them, let them go on for a while. No one’s grading you; and sometimes letting them go on for a while is what is necessary for you to work them out of your system. I think this is especially true for people new to this way of being. 

I feel that my positive experience was partly just about being free to think my own thoughts and connect with myself again. For me, how I live my life, my daily life is often just a parade of various tasks I’ve set myself to do; things to get through. That often includes even recreational activities, like reading a book or watching a show; even those more recreational things can start to feel like more assignments, a laundry list of things to do. So even apart from my meditation experience, there was something very calming and grounding on that trip in just being able to let my mind wander, to not be activity -focused, to just feel free to sit and do nothing and day dream. And that was also an important learning for me; that I need to make more time for just being, and try not to feel pressured to always fill my time up. 

I also had a sense of my experience fusing different parts of myself, of bringing them more in alignment with each other. Most of us are living such hectic lives, that I think there can be little time to let all your experiences and thoughts meld; there’s not enough time for processing. So I think just sitting and being, meditating or not, ** is time your mind spends compiling and fusing all the various thoughts and motivations and goals you have, and coupling them more tightly. During my trip, I had the sensation of my scattered inner multitude of voices coalescing in a stronger, more stable, more calm configuration. 

Another interesting part of this is just how easy it’s been for me to go from having such an amazing experience and being very excited about meditating, to basically not meditating at all. This is partly because of so many things going on in my life, as I’ve said, but it’s still kind of astounding to me. I haven’t had many experiences that amazed me, and this was one, and yet now I’m back to living as if that amazing experience didn’t happen; you’d think having such an amazing experience, you’d want to continue down that path, keep pursuing it; keep chasing the dragon. I tell myself almost every day: I need to make more time for the meditation, I tell myself, okay, tomorrow, I’ll get up early and do it for a few minutes, and really start doing it every day. But then the next day rolls around and I’m exhausted and just want to sleep or rest a few more minutes before work. Plus there’s the knowledge that it’s not that an immediately exciting endeavor; I will have moments of joy occasionally doing it, but that’s mostly not my experience doing it. It’s a practice I think is valuable, especially with the reduction in anxiety, but the payoffs are more long term. Put another way; I experienced a magical thing, but the magic of it isn’t directly obvious or available to me; I’m still not even sure what factors led to it being a magical experience. So that’s another factor for me failing to keep it up even though I want to keep it up.  

But maybe for now, it’s enough for me to know it happened, that it did help me in some long term way, and that it’s there when I want or need to return to it. 

Have you had an interesting experience with meditation? Feel free to reach out to me at behavior-podcast.com and let me know about it. 

Again, I’ve got some book and other resource recommendations for you on the topic of meditation; you can find those on the entry page for this episode, on my site behavior-podcast.com. 

A 2023 talk with Craig Malkin, author of the book Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists, in which he explains that narcissism is a spectrum. It’s healthy and normal to have some positive and grandiose illusions about your place in the world, as long as those illusions don’t become pathologically unhealthy and toxic.

Topics discussed: the spectrum of narcissism, ranging from more normal forms of narcissism to pathological, malignant, dangerous forms; common misconceptions about narcissism; existential and psychological factors that can lead to more malignantly narcissistic traits and behaviors; the phenomenon of people overzealously labeling others narcissists; the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (the basis of many people’s understanding of narcissism) and how it works.

For a transcript and other resources about this interview, see the original episode entry.

Episode links:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Why do we feel so unsettled and agitated when the world doesn’t make sense? In this episode, I talk with psychologist Steven Heine about his Meaning Maintenance Model — a theory that explains how we react when our sense of meaning is threatened. We explore how disruptions to our mental frameworks can lead us to double down on our beliefs, seek comfort in nostalgia, or shift our focus to other sources of meaning. We discuss what this tells us about political polarization, existential crises, and even how psychedelics and surreal art can shake up (and sometimes heal) our sense of reality. If you’ve ever wondered why ambiguity and uncertainty can feel so deeply uncomfortable—and what we might do to avoid it—this episode is for you.

Episode links:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

For more details about this talk, and the transcript, see this page: https://behavior-podcast.com/how-do-we-respond-when-our-sense-of-meaning-is-threatened-with-steven-heine/

Can blockchain tech reinvent journalism—and reduce toxic polarization polarization in the process? In this episode, Zachary Elwood talks with Don Templeman, founder of Aemula, a radically new kind of news platform. Inspired by the decentralization and transparency of cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based technologies, Aemula aims to create a trustless, bias-resistant newsroom of the future—one where algorithms are public, incentives reward nuance, and toxic polarization is nudged downward by design. Whether you’re a blockchain skeptic or a media reform enthusiast, this is a conversation about what’s broken in journalism—and one bold idea for fixing it.

Episode links:

• YouTube (includes video)
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:

• Aemula’s Substack page: https://aemula.substack.com
• Don Templeman’s LinkedIn account
• Previous episode on systemic change vs cultural change for reducing polarization
• A talk with Tangle News creator on how his approach might reduce polarization

TRANSCRIPT

(Transcripts are automatic and will contain errors.)

Zachary: Hello. This is the People Who Read People Podcast with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast about understanding, behavior and psychology. You can learn more about [email protected]. There’s a guy in New York City named Don Templeman working on a news site. That might just be the future of journalism. A complete rethinking about how news should work a new paradigm at the risk of using an overused word.

You might make an analogy to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency just as that is an entirely new way of thinking about money in an attempt to make currency trustless and decentralized. This is doing the same thing for journalism. [00:01:00] I am a little hesitant to use that analogy because so many people have a negative view of cryptocurrency or maybe don’t understand why so many people see it as exciting.

But leaving aside your views on crypto, the important part is that this is a dramatic re-imagining of our news system. Uh, from the ground up, Don Tillman’s project is called Aula, which you can [email protected]. That’s A-E-M-U-L-A. Don thinks it’s possible that he’s creating the newsroom of the future, and after meeting with him and talking to him about the news system, the news ecosystem, and about technology and about politics and polarization dynamics, I think it’s possible he’s right.

I’m impressed with Don and think he’s onto something very big and very important. I think he has a lot of smart ideas. And I think no one else is doing what he’s doing. [00:02:00] Taylor Dotson is the author of The Divide, which I think is one of the best books about American polarization. Taylor also expressed his support for Aula saying, Don Templeman is laying the foundations for a trustworthy informational environment at scale.

The digital newsrooms of the future will look something like annular. I wanted to try to instill in you some of the excitement I had on learning about Don’s work. You’ll like this episode if you’re interested in better ways of doing news and journalism, or if you’re interested in how blockchain technology can be used to create healthier social incentives.

Or if you’re curious to know why people are excited about blockchain technology and why so many see it as a game changer with broad applications in many industries. If you didn’t already know, I’ve written two books on polarization and for the last 1.5 years I’ve been working on that pretty much full time with some [00:03:00] nonprofits and doing my own work.

Like with my Substack and my podcast and various interviews and writings. I myself focus on cultural change as a way to improve things in these areas as opposed to systemic changes. It is not that I don’t think systemic changes have their place, it’s just that I think most systemic changes are unlikely to succeed because we’re so polarized that we’ll never agree on making those systemic changes.

For example, let’s say that we were a hundred percent certain that rank choice voting would lead to less polarization and discord, which is not certain many people would disagree with that. But let’s say we were certain, I don’t think we’d ever see Republicans and Democrats get on the same page to pass something, to change things in that area.

I think toxic polarization leads to us becoming polarized over pretty much everything of significance. So [00:04:00] even if theoretically many people supported something and were in agreement, as soon as a Democrat or a Republican leader becomes associated with that idea will likely become polarized over it.

That’s just what polarization tends to do to us. It makes us fight over stuff in unreasonable ways. As I’ve talked about in a previous episode, we can have a tendency to instinctively think something like, well, if the bad guys are for this thing, we should be against it. So that’s why, that’s one of the reasons I focus on cultural change, trying to arouse the general demand for less contemptuous and toxic ways of engaging.

I have a past episode where I talk with David Foster about cultural change versus systemic change. David has worked on proposing changes to media and news systems, and again, to be clear, I’m not saying that systemic change focus is a bad thing or a [00:05:00] waste of time. I think we need people thinking about all these things.

I just personally think that there’s a lot of low hanging fruit. In the cultural change area, and we need more people working on that. But the interesting thing about Don’s Project Aula, what made it exciting to me is that it was something that was a private sector thing, not something that needed to be mandated by the government or passed via legislation.

And so if Aula became successful and. Became used by millions of people. Eventually, it could really shift incentives and change the culture without anyone ever being able to say this was forced upon us, or that it was associated with one side or the other. All it has to do is what it sets out to do. Be a great news site that people want to use, and it’s other benefits that are about better, less polarized, polarizing incentives and ways of engaging.

Those benefits will unfold indirectly just [00:06:00] as a part of it becoming popular. So, okay. Uh, what is aula? Well, it’s a news platform, but it operates completely unlike other news platforms, it might be easier to walk through some of the ways it works that make it unlike other news platforms. For one, it is decentralized.

You might have heard this word used to describe cryptocurrency. Crypto is a decentralized currency. But what does decentralized mean? It means there is no one actually in charge of it. Don sets up the way the system works, for example, the way that Aula decides to promote submitted articles to readers.

And then Ambula operates on its own. It has its own baked in rules that cannot be changed. Although some rules can be changed by a community of people who vote to change it. Similar to, uh, some other blockchain based. Services. Aula is also [00:07:00] transparent. It’s algorithms, how it works are in full view, visible to all.

There’s nothing hidden. So these two things about Aula, uh, the fact that no one’s in charge of it and the fact that it is transparent, help build trust. Unlike other major sources of news now or in the past, there are no editors deciding what to feature. This means that it takes away perceptions of bias.

It removes the tendency to see, uh, to be angry at the news platform itself, or the editors, or the owners for their bias or their propaganda or their malice or these kinds of things. Now, people may not like the way Alo works and the content it exposes to them, but that’s a different story. They can trust that the algorithm is transparent and public, and if amulet is working properly, people will like the things it surfaces to them and want to keep using it.

And because it’s decentralized and operates on its own, it is infinitely scalable. [00:08:00] Unlike existing traditional newsrooms, ulus billing and money distribution is also entirely automated and transparent. Subscriber money goes into a pool, and then content creators get automatically paid based on how much engagement their articles get.

But wait, you may be saying or thinking there’s no one in charge. That sounds like it would be pure chaos. Wouldn’t it turn into a madhouse? Wouldn’t it be like an out of control four chan or Reddit thread or something like this? But that’s where Ambula is meant to shine. It uses a sophisticated content recommendation protocol that tries to both A, give people what they want based on other articles and writers they’ve liked.

While also B, moving their content recommendations in less polarized, less fringe directions, and more in the direction of ideas and news that have appealed to a broad range of people. Now keep in mind that when I say polarized or [00:09:00] fringe here, we’re talking also about contempt and animosity and uh, just plain obliviousness here.

We’re not talking about ideas. So it’s not just about moving people towards ideas and stances that are moderate or in the middle, so to speak. It’s about moving people towards less contemptuous takes and coverage. Coverage that understands and respects a broad range of views that is not oblivious to the ways that many people see issues and see stances.

Another way to understand this is from the journalist perspective. The view of someone who submits an article to Ambula because of how the algorithm works, that journalist or pundit will have an incentive to try to speak to a broad range of people as opposed to just people on one political side, as opposed to just venting to and speaking to one’s allies.

The algorithm creates the [00:10:00] incentive to try to reach more people and and be more persuasive. I think that’s what’s exciting about Amila. It is meant to create a self-sustaining, infinitely scalable system that has much healthier, more social, less polarized incentives than our current news ecosystem. If it were to become popular, it could create a seismic shift in how people create and consume news.

It would give power to journalists and pundits. Who take more respectful, less polarized, more nuanced approaches, it would lead to less polarized, hateful discourse. It would lead to more nuanced discussions. It would lead to more creative compromises becoming visible. As I said, I don’t often get excited about ideas for changing the system, but I’m excited about Don’s project.

I recommend you sign up to Aula on the main site, which is aula.com. Again, that’s A-E-M-U-L-A. And I recommend that you also sign up for the [00:11:00] Aula Substack, which [email protected]. Okay. Here’s the talk that I had recently with Don Templeman, founder of aula. Hey Don, thanks for joining me.

Don: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

Always a pleasure. Oh yeah, my pleasure. Uh, so maybe we can start with. Uh, you know, as, as you, as you and I have both seen, uh, trying to explain this to some people recently, it can be kind of hard to communicate in, in a short form your vision for this thing, which I think speaks to what a kind of paradigm shift it is and how people think about news and journalism.

But, uh, maybe we could start with an analogy or two because, and I’ll, and I’ll give you a rough sense of how I see it. I kind of view it as like, sort of like the constitution, you know, of a, of a country can help set things up to run in ways that are [00:12:00] self-policing and help create good outcomes. Basically, what you’re trying to do is something like that that creates a self-sustaining system with good incentives for a news and journalism platform.

Is that a good analogy? And maybe you can talk about that.

Don: Yeah, exactly. That’s. What we’re trying to do is set up an ecosystem, an incentive structure, with rules that allow writers to go out and produce high quality independent journalism and readers to be able to consume it and know that they can all trust that it’s a credibly neutral platform.

It’s a high trust environment, and with constitutions, that’s essentially when they’re using countries, what the intent of them is. But what you’re relying on with constitutions is for the execution of that vision of those rules and values that you’re setting up from the start. You’re relying on other people to execute that vision.

So like you’re relying on the judiciary process to actually work and make sure that it’s not [00:13:00] corrupted or executive functions, everything like that. Whereas what we’re trying to do is remove that reliance on trusting individual other humans. By building it on decentralized technologies that are inherently trustless.

So you’re not necessarily having to rely on other individuals to make sure that you can trust information you’re getting. You can see that like this is a program that is running, that there isn’t any way to have a malicious act outside influence, try to censor or push specific narratives. Uh, you can just join the ecosystem.

It’s open to everyone and everyone can rest easy That. Everything is running according to the rules that we’ve all, uh, accepted.

Zachary: Yeah, I think that’s where people, uh, especially people who aren’t that familiar with, you know, blockchain or decentralized structures. Some people can struggle with this because I’ve seen, you know, when I was explaining this to some people, I think a lot of people will think like, well, somebody’s gotta be in charge of these, you know, [00:14:00] editorial decisions or pro what we promote or what articles get promoted.

But the, uh, maybe you could talk a little bit about what. The decentralized technology really means, and you know, I guess an analogy for it is sort of like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies create a self sustaining or self-policing system that works on its own. That’s what you’re trying to do for, for journalism, right?

Don: Absolutely. And I think the Bitcoin analogy is good because it provides like a simple structure that you can use to start to understand. A lot of the mechanisms that we’re using, uh, where we’re building Ethereum or building Aula on Ethereum. And so with Bitcoin it’s a digital currency. And traditionally with currencies throughout human history, what you’re relying on to be able to transact and make sure that no one is kind of creating their own bank balances, no one’s printing their own money.

Is you’re relying on trusted third parties. So these are [00:15:00] institutions like banks or governments or federal reserves that are maintaining the currency system. And what Bitcoin is doing for currency is they’re removing that trusted intermediary and saying that you can trust this digital protocol where everyone is coming together and collectively agreeing on the state of the protocol, essentially like the transactions that are happening, everyone’s bank balances.

So that we can all go and transact freely without having to rely on banks or governments or middlemen. The same thing is happening with Ethereum, and what they’re trying to do is create a world computer, essentially one computer that everyone can come in and work with. Uh, it’s essentially a network. So when you think of traditional corporate internet platforms, when you think of Facebook or Substack.

These companies are running their platforms on their own servers that they fully control. So Facebook has, they control the gates so they can say who has [00:16:00] access to Facebook, they can delete posts on Facebook. They can change the algorithms that Facebook is running and should using to create your feeds for you because they fully control it.

Whereas if we build a protocol on top of Ethereum, no one inherently controls that computer that we’re using to run this program on top of. So no one controls who has access. No one has the ability to remove content or sensor content. Uh, so everyone is able to come and contribute freely and work together to collaborate, uh, with the shared mission, which is essentially the protocol that we’re putting together for aula, specifically, a protocol for producing and distributing independent journalism,

Zachary: right?

So anyone can submit, uh, content to it, the system. Automatically promotes content to people that, uh, it thinks will be interested in that. And maybe we could talk a little bit about, ’cause I think a lot of people hearing that, they’re like, well, nobody’s in charge. It’s just gonna devolve into [00:17:00] madness and chaos and, you know, we, we’ve seen how these things can play out.

So, uh, so maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, how you’re, how you’re making the, the, how the algorithm is promoting content and how you’re, uh. Trying to reward people that speak to a broader range of people to try to break the usual incentives for kind of like speaking to bubbles and such.

Don: Yeah. I’ll start very high level because I think curation is such an important aspect of news and just interacting with information online in general, because we’re in such a digitally interconnected global society. Where most people feel like they have some pulse on what is going on globally, but when you think about your worldview that you’ve created, you really are only able to create it either based on stuff that you’ve directly experienced in your own life, which is a very small subset of that information and information that has [00:18:00] been reported to you from third parties, and in most cases, this is.

Third parties that are strangers to you. These are news reporters, people in different countries reporting the news, people on social media that are sharing posts. And so a lot of the time you’re relying and trusting these strangers on the internet to provide you information that you’re then using to generate your worldview, that you go out and share with other people and use to form your own basis for your own belief system.

Zachary: Right? We’re all, we’re all products of our surrounding ecosystem. Yeah.

Don: exactly. And historically what we’ve had to do is rely on trusted intermediaries to handle that curation process. So with legacy institutional publications, you’re relying on the credibility of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, because they have such a long track record of generating the high quality professional journalism that I know.

If I subscribe to you. New York Times, I’m trusting that their [00:19:00] editorial board is going to go out, sift through all of the information that’s being generated in the world on a daily basis and condense it and curate it into something that is relevant to me. It’s engaging and is something that I can trust to be able to actually build my own belief system off of that.

A similar process happens on social media, but that is more algorithmic where you’re saying like, I will. Create a Facebook account, I’ll create an X account and I will read the stuff that comes up in their news speed and I’m trusting their algorithms to promote content to me that I will find engaging and I’ll follow people and subscribe to people that align with my beliefs.

And I’ll use that to form, uh, the basis for my belief system. However, you’d need to start to look into the incentive structures of how these different institutions are forming these curation algorithms. So with Facebook with X, they’re all free to use advertiser driven. [00:20:00] And so they’re trying to optimize their algorithms to promote content that captures your attention they can use to sell advertising.

And you’re more of a product in those ecosystems where I’m giving you my user data, I’m giving you my preferences, and they’re using that to sell to advertisers to target you with personalized advertising. The type of content that ends up getting promoted by those algorithms is more of that like click beatty, rage Beatty type stuff, where it’s.

It gets people arguing in the comments, it gets people sharing it with their friends, it gets people talking about it, and that’s kind of that amplification cycle of this inflammatory environment where all of a sudden everything online seems so much more polarized than it is in our actual day-to-day lives of interacting with individuals.

Because if you’re actually just sharing what the vast majority of us actually experience and believe, it’s not really that exciting and not something that gets people like retweeting things on x. [00:21:00] So what we’re trying to do is create a different incentive structure with algorithms that we’re using to curate content, because if we’re not relying on a editorial board to go out and cherry pick articles, we’re gonna have to rely on algorithms just given the vast, vast complexity of all the information going on and being generated on a daily basis.

So the first thing is all of our algorithms, we want to be completely open source, fully transparent. Anyone can come on and see like, why am I seeing the content I’m seeing? Writers can see like, what are the goals I’m trying to hit with how I can receive larger promotion for my content work on the platform.

So everything needs to be completely open source and. For open source, fully transparent algorithms to actually be usable. They need to be human readable and easy to understand. So you can’t rely on machine learning, artificial intelligence, like these black boxes where you don’t really know what’s going on in it.

You just know their goals. So we’re trying to have a very [00:22:00] simple human readable algorithm. But then on top of that, what we’re trying to do, our main goal is to be able to reverse these trends of polarization that we’re seeing in the media. And we can do that by promoting articles that receive a lot of diverse support that are written from a more moderate perspective, that have been, that have gone through a peer-to-peer editorial process that may receive feedback, may have been backed up by more research.

So we can include all of these as inputs into how we’re ranking articles and our system. But what we’re able to do without getting kind of too into the details on this now, is. We don’t need to know. We as aula in this context. We don’t need to know any underlying data about the users. We don’t need to know any underlying content of the articles.

We’re just looking at relationally, how are people interacting with specific articles? How are people react? Interacting with specific authors, [00:23:00] because then we’re able to back out and see. Roughly who agrees with whom on the platform. We don’t necessarily need to know what their perspectives are. We don’t need to know if they’re left leaning or right leaning.

We don’t have to try to put content labels on these types of perspectives, but we can roughly see like where people fall in this general population of platform users. And we can map out like what is the actual central consensus viewpoint on the platform and where are the fringes. And once we have this map, we can say people who are writing.

From this moderate center are likely making better arguments than people that are maybe getting a lot of engagement from a small group of people, but are all on the fringe, and we can look at people who are agreeing with those articles and see if they’re all coming from diverse backgrounds and different pockets of ideologies.

Then whoever’s writing that article is probably making arguments that are based in fact, that are sound arguments, reasonable arguments that are easy to engage with from people of [00:24:00] all sides. Once you are able to promote and rank articles based on that diversity, you’re able to start to create new bridges and, uh, kind of new pathways for people to discover new perspectives because it allows ’em to slowly over time start to become exposed to new perspectives rather than.

Showing someone, uh, argument from the complete opposite side of the aisle where they’ll probably quickly dismiss it and discredit it as, uh, false. Even if it is making strong sound arguments, we can show them something that is kind of adjacent to them or slightly more moderate than their current point of view that they’re likely to agree with.

And then over time you can slowly depolarize the entire ecosystem.

Zachary: So, um, yeah, I think the interesting thing about this, the thing I think a lot about is it, it kind of relates to my experience in poker and thinking about game theory and stuff is I think a lot of people think [00:25:00] that if you made your algorithm, uh, your strategy, so to say public and everyone knows it, that it opens it up to gaming and exploitation.

But I think the, the thing that you’re trying to do and, and other companies try to do with these kind of open source strategies. Is you’re trying to create a strategy that has built-in incentives so that even if someone was trying to game it, that’s a good thing from your perspective, right? It’s like, so if somebody is trying to game this algorithm, they’d be trying to create content that speaks to a wide variety of people and like, you know, so that, that’s a good thing.

So I think you’re, you’re creating the, the very incentive that, that you want to see, even if people try to exploit it, right? Am I understanding that correctly? Exactly. That’s, we want you to

Don: try to gain the system because you’ll see. People posting on X or people posting on Substack, how to growth hack your audience.

What are the games you have to play on the platform to try to gain exposure? And with ambulance, like the incentives we’re putting in place are if you’re [00:26:00] trying to gain the system, if you’re trying to increase your exposure, increase your monetization, earn the financial rewards that we’re trying to put out there, you’ll start to be riding from a depolarized perspective.

Inherently, uh, which we think will benefit people over the long run because we want individuals bringing their own unique perspectives. If you’re relying on humans to generate content, they’re gonna be bringing their own biases no matter where they fall. But we think if the ecosystem has those incentives towards depolarization, then that will happen as a second order effect, and everyone is able to still have the liberty to write and interact freely.

Uh, but it’s just, that’s, if that’s where the money is, that’s what people will start to align their engagement for. And it’s, most of the time people are moving the other way where it’s like they may have a more moderate perspective, but then they’ll try to use more inflammatory language or kind of over like, make everything more over exuberant, [00:27:00] like the Mr.

Beatification of YouTube just to try to get clicks and engagement. Or it’s, we can allow people to actually just share the more moderate point of view and they’ll actually receive more monetization that way.

Zachary: Yeah, and it’s worth throwing in too for people thinking like this is some sort of like, because people hear moderate or centrist and they start thinking like, well you’re, you’re trying to change people’s beliefs towards some moderate or center its beliefs.

But I think the important thing is. A lot of what we’re talking about when, in terms of moderation is the, is the contempt that people have for other views, so it’s like mm-hmm. It’s not necessarily a moderate or in the middle stance that somebody have or that might be popular. It’s somebody might have a view that many people think is extreme even, but if they’re expressing it in a persuasive way and not like.

Demonizing, you know, groups of people that’s, it’s all about how you express it. So I just wanted to make that clarification. ’cause a lot of people will kind of mingle like beliefs and, and, and this level of like engagement and contempt. And I think, you know, it’s important to [00:28:00] to point out like, you know, it, there’s all sorts of views that could be, that could, that could gain purchase, uh, in, in in the audience.

Right, exactly. So, yeah, and I wanted to say too, yeah, I think, I think people, I mean for, for me, I. I think so much about the incentives and the systemic incentives, and that’s why it’s hard for me to get too upset about people’s behavior because I, I just see so many ways that this systemic thing that we’re in, like this, this, this toxic conflict kind of scenario and the various incentives of various structures like media and politics, there’s so many systemic elements to this, which to me is like, and, and so many people I think focus on specific people as being.

Agents and powerful agents, you know, for example, they might say like Fox News or M-S-N-B-C are, are making bad decisions and, and, and polarizing us. But I think it’s important to see that they are part of a system and they are playing by the rules of that system. And they [00:29:00] are, you know, whether they know it or, or not.

There’s various, you know, range of people trying to specifically rile people up or, or they’re just biased or actually believe what they’re doing. But there’s various ways that the systemic sys the, the system. Incentivizes polarizing behaviors. And I think, I think when pe when you see that clearly as I think, I think you and I see that aspect of things clearly, it really shows the importance of creating better incentives and not getting so been outta shape on specific actors.

And it’s like, can we, can we work on these foundational incentives? Right? And that’s what’s so exciting to me about your thing because I, I actually see very few. Systemic things that could actually work because, you know, for example, if it was a government based system, we’re so polarized that it’s very unlikely that we’d ever get on the same page about passing some big systemic change government wise.

And I, that’s why like, I think like rank choice voting is kind of a, a dead end for that reason. ’cause I think it’d be very hard, [00:30:00] you know, we’ll become polarized over that in various ways. Yeah. Uh, so the various things that people might propose, I think are. Are difficult to get past, but I like the organicness of, of, of yours and the fact that it might grow organically and be a real paradigm, uh, shift there.

But yeah, there’s just so many incentives baked into these various systems. Yeah.

Don: Yeah. And that was sort of the genesis of the idea is I was starting to realize that everything I was reading online. Or in the press was seemingly more polarized than my actual like day-to-day experience of speaking with friends, meeting new people, and actually talking about things.

And I may be an optimist in this regard, but I think most people, when you’re interacting directly, you’re able to find some common ground. And if you actually spend the time to have that conversation, it’s typically. Things aren’t as inflammatory as they seem online. And when I started to try to understand [00:31:00] like what is actually driving this, like what are the underlying motives that are driving people to be more polarized, there are a lot of contributing factors, but what seemed to be one of the largest contributors was just the incentive structures of our media, our media systems, because.

Corporate social media platforms, you’re relying on advertising supported free to use platforms. These algorithms that are, uh, incentivizing people to promote more inflammatory clickbait type articles or if institutional publications, you’re running into this audience capture type scenario where. You’re, they’re having to carve out their own market share within their own niche to capture market share within these, uh, kind of media markets and the audiences that they then capture, they’re trying to support with providing them.

Information that aligns with their audience’s beliefs, and then they’re hiring journalists that are able to write from those [00:32:00] perspectives. The editorial, the editors on these editorial boards are selecting information to align with those perspectives. The investors, the entire ecosystem that they’re creating is all aligned to support this niche perspective of their audience.

And so that’s why you start to see this fragmented landscape where it’s so difficult to be a reader of one publication. Then switch and start reading another and you’re like, this seems like in a completely different world over here. It’s you switch between world. Yeah. Fox News and M-S-N-B-C. It’s always completely different

Zachary: narratives.

Yeah,

Don: exactly.

Zachary: Yeah. And I think too, it’s also like just the various incentives, you know, not even intentional. It’s like there’s a lot of true believers that like say you’re, you know, an editor or a journalist at New York Times and. You, you find it really hard to understand the quote, other side’s point of view that can’t help but, you know, leak into the things that go out.

And so there’s, there’s compounding aspects of how we form these two [00:33:00] divergent narratives with true belief or, you know, kind of subpar incentives that work together. And yeah, it’s just a whole stew of, of things, biases and bubbles of information and lack of understanding the better arguments on the other side, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, yeah. So, um, yeah, I wanted to ask you, I mean, I think, I think one thing when people hear about this kind of approach, uh, I’ve seen this in, uh, in, in other digital efforts too, uh, where, where people have a response of like, sort of like they have to ai where they’re like, oh, you’re trying to take all the, the soul and humanity out of, um, you know, news and journalism.

You know, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re destroying the. The traditions and the humanity and the human choices. But I think that’s lacking, uh, not seeing what your vision would be. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you see that kind of argument is missing.

Don: Um, I’m glad you mentioned AI in that context, because that is what we’re trying to [00:34:00] avoid.

We’re specifically building an ecosystem that is verifiably human and relying on human generated reporting. Because we want to set us up in this new age of AI’s out there. You can get AI summaries on pretty much any news event that’s happening. Uh, if you Google something, the first thing you see now is like Google’s AI generated summary.

We’re moving away from actual human reporting. And if we want to focus on human flourishing and human creativity and humans actually reporting their experiences through the news. We need to have a more human-centric ecosystem than trying to go these AI routes. And so what we’re trying to do is leverage this decentralized technology to support humans in actually generating human created content.

And one of the interesting things that we’re able to do with that is. We can verify someone as a real human. There’s multiple [00:35:00] methods to do this. I think the one that most people may be familiar with is Sam Altman’s World Coin or now just re-branded as world. Uh, but I don’t know if you’ve seen this, the one where you scan your retinas and then you get a proof that you’re a real human.

Uh, a lot of people have issues with scanning their retinas, how that data is used. But, uh, there are multiple different methods that you’re able to. On your own device, prove that you’re a real human, and then use that proof without giving up any underlying personal data to say, this is my account. I’m a real person, I’m not a bot, I’m not an ai.

And we can verify, we can use that proof as verification of our users, that they’re real people. And so what we’re able to do is we’re able to assign a higher reputation to people who have verified, uh, as being real humans and not AI bot. And so as we start to see more and more prevalence of AI agents operating online.

We’re already seeing it on X, where [00:36:00] there’s a bunch of autonomous AI bots that are posting, uh, even on other platforms like forecaster, you’re familiar, people are already complaining about like getting in arguments with someone and then realizing that it’s actually just an AI bot that they’re arguing with.

We can. Start to verify that like we are a fully human-centric ecosystem, so that when our readers log in, they know that like, oh, I’m reading a real news report that was generated by a actual journalist, and I can trust that this is real information and not something that is being spotted by some AI bot.

Zachary: Yeah, that was one of the misunderstandings when I told someone just a about this just yesterday, they were like, oh, it’ll be some AI kind of, uh, parsing of the, you know, they thought, they thought it was using AI to like parse different viewpoints and do something in the middle, but, so yeah. That’s another common Yeah.

Misunderstanding.

Don: It’s actually the, just one quick point. It’s, we’re trying to do the inverse of that. I think a lot of. Companies are trying to skew towards like how can we leverage [00:37:00] AI in our platform because that’s the hot buzzword and kind of like venture capital at the moment. Or if you’re trying to raise money or hire people.

We’re trying to do the opposite because if you look at these AI companies, if you look at these large language models, the information that they’re able to give is based on their training data sets. And for the most part, you can start to see the differences in answers that these LLMs give just based on their training data.

Like for instance, Google’s Gemini is based on Google index sites. You have Perplexity, which is based on, uh, they got that massive scandal with having Index New York Times paywall articles. And so New York Times was suing perplexity for that training data. Uh, open AI has had access to now Microsoft’s like GitHub, so they have all of these code repositories.

So different LLMs have different answers just based on the training data sets, and it’s really just shows that AI are [00:38:00] in their current iteration or just ways to collect data and summarize it for people who are giving these prompts, but for them to be able to fully understand the human world, like stay up to date with current events.

They need some way to determine like what is high quality, relevant information.

Zachary: Yeah.

Don: And so if we’re able to provide, Hey, we have this platform, it’s all content that’s generated by people that we’ve verified as humans. It’s gone through this robust moderation protocol. We understand like the context of this is a more widely considered accepted true belief, whatever this article is.

We can use that to provide it to LLMs as a basis for fundamental training data so that they can actually be better at summarizing and giving us better context in our daily lives. So they’re more powerful tools. So we’re more trying to create a fundamental training data layer for AI systems rather than using AI systems, uh, to help [00:39:00] curate content.

Zachary: Yeah, I mean, if, if you’re successful at this, there’s just all sorts of ways that. You, you could use, you know what the content that’s marked as high value or, or, or persuasive to many people, you could, there’s so many ways you could use that in other ways. Yeah,

Don: absolutely. And the important thing, like, like I mentioned with the New York Times and Perplexity and how Perplexity was using unlicensed articles from the New York Times, what we’re able to do, since we already know the verified owners of all of the content.

And we know that they own the copyright of that content, they can then have the full freedom to say, I want to license my content to LLMs. We can facilitate that for them and then pass through the payments directly to the authors as the owners of the actual underlying content, which is much more difficult to do in a centralized experience.

So like if you’re on Facebook or if you’re on X in your user terms, you’re pretty much signing off that like. [00:40:00] Anything I post on x I’m agreeing to just let be ingested by Grock on X. As its training data, uh, we can say that anything you’re posting to aula, you now have full control to determine if you want this to be licensed.

And if it does get licensed, then you get paid. And so you’re compensated for actually giving this information to be used. Is training data

Zachary: very cool. Uh, the other, the other thing I can imagine. Uh, people objecting to for this, which is just kind of a subset of, of how people object to depolarization and, and bridge building type work is, and there would be different ways this would show up on the left and the right, but it there’d be that objection of like.

You’re trying to control our thought. You’re trying to, you know, bring our, you know, create some system to make us, uh, more moderate, you know, in, in a, in a political, middle, middle, uh, of the road way. But I think I’ll just give my, my reaction to that and you can respond to it. ’cause I, I think that what that misses is [00:41:00] this is trying to create.

A system that brings out the best of humanity. It’s not one way or another we’re gonna be controlled by the things around us. And this is creating a system that’s trying to bring out the best of humanity and to, to prevent us from becoming into these divergent narratives where we’re we, we have so much contempt for each other.

So I think it’s, it’s, and, and it’s not trying to control people, because at the end of the day, you’re gonna react to the things you react to on that platform and be shown. Things that correspond to what you like, even if it recommends some other, you know, things that thinks you might also like, that are a little bit more, you know, depolarized.

So I think it’s, I think the, yeah, the counter argument is like, no, it’s not trying to control you. You can use the system however you want. If you don’t want to use the system, obviously you can go use another system. Uh, it’s still a free world. Uh, but it, you know, the, the goal is that it gives many people what they want, right.

Don: Yeah, yeah, that [00:42:00] we’re trying to, we don’t want to control everyone and like bring their perspectives into the center. What we’re more trying to do is create a more accurate representation of what people’s actual viewpoints are, because I would argue that on corporate social platforms, they’re more doing a worse job of pulling you more towards the fringes.

Like if you just create a new account. On Facebook or X and you go and you start interacting with data or posts, you’ll start to see how you start to get recommended down these pathways towards radicalization. And they’ve actually done studies on this, on TikTok and YouTube. Like how quickly do you get pulled into these more like radical fringe belief systems?

And when you look just overall like. What is like a distribution of people who holds certain beliefs? Like most people will be fairly moderate. There’s small amounts of peoples on, uh, people on the fringes, but if you look at the type of content and the voices that are getting promoted on social [00:43:00] media, you see that there’s a lot of weight given to those small fringe beliefs.

They’re getting an outsized portion of the voice on these social media platforms. Versus all of these people in the moderate center that have expertise on certain areas. They have their posts that should deserve to get engagement, but they’re just not getting the clicks ’cause they don’t drive that sort of ad engagement.

Mm-hmm. So the first thing is like we want people to have a more accurate rep representation of people’s real opinions on certain topics. The other thing is we try to promote and recommend articles to people based on their current individual beliefs. Because we want anyone to be able to sign onto the platform no matter what their perspective is, and we can give them engaging, relevant content.

So if you are someone on the far left or someone on the far right, we can show you stuff that is slightly more mo moderate than your current point of view, but is still on your side of the spectrum. So it’s not just [00:44:00] promoted like moderate, central, central, centrist voices.

Zachary: Mm-hmm.

Don: And through that. You’ll slowly start to see people come more towards the center over time, and we would expect it to start to reflect more what the true underlying population actually believes.

But over the years, if the problem then switches and we feel that people are being kind of sucked too strongly into the center and that we think that there needs to be more diversity of thought, the underlying algorithms are fully community governed, so the community could come together and. We set up these algorithms with the goal of depolarizing the media landscape.

We ne now think that it’s too depolarized and that people need to start exploring new different belief systems so we can then vote to change the underlying incentive structures of the curation algorithms to start to promote people, to explore new viewpoints and promote people that may be speaking up from the fringes.

So it’s. That’s a problem way down the road. Yeah. Like that would be a great problem to have.

Zachary: Right? [00:45:00] It’d be like the cycle, you know, it’s kinda like when in the 19, uh, what was it, 1950s in America when they were like, the political parties need to become more polarized. They’re not different enough. And so, you know, in the, in the utopia that, uh, ambula creates in the future, one day they’ll be like, we, we need to make ambula more, uh, a little bit more polarized and differentiated views more.

And then the, the cycle then can be, begin again. I’m

Don: just kidding. Yeah. Hopefully not go into a cycle of that. But that is, that is the purpose. We’re, we’re not trying to put, we’re not trying to push any narrative. We’re not trying to push any point of view on anyone. We’re trying to let everyone speak freely, speak independently from their own unique perspectives.

People can explore those perspectives freely. And if we have run into issues with how the algorithms promoted content, then people can propose changes. Everyone can vote on it and, uh, accept them. So it’s. Not some corporation trying to put this algorithm on everyone. It’s actually a fully community governed process.

Zachary: Yeah. Even the, uh, I was gonna say, even, [00:46:00] even sites that you wouldn’t think do this can be very, can get you down rabbit holes, like Amazon for example, because I do polarization related research. I was buying a few, uh, books about the conservative Republican views. To for research, and all of a sudden I was getting recommended, like election denial books and like, you know, liberals are garbage humans books, you know, it’s like, uh, just very quickly and it’s like, that’s, uh, interesting.

But it’s, you know, it’s understandable why that works. It’s like, even if they don’t want to do it, that’s just kind of fun naturally how the organic incentives tend to work. Yeah. Uh, but I want to, uh, I wanted to ask you. Yeah, I was kind of. Obviously this is a joke, but I was curious if you thought about do remaining anonymous and being like the, uh, satoshi of, um, you know, blockchain, uh, journalism or something like that.

Don: I, I mean, I will say like I wasn’t never planning to be anonymous, but I will say like there is merit [00:47:00] to the anonymity behind Satoshi No komoto and really like that helped to kind of create more allure and everything about it. Yeah. But there’s also this aspect where it’s. You like with ula, we want it to sort of be a baseless organization because the whole point is we don’t actually have control over what the narrative is.

So it doesn’t matter what my viewpoints are because everything is community governed. Everything’s community moderated. Everyone’s free to join it. We can’t censor anything, so it doesn’t really matter what my beliefs are. So there is some merit to being like, I’ll stay anonymous and Angela can just be this faceless organization.

It can just be a foundation that helps support this without having anyone worry that like my beliefs or biases are affecting the platform. But I think it’s also. Everything’s open source, everything’s fully transparent. So you can also just go in and see that like I verifiably am not able to go in and start to [00:48:00] make changes or sensor the platform.

Uh, once we have fully launched our community governance protocol, uh, I will say we’re very early on in the process that it’s a small kind of like early testing phase of ambulance. So. It is still fairly centralized, just given the size of the community, but we’re building in programmatic breakpoint, so as the community grows and reaches certain diversity metrics.

More and more control gets passed off to the community to a point where I, I no longer have any ability to control sort of how it’s operating.

Zachary: Right. Gotcha. Yeah.

Don: Yeah.

Zachary: Um, yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s trust involved in the, the transparency and the fact that nobody’s pulling the strings. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so may I’m going to, I was gonna switch to more blockchain kind of related questions ’cause they are just some things I’ve wondered on my own and I figure some other people might.

Wonder them. Uh, so I, I’ve always been a little confused about what makes blockchain so special, because I’ve seen some people say like, oh, it’s [00:49:00] just an, just a ledger, an append only ledger where you can only add to it and not edit or subtracted. But, uh, and theoretically that, that, that’s a kind of form of ledger that already exists.

But maybe you could talk a little bit about what is so exciting about blockchain, what I’m missing there.

Don: Yeah, I think it helps to try to stay like fairly abstract in general about it and building an understanding. Uh, but like how I view what the underlying blockchain technology does is it really facilitates coordination among individuals at scale without having to rely on trust of other individual parties.

And that’s done through consensus mechanisms to really what. Blockchain means is it’s a data structure of you have a block of data and everyone through this consensus mechanism agrees that everything in that block is a valid transaction. There’s nothing nefarious going [00:50:00] on. We all agree that we all accept that this is the current state of our ecosystem.

And then once everyone validates that block, it gets added to the chain. And since everything’s chained together, you can’t go back and try to change something in the past. Once it’s added to the chain, then it’s final. And everyone ag, you don’t have to pay any more attention or thought to it because it’s like we’ve all agreed this is a valid block.

We add it to the chain. Now our focus is on validating the next block. If that makes sense. We can speak more to like. Yeah, consensus mechanisms and like how it works in practice. I think I,

Zachary: I guess, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I guess the, the interesting, the exciting thing about this is that it’s, you know, say somebody put in this type of ledger, this append, only if I’m saying that right, append only ledger, say they put it in a server somewhere.

Like the difference is that that would not be trustworthy because somebody, whoever owns that server could go in and change it. Right? Whereas this is creating. A network [00:51:00] based reality, a system that cannot be tampered with because the community agrees on it. Right. Am I understanding that correctly?

Don: Yeah.

Yes. So it’s the network as a whole. So like we’ll use Ethereum and we can use AM in this example as well, but the community as a whole has a universal state. So we’re all working off of the same computer, essentially. Mm-hmm. So we, it’s not like you have some. The state of the network and I have a state of the network and like we can go do our own things.

It’s like we’re all coming to a consensus and agreeing like, this is the current state.

Zachary: It’s almost like a dispersed, uh, server in a way. It’s like a, it’s like a Exactly. Abstract server that’s distributed.

Don: Yes. That, that’s the perfect way to think about it. And like this state, like what we’re all agreeing on is essentially any interaction that you would do on a traditional server.

Like I can go in it, I can write data, I can read data. And what we’re all agreeing on is like no one went outside of [00:52:00] the guidelines of any program that’s running on the system. No one deleted something accidentally. No one is trying to write data that they’re not able to. No one’s able to try to like spend money that they’re, they don’t have.

So we all agree that everything that occurred in this block is a valid interaction and then we can add it to the chain. And now this is added to this universal state that we’re all working off of. But I realize that like transactions, interactions, data, like it’s all kind of abstracted away and it’s difficult to like understand like what is the importance of this?

So in the context of Aula, if you’re a writer writing to Aula and you publish an article, your authorship of that article and that article’s existence is stored in the data of the Ethereum network, that Ethereum virtual machine, that distributed server that everyone’s working off of. And so if we want to be able to verifiably say that you’re the owner of this data and prove that you own that article, we don’t want anyone going [00:53:00] in after the fact and deleting your article off of the server.

We don’t want anyone going in and trying to like sensor your perspectives by saying like, oh, we’re actually gonna take those articles down. So that’s like once you publish an article, everyone agrees that like you are now the owner of the underlying date of that article. And now once it’s added to the chain.

You can rest easy knowing that you have full ownership of your own underlying data.

Zachary: Right? Yeah. And, and, and the exciting thing about all this is that as, as we’ve seen with, um, cryptocurrency, even though it’s in, its, you know, beginning stages, it, it gives an example of how. A wellc created system that catches on can really change incentives and change behaviors, which is what mm-hmm.

You’re, you’re trying to do for journalism, but the, I think the, yeah, the exciting thing that, the thing that excites people is how you can create these systems that have their own life and, and really change incentives and change real life [00:54:00] behaviors and change how people interact. I think, yeah, I think that’s, that is exciting.

Yeah.

Don: Exactly. It’s, it’s everything is self-executing, so you’re not having to rely on trusting a intermediary. And that’s the beauty of it for journalism specifically, is when you look at what creates like a credible, trustworthy, journalistic environment, you need it to be censorship resistant. You need to be able to trust that there’s not outside influence.

You need to make sure that no one’s manipulating the narrative. And you wanna make sure that you can track people’s reputations, that no one’s creating some massive piece in like misinformation campaign and it gets taken down and then they just go and create another account and do it again somewhere else.

We can verify that your real person, your reputation will be tied to whatever you write going forward. If you try to spread misinformation, then that damages your reputation. You now have to work to build a track record of high quality [00:55:00] content to. Work your way out of that. Mm-hmm. And so it just creates this high trust environment where you’re not actually having to rely on people saying like, oh, trust me, I’m gonna work in your best interest.

Because like, while that’s all well and good, it, there’s so many powerful incentives behind controlling and manipulating media narratives that they, any weakness will always be exploited no matter what. Like, we’ve seen this. With the New York Times, like in 2004 when there was the NSA surveillance story, that they were pressured by the government to not post until after the election.

So like we’ve seen that with the New York Times, which you would trust. We’ve seen it with Facebook throughout COVID when they were pressured by the government to suppress stories on COVID lab leak theories and everything. And then it came out after the fact that they were actually being pressured by the government to censor content and.

We’ve seen it with X where Elon buys X and says that he wants to support free speech, [00:56:00] but then immediately gets into a free speech legal battle with Brazil over them trying to censor moderate content. So it’s, and we’ve also seen it with Substack when people were sharing, uh, like Nazi type articles and.

They were not trying to censor it ’cause they said they were supporting free speech. And then everyone says, I think we can all agree that this isn’t something that we want to be sharing here. And so it, anytime there is that point of weakness, it will be pressured. And so what we’re trying to do is remove that point of weakness entirely.

Zachary: Right. And

Don: say we can’t go in and sensor, there is a, I’ll say there’s a moderation protocol. So if someone is sharing Nazi beliefs that are harmful content. It can be taken down and removed by that moderation protocol, but no one can go in and actually sensor underlying narratives. So even if the government wanted to come in and say, we don’t want you posting this story, it’s, you can’t really come to a and ask [00:57:00] that because we don’t have the ability to control that.

Zachary: Mm-hmm. Well, this has been awesome. Yeah. Thanks for joining me, Don. Anything else you’d like to add?

Don: No, I, I, I think this is great. Like I always appreciate any opportunity to talk about Web3 and Web3 and journalism specifically, and no better person to do it with than you just given your experience in the space.

So, uh, I mean, your support and the invitation to come on definitely means a lot.

Zachary: Thanks. Thanks, Don. Okay. Talk to you later. That was a talk with Don Templeman, creator of ula. Sign up for [email protected] or for the substack ula.substack.com. And again, that’s A-E-M-U-L-A. If you enjoyed this talk, I have related episodes in the backlog.

For example, I have a talk with Isaac sa, a creator of Tangle News about polarization in the news and about how he sees tangle news as trying to reduce polarization. You can see episodes and best of compilations for my [00:58:00] [email protected]. You can check out my polarization related books and other [email protected].

Thank you for listening. Music by small skies.

Maybe you’ve heard that you can get clues about whether someone is lying by what direction they look when they talk. The most common form of this idea is that if someone is looking up and to their left, they’re more likely to be accessing real visual memories (associated with truth), and if they’re looking up and to their right, they’re more likely to be constructing visual images (associated with lies). But there is no basis for this; in fact, many studies have found evidence against that claim. This idea and other more broad ideas about eye movement clues were popularized by NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), a school of thought whose core ideas have been debunked time and time again.

In this episode, I talk to Tim Levine, a respected deception detection researcher. We talk about: the eye direction idea; the huge amount of bullshit in the pop behavior analysis space (e.g., shows like the Behavior Panel); reasons why the spreaders of this bullshit are so popular and successful; what the science says about using behavior to detect deception; why it’s so difficult to use behavior to detect deception; the idea that you need to establish “baselines” for people to aid you in reading them; how behavioral patterns in games/sports can differ from more real-world non-game scenarios; confirmation bias in the behavior analysis space, and how even smart researchers can be unreasonably biased in favor of their own ideas; Paul Ekman’s work; and more. 

Episode links:

• YouTube (recommended: includes video and more thoughts in comments)
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Resources related to or mentioned in our talk:

• My previous talk with Tim about the difficulty of using behavior to read deception
• Tim Levine’s website
• Criticisms and debunkings of NLP-associated ideas
• A paper with more debunking of NLP-associated ideas
• “The Eyes Don’t Have It”: Wiseman’s research examining NLP-associated eye direction ideas
• Reddit thread about eye direction and deception ideas
• The Behavior Panel episode on Carole Baskin referenced in this episode
• Unethical behaviors in the pop-behavior-expert space
• Talk with David Zulawski on interrogation strategies
• A talk about aphantasia, which both Tim and I would say describes our lack of visuals in our mental processes
• More links in the transcript below

TRANSCRIPT:

(note that transcripts are rough and will contain errors)

You can find a lot of people who will tell you that you can get clues to what people are thinking, and clues to whether they’re deceiving you, based on where they are looking: for example, whether they’re looking up and to the right, or down and to the right, and so on. 

Here’s one common version of this idea: 

[TikTok video: https://www.tiktok.com/@mandrae/video/7086540364655562030 talking about how you can get clues about whether someone is lying based on where they look. If they look up and to their left, it’s visual memory, meaning it’s likely to be tied to real memories, but if they look up and to their right, it’s imagined visual, meaning that there’s a good chance it’s false and fake.]

These eye-direction ideas come from the world of neuro-linguistic programming, also known as NLP. Here’s an image from an NLP training site where it labels someone looking up and to their left as “Remembering pictures” and looking up and to their right as “Constructing pictures”. https://www.nlpworld.co.uk/nlp-glossary/e/eye-accessing-cues/ 

The upper left and upper right idea is just one specific iteration of the more general claim that you can get reliable information of some sort about what someone is thinking by the direction of their eyes. There are other assorted variations on this; including some more subtle and nuanced-seeming ideas. 

Here’s a clip from the popular YouTube show Behavior Panel talking about using eye direction to gain information. This was from the first Behavior Panel episode in 2020, in which they analyzed the behavior of Carole Baskin. Baskin was featured in the documentary Tiger King; some people suspected she had killed her husband, which is why they were examining her: 

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKpjC8rwZW0: 27:30 

Chase: You don’t see a lot of eye movement going hard right or hard left or hard anywhere they go a little bit to her left but not a whole lot just they’re barely going back and forth. So instead of accessing which would look if my face is it clear here accessing would would look more like this and her eyes were just like this.

Greg: But you can go to different parts of your brain when you’re accessing. 

Here’s another part of that episode, where they’re talking about another moment of Carole Baskin’s interview (21:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKpjC8rwZW0):

Greg Hartley: If you notice in every other place go watch when she’s describing her father building these cages and she’s accessing and she’s remembering it’s for buy and she’s using data yes he’s recalling her eyes are drifting right she uses that as an illustrator as well she’ll make her points by doing this this is the only time I see her eyes go to her left as she’s describing the number of accidents he had and he was getting dementia if you go back and look at it her eyes deviate from that baseline fairly significantly as well as breaking contact. Chase: I hundred percent agree her baseline has her doing recall of looking up into the corners and when she broke I don’t know if you want to just maybe play this again in the in the final video but when she broke this time her eyes stayed towards the middle they

were still focused on an object that was off-camera.

This idea, that you can get reliable information about what someone is thinking or about their likelihood of deception, is repeated by many people, in a variety of iterations. It’s even been taught in some law enforcement and interrogation trainings.

A 2021 paper titled “Investigative Interviewing: Research and Practice” includes information about the use of NLP-associated ideas in investigative work: 

Criminal investigators describe NLP as useful for developing rapport in an interview or Interrogation, where the focus is on the interviewer matching an interviewee’s nonverbal behavior, the manner in which they speak, and their choice of words. More often, NLP has been proposed as a way of helping an interrogator discern truth telling from lying in criminal interviews and interrogations. Here the focus is on an alleged relationship between eye movement and thought: for example, if right-handed people are visualizing an imagined event (i.e., something they are lying about), they are likely to look up to their right; if they are visualizing a remembered event (i.e., presumably something that they are not lying about), they are likely to look up and to their left. 

One example of this: a 2012 paper by the interrogation and interviewing consulting firm Wicklander-Zulawski was titled “Misconceptions about Eye Movements: Part 2.” https://www.w-z.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Column-LPM0312-Interviewing.pdf  In it, they described how noting person-specific patterns about which eye direction was linked to accessing memory can lead to hugely reliable deductions about someone deceiving or not. They describe an interrogation where a subject’s eye movement patterns allowed them to conclude she was lying about denying using drugs on the job. They concluded that example by writing: “The subject’s eye movements during this exchange helped in gaining an admission.”

Because these ideas are so common, it’s understandable that many lay people think there’s validity here. Many people will conclude, “So many people are talking about this idea; there has to be some valid information there, right? It must be that eye direction gives us valuable clues to what people are thinking and whether they’re making stuff up, right?”

And yet, no, there is no evidence that one can use someone’s eye direction to get useful information about what they’re thinking about, or deduce whether they’re telling a lie or not. There’s actually good evidence against that claim, as numerous studies have found no useful correlations. Now, to be clear, this is not to say there are not person-specific tells; people can have all sorts of idiosyncratic tells and patterns when it comes to behavior, and we’re not talking about that. We’re talking here about the idea that these eye-direction ideas can be used for the general population; that there are common types of patterns that can be found amongst the general population that help us read them and get clues as to whether they’re likely to be telling the truth. And again, there is no evidence for that idea. (If you disagree with me on this, I invite you to send me a message, as I will be doing a deeper dive on this topic in the future.)

Now many people who spread these ideas are, I think, major bullshitters; many of them are on the highly deceptive, unethical end of the spectrum; for example, you’ve got people like Chase Hughes, who claims to be an expert at behavior and influence and whose immense amounts of deceptions and unethical behaviors I’ve examined in other episodes. Other people who spread these bad ideas I think are true believers of various sorts; I would count Greg Hartley, also of the Behavior Panel, in the true believer group; he and Chase’s ideas on behavior are heavily influenced by NLP, and these ideas are commonly held by those who embrace NLP trainings, even though NLP ideas have been thoroughly debunked. 

Some people, like the Wicklander-Zulawski organization I referenced, I think have done good work on interrogation patterns and strategies in other contexts; I actually interviewed David Zulawksi when I first started this podcast https://behavior-podcast.com/tips-on-interrogating-people-for-information-and-confessions-with-david-zulawski/ and I found it an interesting conversation and it was one of my more popular episodes. I think they’ve just made the mistake, as many in law enforcement and interrogation work have, of defending some old, outdated, but common ideas that have no basis in evidence. 

This is just to say; my criticizing these ideas is not meant to imply that I think everyone who spreads the various forms of these ideas is purposefully lying or being unethical; it’s a spectrum, as with everything. But the behavior analysis space, especially the more pop-behavior-analysis space where people like the Behavior Panel make claims of frequently getting reliable information from assorted interviews and speeches, is full of bad information; the people in this space, and in NLP, have incentives to exaggerate what’s possible with interpreting behavior. They even have internal incentives to persuade themselves of some of these ideas — and it’s easy to persuade ourselves of faulty ideas, especially when it involves an ambiguous and high-variance information source. 

Later I want to do a much deeper dive into this topic, as I’ve done a lot of research into it and it makes for an interesting history of how these ideas came to prominence back in the 70s and how NLP was involved in that, and why these ideas are still so popular, and the various iterations of these ideas from the more easily debunked to the harder to debunk. And I’ve not seen anything like that deep dive elsewhere, that delves into these ideas in such depth. If you’d like me to spend time working on that deeper dive, please let me know in the comments and send me a message, as the more encouragement I get, the more likely I’ll work on it. But this episode will not be a deep dive in that way; it will be a talk with deception detection researcher Tim Levine; Tim and I talk about the eye direction idea, and we talk about the huge amount of bullshit in the pop behavior analysis space, and some of the reasons the spreaders of that bullshit are so popular and successful. We talk about what the science says about using behavior to detect deception. We talk about why it’s so difficult to use behavioral information to detect deception. We talk about the frequently heard idea that you need to establish “baselines” for people and that this will help you read them. 

We talk about poker tells and how behavioral patterns in games can differ from more real-world non-game scenarios. 

We talk about confirmation bias in the behavior analysis space, and how even very smart researchers can fall pray to the mistake of being biased in favor of their own ideas. We talk about Paul Ekman and whether some of his teachings about behavior have gone awry due to his burning desire to prove his own theories. 

If you’re interested in behavior, or you just like debunking bullshit, you’ll like this episode. This is actually my second talk with Tim Levine and if you like this one you should go back and listen to that one; in the first episode with Tim we talk about his truth default theory; basically the idea that we will tend to believe people unless something triggers us and gives us a reason to not believe them; this helps explain why we can be so gullible about so many things; why it’s so easy for us to fall pray to scammers and con artists – which, by the way, include some of the same people out there who make grandiose claims about being able to teach you how to read and influence and manipulate people.  

You can learn more about Tim Levine at https://timothy-levine.squarespace.com/. I’ll read a little bit from his bio on his site: Levine has published more than 160 refereed journal articles reporting original research related to communication and he is an internationally recognized leader in deception research.  He is the author or co-author of Information Manipulation Theory, Truth-Default Theory, the Veracity Effect, the Probing Effect, and the Park-Levine Probability Model.  His research on deception has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense, and the FBI.  His current research focuses on what makes some people more believable than others, the prevalence of lying, and on effective interrogation strategies. Levine’s book, Duped, describes his program of research on deception relevant to Truth-Default Theory.

In this talk with Tim Levine, we focus mostly on the most extreme and easily debunked form of this idea; the idea that someone looking up and to their left is associated with real visual memory; and the idea that looking up and to one’s right is associated with visual construction. That is still a common idea despite being so clearly false and debunked. But our talk also pertains to the more quote “sophisticated” version of these ideas; and I put sophisticated in quotes here; the idea that people will tend to have one of two patterns; looking one way for recall and the other for construction, and that you just have to figure out what their pattern is; I call that the more “sophisticated” version because it’s harder to debunk and can come across like a more advanced, sophisticated version of the old, more clearly false idea, but again, there’s just no evidence for any of it. There are no studies supporting these ideas, even as so many speak as if they are extremely reliable. And that should be a red flag, as Tim and I talk about; when people act as if a behavior pattern is highly reliable and contains a lot of information, and yet nothing has been found in studies despite people looking for it, and actual behavior researchers don’t think it’s legitimate, these are all red flags there’s likely some bullshit involved. 

Okay here’s the talk with Tim Levine…

Zach: [00:00:00] Hi, Tim. Thanks for joining me again. 

Oh, you’re welcome. Happy to be here. 

Yeah. Good to see you. Uh, so yeah, uh, maybe we can start with, you know, you’ve been in the deception research field for quite a while. I’m wondering if you can maybe give a synopsis of, of how, uh, what your views are. On the whole like neuro linguistic programming associated idea of what quadrant you look in upper left, upper right, that those things can be tied to.

You know, somebody accessing their recall, making it more likely to be truth or accessing their more creative side, making it more likely to be made up in a lie. You know, we see these ideas a lot. So I’m wondering if you have a A rough summary of how you view those ideas in your many years in the field.

Tim: Uh, so, uh, were [00:01:00] you intentionally looking up while you were talking to me? 

Zach (2): No, I 

Tim: wasn’t trying 

Zach (2): to 

Tim: do. What should I infer from that? 

Zach (2): I’m going to be thinking about this too much now. Oh, sorry to do that to you. Got to throw it in there. 

Tim: So I’m not in any way, an expert. on eye behavior as it relates to what people are thinking about.

My area of expertise is all in, uh, deception. And, uh, to the extent that, uh, the neuro linguistic stuff and eye behavior is linked with truth and deception, uh, then I can say with pretty good confidence that there doesn’t seem to be any relationship at all between eye behavior of any sorts and whether or not people are honest or not.[00:02:00] 

Zach: So, yeah, the surprising thing to me is, I mean, that’s my understanding. I’ve looked at a good amount of research on this. debunking it. You know, there was the well known one from 2012, Richard Wiseman debunking it and some, some others. Uh, and I just keep seeing the idea, and it, it is really surprising to me because I, I hear people saying it quite confidently, like, you know, for example, this guy on the behavior panel, uh, Greg Hartley, will say, like, it’s very tied to, you know, uh, recall and, and, uh, or very, very tied to, to, uh, deception, highly correlated, and it just kind of surprises me because I’m like, you would think if something was so highly correlated, they would have found something A little something in the research, but you know, it’s so, it sounds like, yeah, you, you have not heard of any.

research that stood out saying like there’s something there in those terms. 

Tim: Uh, no, and I have, um, so [00:03:00] as part of my deception detection work, I’ve, uh, been collecting these, uh, uh, videotapes of people. Uh, I, I bring participants into lab, you, you know, of this work, uh, and give them, uh, a reason to lie. They, uh, they’re playing a trivia game and they get an opportunity to cheat.

And it’s up to them whether or not they cheat or not. Um, but if they do, they might be in trouble because it’s a university setting. And then we interview them about this. And I have 485 tapes. And, um, out of that, uh, there’s one liar. With the sort of 

up, 

Tim: right? So there might be people who do this. Um, but it wouldn’t ever show up in social science because most people don’t.

And, and even that one, uh, was an international student, uh, who [00:04:00] was, uh, obviously speaking in second language. And so it might’ve had nothing to do with the fact that she cheated and lying. And, uh, it might be that. you know, the communication task was quite difficult for her. And, and I have met individuals who do eye things when they’re thinking.

Um, my wife does, um, my wife has a visual memory and, um, when she is recalling things, her eyes go up, um, and, but this isn’t. You know, this is a thing that’s unique to her. Right. And, and people have particular kind of eye behaviors and eye patterns, but I know of no evidence that those sorts of claims are general across people.

Zach: Right. I [00:05:00] think that’s an important nuance because it’s like. Yeah, I mean, to tie it to my Pokertel’s work, it’s like, there are Pokertels that you can use that A, are pretty valuable and are not studied, like there’s no formal studies, so it wouldn’t be surprising to me to learn that there were patterns that just haven’t been studied or haven’t been studied well, but then, and then there’s also player specific patterns, right, like that you wouldn’t find in a general, like that you wouldn’t find in a general.

Population, but yeah, for that first case, like it wouldn’t shock me to learn that there was some kind of upper left upper right. It’s a general pattern, but like for the people that speak as if it’s like a really highly correlated pattern. That’s what gets me. It’s like, it’s, it, it kind of clearly can’t be that, uh, highly correlated a pattern if you, if all these studies, multiple studies have not found anything and, and for, you know, so I think, I think, I think that to me is the important part because like, yeah, sure.

There [00:06:00] could theoretically be something there, but if someone’s talking as if like, this is a very highly reliable, Yeah. Clue to something related to deception. Like that’s to me where you get into like, you should really red flag should really be waving. Cause that’s, there’s nothing supporting that. And if it was such a highly correlated thing, somebody would have found something by now.

So that’s kind of where I stand on it. It’s like, it’s not that I’m like skeptical of everything out there that somebody says, but I think it really, when, when some of these people speak in the really highly confident ways. That’s what really bugs me because I’m like, there’s no way it can be, you know, highly correlated like that for a general population, but yeah.

Tim: You know, I’m a pretty experienced researcher and when things are highly correlated, if you’ve seen lots and lots and lots of data, it probably only takes about 20 people to see the pattern. 

Zach: Right. Highly correlated. Yeah. Right. And 

Tim: if I’ve [00:07:00] done 400 something and I’m not seeing the pattern. Right? Then there’s either, it’s a tiny correlation that might be real, but you only need big data to see it.

Zach: Right. 

Tim: Um, or it’s not there. And either way, it’s not going to be at all practically useful in any way. 

Tim (2): Right. 

Tim: Right? So I, I think we can really, really confide. at least as related to deception, rule out the idea that there’s a strong correlation there. I think, you know, just, just the way statistics work and, um, you know, if strong correlation was there, it would, it would show up in data and it would show up across data sets.

And it’s very clear it doesn’t. 

Zach: Yeah, so that’s and I think that’s a real important point to a general point. I mean a lot of these behaviors Studies that you find or just maybe just research in [00:08:00] general. They’ll find a correlation, but it will be very weak, right? So it’s like even if there is a correlation there the chances of it being like Practically useful even if it even if it is there which sometimes is in a doubt if it’s a really small, you know small correlation Sometimes the research papers make it, like, just if you read the research papers, it makes it sound like there’s something that could be meaningful there.

But a lot of the stuff, and I’m not even talking about deception, because that’s, you know, that’s a specific area too, but, it just seems to me like sometimes the, the, the papers, and then the way the media reports on it, will make it sound like there’s this, like, large correlation there, but you actually read the paper and it’s like, Oh, it was like, you know, a few percent more likely in this one scenario, but I’m curious if you have thoughts on that, like, do you see that often happening in, uh, like science reporting for behavior?

Related things where it exaggerates how much correlation is there? 

Tim: Uh, [00:09:00] yes, absolutely. And I was writing about that, uh, just before we got on together. Uh, so one of the, one of the problems is that researchers rely on something called significance tests. And the way they’re most often used is what they’re being used to statistically rule out.

the idea that there’s nothing there. And it’s real easy, even if there’s something there, right? If you can rule out nothing there,

that means there’s something there. But that there’s something there doesn’t mean that there’s much there. So when I’m teaching to this, my students, if I have a dime in my pocket, It means I’m not broke. I don’t have zero money, right? But that dime’s not going to take me very far. It’s not going to buy me a cup of coffee or a beer or even a candy bar, right?

And there’s a big, big, [00:10:00] big difference between having a dime and being a millionaire. Um, so ruling out broke doesn’t necessarily tell us much. In the context of deception, uh, the latest data is that the best tell to deception. Uh, has to do with the number of details in an account. And on average, honest people provide more detailed accounts than people who are deceiving or lying.

And this effect is somewhere between, uh, one third of a standard deviation and half a standard deviation. Um, so let’s, let’s think about what that means. So if somebody gives a detailed account, does that mean that they’re honest? No, of course not, right? And if somebody [00:11:00] doesn’t provide much details, but if you really wanted to use this in an instance, you would need to know what I would call a cut point.

So how many details does it take before it proves that somebody’s honest? Right? And the second you start to think about this, you realize how absolutely silly it is to take a statistical finding that occurs, you know, across a large number of people in very tightly controlled situation with all other things being equal and try to apply it outside of that.

For example, uh, I don’t have a visual memory. I mentioned earlier that my wife has an incredible, she’s probably like one in a thousand, one in 10, 000 visual memory people. Right. You’ve got the 

Zach: aphantasia thing, which is, you know, which is how I would describe my own. And 

Tim: yeah. But I have no visual memory.

So, uh, [00:12:00] I, I can’t pull up. So if you’re asking me to describe something visual, I’m not going to be able to provide, I give you gist, but I can’t give you any details. Uh, this doesn’t mean I’m lying, 

Tim (2): right, right, right, 

Tim: you know. Now, if you want to give me, if you want me to give you details about, you know, my latest study, then I can give you all kinds of details, right, right, right.

Um, and I’m, and if you’re talking to me, I can give you a lot more details about like the last study I read than the average professor can about the last study they read. Yeah. Um, but I can’t like tell you. The people, the faces of the people in my classroom, 

Zach: right? The level of detail, it might have a correlation, but it’s not practical for all, for all intents and purposes.

It’s not practically useful for, for practical. Yeah. Yeah. 

Tim: Cause what that correlation means [00:13:00] is right. All things being equal in a carefully controlled environment across large numbers of people and just all bets are off in particular situations when there’s other factors at play. 

Zach: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. But I can, can you still hear me?

Yeah. Um, yeah, the, um, though to play devil’s advocate, I can imagine like if you, if you were in a police interrogation scenario, I imagine outside of the lab, if it’s like a consistent thing where somebody is not able to give you like pertinent details and when they’re giving a report, I can imagine scenarios where you’re like, You know, okay, well, this seems to make it significantly more likely based on this specific scenario that this person’s, you know, um, making stuff up or, or telling a lie, but then I think the pertinent question, even if you think that is like, what do you do about it?

Because, and usually I think in interrogations, that’s not going to be the only clue, right? [00:14:00] Like you’re not, I don’t think it often happens where they’re like basing a big decision based on like, You know this guy left out some pertinent details. I think that’s what gets left out is like, you know, investigators may have a feeling one way or the other, but like rarely is that like making up a, you know, a decision point of where they spend their time.

Usually there’s going to be some like other evidence involved or some reason to go down a path, right? They’re not just like, right. He left out some details or other some other behavior thing and they’re gonna they’re gonna like go down this path based on that and I think that often gets Left out. It’s like in the case in the big picture of things all these things are can be pretty minor Even if you think they are A factor, at least that’s how I view it.

Tim: Exactly. And let’s, let’s think about your particular example. So we got the detective is interviewing a suspect and listening for details. It probably matters a whole lot how long ago the thing was, right? So I’m going to have [00:15:00] a, I’m going to have a lot better memory of a recent event than a distant, and that’s going to affect how detailed things are.

It’s going to matter how smart I am. If you’re, you know, Interviewing somebody who’s two standard deviations above average versus somebody who’s two standard deviations below average, you’re going to get very, very different degrees of specificity. 

Zach: There’s all sorts of context. Yeah. There’s all sorts of things in the mix of like.

Whether somebody would judge this was abnormal or, or not. 

Tim: Yeah. Was this a typical thing or something that was really memorable? 

Zach: Right. 

Tim: Right. What was their emotional state when this was going on? Right. There’s so much in there that’s going to affect how detailed you are or where your eyes are moving than just the fact that you’re lying or telling them.

Zach: Yeah. Well, let me, we’ll get back to the general behavior things, but I, to get back to the eye direction. [00:16:00] Do you have a sense of where those ideas come from because I, I get this, I get this rough sense that, you know, I think there is some evidence that looking up people generally like to look up when they’re recalling things because basically because it’s like a clear field of vision and it’s like a place that’s not distracting.

So you generally, people will naturally sometimes look up because it just is somewhere to look. I mean, so I can understand that part of it. And then I kind of understand where they, the NLP people got the left and right idea because of the left and right hemispheres, one being tied to more, you know, concrete things and one being tied to more creative things.

So I got it, I kind of get back to, and then there’s also these things where they’re like, if you’re looking in the middle sphere, it’s more auditory. And they also have this thing, if you’re looking down. It’s more, um, sense related, like, uh, tactile, which kind of makes sense because you’d be thinking about, like, your hands touching something.

So I could, you know, just to say, I can see where they got the ideas, at [00:17:00] least that’s my rough understanding, but I’m curious if you Have your own thoughts on where those ideas might have come from or originated from. 

Tim: Uh, I think a lot of ideas come from legitimate observations of people, uh, where we don’t realize how idiosyncratic the observations are.

Right? So we notice certain trends, and we really notice them. Right. But then what we do is we over, over extrapolate. Yeah. Yeah. Over extrapolate, overgeneralize. Right. Uh, I don’t think people appreciate just how, how different people are person to person. This is a huge problem in, let’s say like brain scanning, right?

Because not everybody’s brain works the same way. . 

Zach: Mm-hmm . [00:18:00] Yeah. No, it makes sense. And the, the, um, the, the, uh, bias to, once you start thinking something is a, is a clue, you’re more likely to notice it. And, uh, I mean, I can see how that’s, especially if you’re not a, a scientist and you, you start having a theory about something and you’re like, oh, it really seems to hold up.

You know, but you’re, you’re just biased and you’re remembering, you know, like we all do for various things. We’re just remembering the times it worked and the. And forgetting the times it didn’t work, de emphasizing the times it didn’t work. But I can kind of see how that played into the NLP neuro linguistic programming where those guys kind of thought they were geniuses, which I think the narcissistic element of some of this stuff, you know, kind of plays into like, Oh, I have this theory that is going to make me.

You know, show, show my genius. And I’m, they’re really motivated to like find the evidence for it. And then they start, they really start believing like, Oh, this is, this is so important, you know? Um, [00:19:00] So 

Tim: I have these different categories of researchers. Um, I think there’s, there’s some researchers who are really all about the science, right.

And they’re trying to learn stuff. And, um, for them, it’s, it doesn’t matter about being right yourself. Right? It’s about trying to, um, find 

Zach: the truth. 

Tim: And if you’re wrong, hey, you know, then, you know, you learn something too, right? And there’s no, no difference between whether you’re right or wrong, as long as you learn something, right?

And even if you know, you don’t know, it’s also important. thing of knowledge. Uh, then there’s, uh, researchers out there that are just playing a publication game to, uh, get tenure and get a job and to be good in the race pool. And, um, [00:20:00] uh, for them, it’s, it’s just kind of a thing. It’s a, it’s a grind. 

Zach: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim: Um, and then there’s a third kind of people, which I call the crusaders. Or the true believers. And, uh, some of them are very, uh, intent on being the genius and being right. Others of them have a particular cause, right? And they don’t want to let data stand in the way of either their brilliance or their cause.

And so there’s all kinds of, uh, tricks that researchers can play out of view, uh, to make their findings, um, look supportive when they present them. And when somebody else tries to do the study, um, it doesn’t come out. Um, and then they have, and then they have to like 

Zach: search for reasons why it didn’t come out because they’re really [00:21:00] invested in the idea behind it, right?

Tim: Yeah. And they get into this, uh, uh, circular logic that goes something like this, um, I’m right. If you find something that doesn’t agree with me, it’s because you didn’t do your study right. I know you didn’t do your study right because you didn’t find what I know is right. 

Zach: Right. Yeah, this almost seems like a good idea for a study, studying researchers for the different types of, um, you know, motivations and separating the, um, ideology or, or something from the, the true, the, the, the true questers for, uh, truth and such.

Um, do you have, do you have thoughts? Are you willing to share, like, you know, how that maps over to some researchers, specific researchers in the behavior space? I mean, cause I’ve heard like, Let’s take Paul Ekman, for example. Obviously, he’s done some good work, but I [00:22:00] also have seen, you know, criticisms that he is a bit too, you know, uh, set in these, some of these ideas, and that even when they turn out to not be true, they still, you know, him and his, I think it’s the Ekman Foundation or Institute or something, they still promote some of these ideas that are, uh, that seem to be, I’m curious if you have any thoughts, whether it’s on Ekman or anybody else, would you like to share thoughts about the behavior and or deception sphere at all?

Tim: I’m, uh, very likely to, um, get into particular names, but I can say with. Uh, that I’ve only kind of met him, seen him talk once in person. And, uh, when he did his presentation, uh, he was very explicit, um, that what he was trying to do was [00:23:00] stick to his guns, no matter what. And so I don’t have any problem calling him out on this because if I heard him correctly, this was self, a self classification in that camp.

Um, 

Zach: And I’ve heard that criticism from other people. Yeah. So it’s. That doesn’t surprise me. Like he, yeah, I was kind of shocked 

Tim: that he would say it aloud. Um, I thought, I thought that probably took a whole nother level of arrogance. And maybe I can get 

Zach: the exact, is it, was that a recorded thing or just something you, you heard?

It might’ve 

Tim: been, it was at, uh, the second Decepticon at Stanford. 

Zach: Hmm. Okay. Well, I can probably find something equivalent if I can’t find that one. Cause I think that’s, I’ve heard people make that criticism. So, um, but maybe we, yeah, maybe we can. pivot to the, you know, when it comes to the general, uh, behavior for use for deception, do you want to [00:24:00] share any of your general thoughts about, you know, how, how useful that is, or anything bugging you in that space that you’ve seen recently, anything like that?

Tim: I don’t know so much recently, but there’s this longstanding belief in the deception literature, uh, that there are these cues or tells to deception. And my reading of the whole literature, as this has pretty clearly been debunked, I think there are ways And that’s what you and I 

Zach: talked about the first time I interviewed you.

Yeah, 

Tim: and there absolutely are ways to detect deception, but it’s not by reading people’s cues. It’s not by listening for details. So details are a great example. So the Q people all want to count up details. And if you’re giving me a really detailed account, um, then you’re probably honest. And if you’re, seem to be avoiding [00:25:00] details or can’t bring them up, then you’re probably lying.

In my view, what you want to do is you want to listen for what the details are and see if you can fact check them. Right? So if you’re giving me details that don’t align with the truth as I know it. 

Zach: Right. The actual evidence. Yeah. 

Tim: Yeah. 

Zach: Yeah. 

Tim: So, so. The point in the deeper point is usually in deception detection.

We’re not interested if somebody’s lying or not, we want to know what the truth is. Um, and then the question is if what they’re saying Once we know that it’s not truthful, then we can ask ourselves, are they lying to us, or are they just misguided? Um, I, I wondered some of this with modern politics. How much, you know, when, when people are, when politicians are saying things, uh, that are truly false.

And obviously false, and easily fact checkable and provable false. Uh, are they believing their own bullshit? [00:26:00] Or, right? Or, or are they, uh, you know, and being sincere in this falsehood? Or are they just, uh, duping people? And, and of course it might be a mix of both. Right. Right. But, but I think usually what we want to do is we want to know what’s true.

And, um, you know, it’s only if I really have a relationship with you that I care. Are you being honest with me? Uh, otherwise it’s good enough for me to know what’s true or not. 

Zach: Yeah. And you bring up an enter a good point there because I mean, people can fool themselves into, you know, people’s people often say things that they really believe that are clearly untrue.

And I, and I actually. When it comes to, I mean, there’s studies showing that, that narcissists, people with more narcissistic personalities, especially, can convince themselves of things that are clearly not true, or, you know, things that most people would say, like, that’s not true. So, it opens up [00:27:00] this space where it’s like, yeah, it’s, sometimes it’s even hard to tell if someone is knowingly telling a lie, even when you know that they’re Telling something, saying something that’s not true.

So, um, yeah. And I, so I wanted to ask too, I think, cause I think the, uh, I think the devil’s advocate response or the people in the behavior, the pop behavior kind of space who I often criticize, they, you know, they often do this thing where they’re like, Well, you need to get the baseline, and if you have the baseline, you know, then you can tell deviations.

So they might say, like, well, yeah, maybe it’s not that valuable, but, uh, maybe, you know, once you study them for a while in the, in the context of an interrogation or something. But to me, you know, I think this is often just, uh, just covering up for bullshit. Because what, what they’re really trying to do is have it both ways.

They’re trying to acknowledge. that a lot of this, the behavioral cues stuff isn’t that useful, right? So they’re saying like, well, you gotta check the baseline. But in any practical, you know, sense, like if you’re studying some [00:28:00] interrogation footage or some speech of somebody every time, like, you would have to rack up such a huge amount of baseline to like, judge things like small behaviors or things like small verbal things.

Like, you would have to rack up, you know, for all these things that happen pretty infrequently. Like, but the, but the way they talk about it in these kind of like pop behavior videos, they’ll act as, they’ll speak as if it’s highly reliable, but then they’ll occasionally be like, well you gotta check the baseline.

But it’s like, that’s just, to me it’s just a way to wave away the fact that these things are, are, are barely reliable, if they are reliable even, like, because a lot of things they say are just like the eye direction thing, it’s like, that’s kind of clearly bullshit, and like, Yeah, so I’m curious what you think of all that, this whole, like, you got to get the baseline 

Tim: stuff, 

Zach: you know.

Tim: So the baseline has been researched way more than the I stuff. I mean, there’s a lot of research on this dating back, uh, to one of my former [00:29:00] professors, Jerry Miller, um, in the 1980s. And it is clear. Uh, baseline doesn’t help much. Mm. I mean, best case scenario, it might move you from like 54% to 58%. Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm . Um mm-hmm . But, but that’s, I mean, that’s best case, right? Um, it’s, it baselining doesn’t help much. Mm-hmm . Uh, the argument I’ve heard, uh, against kind of the, uh, go with evidence and go with facts is, uh, well, sometimes evidence and facts aren’t there, and at least in a. Criminal Context. My answer to that is, what do you do when interviewing people going in cold with no facts, right?

It’s not like police pulling random people for no reason, right? Yeah, exactly. I don’t want 

Zach (2): to go out in the street and know nothing about them. I got to go only on his [00:30:00] vibes, you know. Yeah, 

Tim: I can just see like the seals. You know, randomly, um, going in and snatching up random people from, like Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the, I mean, 

Zach: I think that’s the, that’s the really important part.

Cause like, it’s like, in most, in almost any interrogation interview kind of setting, you’re gonna have, like, there’s a reason you’re doing that, and you’re looking for actual evidence. You’re not just going in blind, being like He looked a certain way or did this thing and therefore I’m going to change the direction of my investigation based on this little, little thing he did, you know, like it just, it’s kind of, it’s kind of, uh, leaving aside how these things actually work in the real world.

Uh, oh yeah. So, but the, yeah, to, to think of, to, to mention a specific thing, like I was, I’m remembering the behavior panel. You know, one of their first ones, actually their first one was, uh, analyzing, um, the Tiger King. And so they were analyzing Carol [00:31:00] Baskin’s, you know, behavior, how she spoke and where she looked and, you know, this is like a common thing.

They’ll them and other people in this space will be like. Oh, you know, she deviated from her baseline there when she was answering, answering that question. She looked, she looked, uh, a different way and she talked faster or whatever the thing is they say. But it’s like, yeah, to, to reiterate that point, it’s like, there’s all sorts of reasons why she could be doing that.

Like it’s a slightly more emotional thing. She’s, her emotions change. It’s uncomfortable. She’s thinking about whatever, like there’s, A bird flies by. Yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s literally so many things. And for, and for, And to say, like, that that ever could be meaningful, you would literally have to put Carol Baskin in and study her for, like, you know, a hundred hours or more to, you know, get a sense of, like, what actually are her patterns and when does she deviate?

And then that would even imply that you could even That can easily link like, lies to, you know, which, which is itself hard to [00:32:00] do, like we said, like it’s hard to tell lies from something someone has fooled themselves to believe. All these things. So there’s just so much massive complexity, but that all gets waved away and these Pop Behavior analysis people’s things where they’re like, Well, you got to get the baseline, but still all speak as if this thing is highly valuable and it’s like, well, when is it valuable.

If you just said you had to get the baseline and how are you going to get that baseline? You know So this is just why I mean, I’m, I’m trying to emphasize, like, there’s just so much bullshit in this space. It’s wild to me. It’s, it’s wild. 

Tim: But there’s a market for bullshit. There really always has been. 

Zach: Yeah, there really is.

Right? 

Tim: This is, this is all through human history. 

Zach: Yeah. Right? 

Tim: There’s been bullshit and there’s been market for bullshit. 

Zach: Yeah. What do you think explains the market, the demand for the behavior stuff specifically? 

Tim: Um, wishful thinking, mostly. 

Zach: Do you think it’s, um, But wouldn’t [00:33:00] it be cool 

Tim: if it was true? I mean, what, what all of this almost always has in common is wouldn’t it be cool if it was true?

Zach: Do you think, uh, It’d be really 

Tim: helpful. 

Zach: Do you think there’s a I mean the way the way I think of it is it’s almost like people want to have a special ability like they’re questing after like I’m one of the special ones that can recognize this stuff. And I mean, I see that I see that in this, uh, like the behavior panel Facebook page where the fans are like posting a video.

And they’re like, saying all this bullshit about what they think happened in this video. And it’s just like, it’s just their biases and their dislike of people coming out. And so they’re, they, they might hate some royalty, member of the British royalty. So all their dislike, you know, they’re, they’re filtering all these behaviors through their dislike of these people.

And so they’re just like, she moved her head that way. It shows she’s a, you know, a filthy liar, blah, blah, blah. They’re just, they’re just, and, but they’re, they like to embrace the idea that they’ve learned some interesting or powerful [00:34:00] Tool that is amongst the special set of people, but that’s how it strikes me as why the demand for that is there 

Tim: Well in their defense now i’ll play devil’s advocate.

Okay. I like that. Um, I think I have some special knowledge right and um I think it’s kind of cool that I do, you know, and because I have the special knowledge, you know, you’ll invite me onto this podcast and, and there’s, there’s like good stuff that happens when you have special knowledge. So I, I can understand why people, I think that, that feels psychologically good.

And there’s, you know, some advantages in life. If you can convince other people that you have it,

right? Nobody [00:35:00] wants to go see the, uh, the doctor who really doesn’t know what they’re doing, you know, but if they think you, you know, you’re the, the specialist who really is going to cure my cancer, um, you know, there’s a lot of people willing to pay big bucks for that. 

Zach: Yeah. And I guess that’s. I guess we would say how you approach the quest for special knowledge is important.

You need to be hyper, hyper skeptical and not fall prey to the, uh, desire to have special knowledge quickly, basically, I would say. Um, yeah. 

Tim: Yeah. And you have to kind of. A, work hard to get it and B, be willing to have it to independent tests,

right? You know, so if my ideas and my findings don’t hold up on other labs, look at them, you know, then, uh, [00:36:00] 

Zach: Yeah. Uh, I don’t know if you want to, uh, get into this, but I think some people, and I talked about this in my last interview with you, but I don’t know if you listened to it cause I just added a note.

But I was trying to tie in because I think a lot of people would be just surprised at me who I’ve worked on. You know, I was a former poker player. I wrote books on poker tells a lot of people would be surprised that I agree with you, that deception detection is like very hard with behavior, if not mostly impossible, but the clarification there is.

I think that I think poker tells the ones that are useful are not really about deception because people didn’t think like bluffing is deception. But what usually happens, we’re just talking about patterns that, you know, for example, there’s different categories, but one category is people are just much more relaxed when they have a strong hand.

I mean, that’s one category, and that has nothing to do with deception, right? Like somebody. Making a big bet in poker and they’re very relaxed. They just do things that a [00:37:00] buffer wouldn’t do a buffer’s more You know more tied down and like so a lot of the more relaxed behaviors from bettors are tied to very highly correlated to You know, having good hands, and that’s one example, and then there’s other examples of attention, like, you know, somebody, like, uh, staring at their cards, for example, they, they, people tend to not look at their strong cards long, because they like to hide their They’re, they’re, they’re power or their treasure, right?

Which means that somebody that looks at their cards for a while tends to equal a weaker hand that they’re just not that interested in. And that has nothing to do with deception detection either. It’s just kind of an attentional thing or like a, a desire to hide value when we have something good. So just to say there’s these classes of tells that are quite valuable.

Uh, and, and I’m not the only one who thinks this. Experience poker players who think these things but these things have nothing to do with deception detection, right? So I think that’s I just want to throw that in there because I think people would be surprised that I agree with you on the [00:38:00] on the behavior and the deception front But I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that or if you anything comes to mind about uh, the different You know, these other categories of attention and so on.

Tim: Um, no, I think, you know, there are behavioral things. You know, we’re more likely to smile when we’re happy. Um, you know. 

Zach: Yeah, and a real smile that, like, affects our eyes. Yeah. These kinds 

Zach (2): of things. There’s all these, yeah, there are all these patterns, yeah. 

Tim: Right, and when you’re engaged, you know, the fact that we’re having a good time talking to each other will be Evident to anybody who watches this, right?

Cause we’re doing all this, like engaged communication stuff. Yeah. Um, that’s. This is, this is a real thing and this is, this is how people act when they’re, uh, into it. We’re not hating this. You can get the read that we’re not, we’re not hating 

Zach: this interview. 

Tim: No, no, no, no. This is, this is like a good back and forth and, and this is communicated, [00:39:00] uh, in part non verbally.

So, you know, non, non verbal stuff is pretty good at, uh, conveying emotions. People can seek to hide those, but, but generally speaking, um, you know, things like how engaged you are in the conversation, and, uh, do you like somebody or dislike them, or what are your major emotional states, um, are you tired, are you energized, uh, these things, these things come off.

And they’re, they’re Real things it, it, you just got to be really, really careful in reading them to use your poker example. And you would know much more about this to me, but my guess is the elite players know this stuff and that these things are going to be much more useful on less elite players than more elite players.

Exactly. 

Zach: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. [00:40:00] Um, yeah, that’s, uh, Do you have anything else you want to fit in here while we’re on the call? Do you think we’ve, we’ve, I know we’ve covered the things I want to cover. I don’t know if you want to say anything else about the iDirection things that, that we haven’t talked about anything else.

Tim: Um, no, I was just, uh. It was just a blast. Oh, it was fun talking to you again. It’s been a while. How long ago was it? 

Zach: Oh, that was like a couple years. Yeah. Yeah, it was a while back. But yeah, I want to yeah Anybody listening go check out the first interview because that that was I don’t know if I ever told you that was one of the

It’s just a term that people search deception and things like that, but yeah, I think people really like that. 

Tim: Well, cool. Yeah. Well, it’s nice to be on with you again. Thank you for inviting me. 

Zach: Thanks Tim. I’m 

Tim: reaching out. 

Zach: All right. Bye bye. See 

Tim: ya. All 

Zach: right. I’m going to.

Many Americans think Trump is harming democracy: see him as being undemocratic in various ways. At the same time, Republicans and Trump supporters can view Democrats/liberals as themselves acting in highly undemocratic ways: as embracing various beliefs and actions that violate the spirit of democracy. I talk to Elizabeth Doll, who has worked in the political depolarization/bridge-building space for several years; she is currently the Director of Braver Politics for the organization Braver Angels. She is also someone who has been frustrated with various stances of liberal “defenders of democracy” that she sees as undemocratic and hypocritical. Topics discussed include: Republican-side views that Democrats/liberals have behaved “undemocratically,” the debate over the electoral college; the debate over stacking the Supreme Court; the ambiguity in the word “democracy” and how that ambiguity leads to many things being called “undemocratic,” how misunderstanding each other amplifies our toxic divides, and more. 

Episode links:

• YouTube (includes video)
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:

• Understanding different interpretations of “undemocratic”
• Elizabeth Doll’s Substack newsletter
• Elizabeth’s page on Braver Angels’ site
• On insulting framings that conflate conservative views with racism/bigotry:
  • An excerpt from my book
  • A talk with researcher Leonie Huddy about exaggerated views of American/Republican racism
• A seminar titled “Political Violence, Polarization and the Prospects for Democracy in the US and Abroad” at Western Washington University, which Elizabeth Doll references as containing liberal-associated ideas she sees as undemocratic
• A paper on left-wing authoritarianism
• Isaac Saul’s TED Talk on how language can add to our divides, and help reduce them
  • A talk about the challenges of democracy and what we owe to the “other side”
• A talk about why anti-Trump people should have cognitive empathy for Trump supporters

TRANSCRIPT

(This transcript will contain errors!)

This is the People Who Read People podcast, with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast aimed at better understanding other people, and better understanding ourselves. You can learn more about it at behavior-podcast.com.

This show sometimes focuses on political polarization and conflict. I see our tendency to get involved in toxic conflict as humanity’s main problem, while also being a problem that’s barely discussed – at least barely discussed in a meaningful, helpful way. That’s why I’ve written a couple books on the topic. I have an ebook written for all Americans titled Defusing American Anger; you can learn more about my work on this topic and see reviews at my site american-anger.com.

In America, we’ve heard a lot of people talking about “democracy” and threats to democracy and “undemocratic” behaviors. 

This is mostly associated with concerns about and criticisms of Trump and Republicans, but it’s also true that many Trump-voting, Trump-supporting people see Democrats and liberals as the undemocratic ones. As is true in many toxic conflicts, both sides will see the other side as the ones behaving in the most underhanded and unfair ways. Seeing that this is just a basic aspect of toxic conflict doesn’t require you to think “both sides are equally right”: we’re talking here about perceptions. How we filter the large and complex environment around us to build our narratives. Perceptions are important. 

What has been interesting to me is that people on both “sides” who see their opponents as behaving “undemocatically” are often speaking about entirely different categories of behavior. There can be entirely different perceptions and definitions of what “democracy” is and what is “undemocratic.” The ambiguity of these terms lend themselves to very different interpretations. The ambiguity of these terms makes it so that just about anything can be labeled as “undemocratic,” depending on how you define “democracy”. 

So that’s why I wanted to talk to Elizabeth Doll, my guest. She’s someone who has been working on reducing toxic polarization for a while; she has volunteered with the organization Braver Angels for several years; since 2022 her title with them is Director of Braver Politics. 

 She is a Republican-leaning voter who voted for Trump in 2020 but not in 2024. She’s also someone who has expressed frustration with what she sees as often hypocritical behaviors from liberal and anti-Trump people: some people who claim to want to save and maintain democracy are, in her view, promoting undemocratic ideas; for example, efforts to get rid of the electoral college, or stack the Supreme Court, or attempts to unfairly smear conservative-associated stances and remove them from the public square, things like this. 

So I wanted to ask her about her views: what specifically was bothering her? What specifically does she see as undemocratic on the Democrat/liberal side? What doesn’t bother her about Democrats? How do her views in these areas differ from other people’s views?

I think anyone who wants to reduce toxic polarization, and anyone who is concerned about democracy, however they define that, or anyone who just wants to be a more persuasive, effective activist: I think everyone should want to understand these different views of “democracy” and “undemocratic” and how people are using these terms. Without curiosity about these different views and interpretations, we’re at risk of always speaking past each other; of just yelling at each other “you’re undemocratic” “no you are” without really understanding why we’re misunderstanding each other. 

Some people watching might be thinking, “Why are you focused on this intellectual, conflict resolution stuff: obviously Trump is doing harm to the country right now; obviously he himself is undemocratic; isn’t all this talk rather removed and distant from the problem?” 

I’d say the reason you should care about this is that you should want to understand why smart and rational and compassionate Americans supported Trump and voted for him; you should want to understand what leads to his support. And what continues to lead to people not caring about the things you care about. Because in a polarized dynamic like ours, support for a specific leader is less about liking their qualities and ideas and much more about concerns and anger at the perceived threats and insults from the “other side.” To understand Trump’s appeal you must understand why people see their liberal opponents as behaving badly and unfairly, as being undemocratic in various ways; you should be curious to understand why people can come to see Democrats as the “bad guys.” You should be curious to know what bothers people; what bothers people like my guest. 

It doesn’t matter if you agree with her points or not; it’s important to understand people’s perceptions and concerns and fears. 

If your reaction is just “but Trump is clearly horrible; enough with the empathy for Trump supporters and their views; if you can’t see why Trump is horrible, you’re a lost cause,” then I would say you’re behaving in ways that are similar to Trump voters who take similar approaches; who believe “the time for understanding each other is past; we just need to fight them harder.” There’s always an excuse for giving up on understanding each other; for justifying not caring about our adversaries’ narratives and concerns; that desire to write them off, and say “fuck their views,” is how our conflict continues to grow worse. It is what leads to support for more polarizing, more extreme, more hostile leaders and activists. It is, in the end, self-defeating. 

For anti-Trump people who are skeptical about this, you might like a recent op-ed I got in The Hill titled Can we lower toxic polarization while still opposing Trump? https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5158612-can-we-lower-toxic-polarization-while-still-opposing-trump/ You might like checking that out, or maybe you’d like to check out my book How Contempt Destroys Democracy, which goes into detail about these same ideas and attempts to overcome common objections to working on this problem. 

It’s also important to recognize that we’ve become polarized around the word “democracy” (just as we’ve become polarized over a lot of words and phrases). This is for a few reasons: for one, Democrat-side messaging about “saving democracy” creates a natural Republican-side inclination to try to downplay and even mock such concerns; this results in a team-based instinct to make in my opinion rather childish arguments like, “well, actually we’re a republic, not a democracy,” even as clearly we are both a democracy and a republic; we are a democratic republic with a representative democracy. Some of our polarization over language has this flavor to it: people see their opponents using language and so we begin to be polarized over words and phrases; so much about conflict is self-reinforcing. Another likely factor in our polarization over the word “democracy” is the name of the Democratic Party; you can see this being a factor in the fact that some Republicans refer to it as the Democrat Party instead of the Democratic Party, as a way to insult them and say that they’re not really Democratic.  

But still, even with our polarization over the word “democracy,” you’ll find many Republican, pro-Trump voters expressing support for democratic values in surveys and criticizing Democrats for being “undemocratic.” Political groups are never monoliths; they contain a spectrum of partisan hostility and different aspects of polarization; often, similar views and concerns on both sides will manifest with very different language. 

This polarization happens for a lot of words and phrases. I previously interviewed Isaac Saul, the creator of Tangle News, about the role of journalism and news in either amplifying our divides, or reducing them. Related to this topic of language, Isaac has an interesting TED Talk titled 3 Ideas for Communicating Across the Political Divide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=543mYKKh1EE. In that talk, he explores how subtle word choices can inhibit productive dialogue about significant issues — and shows how small (but important) changes can help us all have better conversations with people who think differently than us. To anyone who cares about reducing divides, or just more effective communication or activism, language is key to all these things. 

More about my guest, taken from the Braver Angels site: “Elizabeth Doll joined Braver Angels in March 2022 as the Director of Braver Politics after four years of volunteering with the organization and many years working in politics in the Pacific Northwest. She began political work as a teen, when, while interning on a Congressional campaign, she became passionate about improving her community through civic engagement. Since then, Elizabeth has consulted for and worked on many state and local campaigns.”

I have a Substack entry that I wrote based on this talk; it’s titled “Ambiguity in “democracy”-related language and the ease with which we can call disliked stances “undemocratic” https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/ambiguity-in-democracy-related-language It attempts to summarize my learnings and thoughts after talking to Elizabeth: I saw three different main ways that people were defining ‘democracy’, and those different ways led to different takes on what was “undemocratic.”

Okay here’s the talk with Elizabeth.

Hi Elizabeth. Thanks for joining me. 

Elizabeth: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. 

So maybe we could, uh, start with what drew you to the work of wanting to work on reducing political toxicity and the polarization problem? 

Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I was working in politics. I started doing that very early on. I was a teenager for my first congressional campaign, and I started to see people, even in local politics, breaking relationships with each other, um, whether they were in the same party and just disagreed over tactics, but nonetheless saw each other as political enemies or whether they were in opposing parties.

And it was families no longer talking to each other, friends no longer talking to each other. Um, I started to get really concerned being in more of a rural community that we wouldn’t be able to meet each other’s needs if anything happened, because we wouldn’t know each other. We wouldn’t know what each other’s needs were if people weren’t talking to each other.

I am the type of person that once I noticed a problem, um, then I have to figure out if there’s anything that I can do about it. And if there is something that I can do about it, then I try to do those things. Um, so it was sort of a natural next step for me to start thinking about what I had seen. What was that called?

Oh, it’s called polarization. Okay. Well, can I do something about it? And I spent a lot of, not a lot, but I spent a few years noodling what, if anything I could do about it, and eventually ended up organizing dinners between Republican and Democratic women. Um. And a friend of someone who attended one of those dinners invited me to this thing in the town next to mine called a red blue workshop that was put on by what was then better Angels.

I had my first ever experience said, oh my gosh, this is, this is what I was trying to invent and there’s already national infrastructure. I’ll be a spoke in this wheel and promptly plugged myself in. Um, that was spring of 2018, we’re now in 2025. So it’s been a fair few years that I have been thinking almost single-mindedly about the problem of political polarization and how to mitigate it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You’ve been in this early on, relatively speaking for the polarization work. Yeah. Um, so would you care to share, uh, because we’ll be talking about, uh, Trump and, uh, reactions to him. Would you care to. Talk about your, um, your support of Trump and how that’s changed over the years and, and maybe some of your, your voting preferences.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So I am very much an ideological conservative. Um, in 2016, I took the Ben Shapiro attack. I was very much never Trump, um, by which I didn’t necessarily mean never, ever in any election. I just meant never Trump for the 2016 election. Um, but nonetheless, my concern was that Trump was not actually conservative.

And moreover, I wasn’t entirely certain that he would even be more conservative than Hillary Clinton. And so I did not vote for him. I voted for Evan McMullen, who was a write-in candidate. Um, yeah, he was a write-in candidate from Utah. Uh, he, I. Sort of went a little bit off what I think is the deep end after that, unfortunately.

And they came extremely single-mindedly anti-Trump. But at the time, he seemed like a particularly excellent candidate in the tradition, in the long tradition of ideological conservatives. Before, um, in 2020, I ate my humble pie. Uh, Trump in fact had governed much more conservatively than Hillary Clinton would have, and he appointed two Supreme Court justices, um, who I really, really liked and stood by Brett Kavanaugh, even through the whole drama of sexual assault allegations.

And I think that probably any other president would’ve backed down and asked Brett Kavanaugh to step aside and nominated Amy Comey Barrett instead. Um. I’m glad that we ended up getting both a CB and Brett Kavanaugh, and I think in hindsight, none of the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh held any water.

Um, I appreciated the term from 2016 to 2020. Uh, I thought it was pretty good. And then January 6th, 2021, I promptly regretted having voted for Trump in 2020. Um, I think that it in fact was a constitutional crisis that Mike Pence, rather than Donald Trump had to call in the National Guard in dc. I think that it is a constitutional crisis that Donald Trump asked Mike Pence to find a way to overturn the electors.

Those are not things that I want from any president at any time, from any party. And that was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back for me on Trump. And after, uh, a lot of the election denial stuff in 2020 also really frustrated me. Um, and I could not bring myself to vote for him in 2024. I feel really, really good about that choice.

Gotcha. Yeah. So that, yeah, that, that’s just a, um, I know I wanted to ask that. I know, I know when I have these talks that’s top of people’s minds, whether it should be or not is, you know, going through those kinds of things. Uh, so yes. Maybe, um, you know, the, the, the reason I wanted to have this talk is because.

You know, na, the nature of our divides is, is such that many people on both sides leaving a side who’s more correct or whose fears are more justified. We know that studies show that many people on both sides view the other side as behaving undemocratically and engaging in undemocratic and, and really unfair ways in various ways.

Uh, but I think, uh, you know, also the nature of our divide is that it can be really hard for people on both sides to understand the other side’s narratives. So, for example, I think there’s a lot of, uh, democrat leaning citizens who would have a hard time understanding that point of view on the right about, you know, that they would say, what, you know, what, what exactly, uh, they would wonder what exactly are people concerned about when, when they say, you know, democrats or, or, or liberals are behaving.

Undemocratically. So I’m curious, would you like to go through maybe some of the things that, maybe we could start with some of the, the things that are top of mind you that you see as top of mind on the Republican side for those things? And then maybe we can talk about your, your views a little bit after that.

But maybe you could talk about, you know, what’s top of mind on the pro-Trump, uh, slash Republican side for, uh, Democrats behaving undemocratically. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. So, top of mind for me right now in terms of Republicans behaving undemocratically is the deportations to El Salvador. Um, oh, 

and, and sorry, you said Republicans, but I was thinking, um, I, I was actually asking about what Republicans view.

Democrats, oh, the Republican 

Elizabeth: perspective on Democratic, on 

Democrats. Yeah. And we can, we can get into the Republican side things, but I, yeah, sorry, I thought you were asking me to start 

Elizabeth: with my opinions on Republicans and then move 

on to the Democratic, sorry. Sorry. It’s hard to, it’s hard to throw in all these terms.

I know. It can get a little muddled. So, but 

Elizabeth: too many different, uh, too many uppercase and lowercase, uh, uses of the word Republican and Democrats. 

Yeah. Yeah. But my main focus was gonna be, yeah. What’s, what’s in republican’s minds when they’re, when they’re saying Democrats are, have been, uh, behaving un undemocratically.

Yeah, 

Elizabeth: yeah. Usually top of mind for most Republicans are the, the SCOTUS reforms and the anti electoral college push. Um, both of those things are regularly talked about by leaders on the left. Um, whether it is Chuck Schumer or ProPublica, um, or Nancy Pelosi, um, or a OC, there is a consistent push, um, usually admittedly from the progressive left, um, more than the liberal left, but certainly still some comes from liberal, left congressional reps as well, uh, and senators to pack the Supreme Court to expand the Supreme Court to create a retirement status that would only impact Clarence Thomas’ ability to be an active participant on the Supreme Court.

Breathless reports sharing that conservative justices have really not violated any ethics rules. But doesn’t it feel like a con, a conflict of interest that conservative justices are friends with influential conservatives? No mention of the close relationships between progressive justices and the amicus briefs that come in.

No mention of the relationships between the progressive attorneys, uh, testifying, for example, uh, chase Sangio and his connection to, um, the Democrats on the court. It’s only a conflict of interest when it’s someone whose politics they don’t like. Um, they only want to pack the Supreme Court when they think the Supreme Court is deciding in a way that they disagree with.

They only want to expand the court. Be because they want to exchange the outcomes from the court. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: That’s politics. That is undermining a constitutional institution, an enumerated constitutional institution. One of the most important pieces of our federal government to ensure protection of individual rights and to protect us from an authoritarian president.

And they would like often when it rules in a way that is different than they would like to completely change it and to allow it to be altered for their political ends. And that is the exact opposite of the purpose of the Supreme Court. It is, while it is small D, democratic in the technical sense. I think that one big thing that is missed is when the American people think about democracy.

They’re not just thinking about the technical small d democratic sense of a massive people voting, majority vote only for things. Instead, they’re thinking about the American system that is outlined in the Constitution. That’s what most people mean when they say democracy. And I find there’s a bit of a Martin Bailey on the left sometimes, particularly in the quote unquote pro-democratic groups, um, where they pretend that they’re talking about the mot of our system of government built, uh, established on the Constitution and supported by the founders, and then they switched to the Bailey in specific policy arguments of small D democracy.

And one voice equal. One person equals one vote in every circumstance, and majority rule is the best thing that we could have. Mm-hmm. I find that to be incredibly deceptive. I find that to be incredibly undermining toward our institutions, incredibly undermining of the constitution, and really not much different than the anti-democratic actions of the rioters on January 6th.

They both wanted to overturn constitutional provisions, but one of them wants to overturn a constitutional provision to help progressives and the other wanted to overturn a constitutional provision to help Trump. 

Yeah. The um, I mean, I do often in my book, diffusing American Anger, I talked about the different.

Interpretations of democratic or democracy. You know, there’s all, as you’re, as you’re getting at, there’s, there’s different ways people can use that, which I think gets at the fundamental way we can be arguing at. You know, people can be arguing at, uh, different angles on those things and completely be missing, you know, uh, understanding what their opponents are talking about.

Because yeah, there’s this, what you’re referring to as small D democracy is this idea that, you know, the, the, the conceptual idea that we should hear, or from many people, and many people should be involved, or, you know, that many people should be respected, many groups should be respected. All the, these kinds of more conceptual ideas.

But then there’s, you know, the idea that people are using democracy to refer to these specific rules that we have that, you know, are in the Constitution. So there, there’s these different ways people are, are, are coming at the, the argument depending on, and, and I see a lot of team based thinking in it, right?

It’s like. Because you can justify, depending on how you parse that language, you can kind of justify any kind of team-based thing you want to justify, depending on how you interpret. You know, like, oh, if you think Republicans are doing something unfair, you can label that as undemocratic. Right? Pretty much no matter what it is and kind of, you know, vice versa for any, for, for any team based thing.

So I think the, yeah, the, the ambiguity in the language there, which I think gets into a lot of ambiguity for a lot of these contentious issues about the language we use because people can be using so many different terms in, in so many ways. But I’m curious if you have anything to add on that, that ambiguity in that of the, of the democracy language?

Elizabeth: Just that I find it incredibly frustrating as a conservative when I talk to progressives about the. Anti who are panicking about the anti-democratic actions on the right, and I asked them, well, do you support the electoral College? Like, well, no, we think that there should be this national popular Vote compact.

Okay, well, the National Popular Vote Compact is an end run around the Constitution. It is an attempt to avoid the necessity of a constitutional amendment for an enumerated constitutional process. You are also undermining the Constitution. Explain to me why you are so concerned about the anti-democratic actions on the right and you haven’t even noticed your own support for anti-constitutional actions.

Because most, even most progressives are not thinking about the conflict between having a. Republic with democratic leanings or a constitutional republic, um, whatever word you wanna use for that. Um, versus having a direct democracy. And it’s difficult because on one hand, yes, I am absolutely advocating for the support and continued, um, continued existence and strength of undemocratic institutions.

But undemocratic institutions are the point in our constitution. It’s why Benjamin Franklin said, a republic, if you can keep it, this is the way that our government was intended to be. And if you say that anti-democratic actions are those that are trying to tear down the system of constitutional governance that we have, I have questions.

When you are only upset about the right and not at all upset about things happening on the left, it drives me up a wall when I hear people advocate to get rid of the electoral college via a state compact that is quite literally trying to avoid the legal mandate of a constitutional amendment and try to undermine the Second Amendment and try to undermine the First Amendment, the freedom of speech.

But they’re concerned about my side of the aisle being anti-democratic. Like, let’s, let’s talk. 

Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, I think there’s a couple, yeah, a couple things in there that I think about where it’s like, regardless of whether you like it or not, it, it always perplexes me when people talk about it as if it’s something that, you know, we should easily get rid of or, or can, can easily get rid of.

Because whether you like the electoral college or not. It is part of the system of American, you know, government. It’s, it was embedded in the system. So yeah, the, the idea and, and then the other thing that strikes me is, you know, the getting back to the team-based interpretations, because I think we know that if the shoe was on the other foot, we’d see many people making the opposite arguments.

Right. A lot of, a lot of the arguments that we make on these things is depending on like how, you know, power, basically, like who, who has, who has the power. So if the shoe was on the other foot, you’d see, you know, Republicans arguing for the popular vote and you’d see Democrats arguing, um, um, the, yeah, for, for the electoral college.

Um, but yeah, I, I, I think, you know, and, and the, I I think it gets, the thing that bugs me about liberal side arguments on that is not understanding, you know, what’s bothering you and other people in terms of. Tr trying to act like these things should, or could easily be gotten rid of and, and not, not really, uh, grappling with the fact that these are, you know, part of the system of government, whether you like it or not.

And, and you have to take that seriously and, and, and think about that seriously, and not just try to, like you’re saying, create an end run around it. Right. Uh, and then, yeah, B is acting as if any of these things are obvious ’cause like, getting to the effective affective of polarization, of treating people with contempt to disagree.

You know, I see a lot of that too, where it’s like, you know, acting as if you’re an idiot for, uh, thinking the electoral college is a good thing or, or, you know, these kinds of things. Um, getting to that, the contempt that people will treat. People who, who disagree with them. That that’s, that’s another thing I, I see in that area.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I’m gonna push back just for a second here. On the notion that if the shoe were on the other foot, you would see the same behavior from Republicans opposing the anti-democratic institutions. Um, I think that that hasn’t been true for a long time, but you are starting to see that now in the political realignment.

Um, I think that the Democratic Party for a lot of decades at this point, basically, I think since, uh, William F. Buckley kicked the birchers out of the Republican party, um, you have seen the Democratic party increasingly become a grievance constituency that is more reactive than ideological in any way.

And the Republican party was deeply ideological in. Almost all of its senses, more than a grievance constituency, I would argue even really until 2016. I would argue that you started to see some of that in 2010. Um, really with the Tea Party movement, even though I was a part of that movement and a lot of really wonderful people joined the party and are ideologically conservative as a result of the Tea Party movement.

Um, I think that there was also a lot of grievance built into some of the people who joined, um, the, the Tea Party movement, the, the uprising, uh, the populist movement,

and now I think it’s much more fully fleshed out. The Republican party’s transition into a grievance party that mirrors the Democrats. Um, but I think for many, many decades you had a party that, um, for example, the whole Federalist Society, um, was built in response to the Progressive Burger Court. And it wasn’t built on an idea that the Republican Party would have its own expansive definition.

That hasn’t happened until now with the advent of common good, so-called common good constitutionalism. Instead, it was built on the idea that we would have an, the most historically accurate interpretation of the Constitution that was possible, that we would treat the Constitution as a dead letter that could be known according to original public meaning at the time, rather than a living constitution that fit our will.

And so I do wanna, I do wanna push back on that conception just a little bit that, um, I. It has always been a team-based sport. Oh yeah. Definitely not. Definitely not. ’cause I think it is much, definitely not always. 

Yeah. It’s become more team based is what I mean. You know, and especially in the past, you know, 10 years.

But even like, you know, with all the, the partisan hostility ramping up over the last, you know, 15, 20, that’s what I was mainly referring to is I, I, you probably agree with me that we see more people on both sides regardless of, you know, who we think is more wrong or right, or more right. I, I, I think you’d probably agree that we see more people filtering things through, you know, justifying things through a team-based lens of like, okay, if my side, you know, if it helps my side, I, I’ll be more okay with it.

But yeah, 100%. I feel like that’s absolutely, that’s definitely gotten worse in the, you know, as time has gone on. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, um. So, do you want to Yeah, that. Okay. So we talked about the, yeah, the electoral college, the SCOTUS reforms, uh, what other big things on your mind there? Uh, well, one thing I did want to preface it with is I think there’s two when it comes to things that bother, uh, bother Republicans or, or bother anyone really about the undemocratic actions, you could kind of group them into the ways that, uh, people treat their opponents.

You know, for example, Democrats reaching for ultra pessimistic views of Republicans and what motivates them. You know, that that’s a whole class of how we speak and treat about our opponents, which can be viewed as undemocratic and insulting, you know, be treating people as if their concerns are not, uh, relevant or, or not rational.

Right? That, that, that, that’s a whole class of things you could fit into that large category apart from, you know, the thing. Actual behaviors like, um, you know, trying to restrict Trump from, uh, being on the ballot, like actual, uh, actions that are taking. So, so I, it might be helpful to think about it in terms of the, the kind of insulting, uh, views or framings of opponents versus the actions.

But, um, I don’t know if you want to talk about other, other things that are top of mind for, um, undemocratic actions though, for, for you. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. So, um, you told me you wanted to hear it all, so you see I have a lot of bullet points on my list. Sure, sure. 

Yeah, go ahead. 

Elizabeth: So I can, to, to talk about what you were mentioning.

Um, the racial resentment scale is something that has frustrated me more. As I have become someone engaged in depolarization and really, uh, dived into the peer reviewed academic literature around political polarization. Um, when I was a, but a young Republican conservative, uh, I was always hearing people call Republicans racist, and I just sort of thought this was a stereotype.

I didn’t know it was based in anything. I had never seen racism. Um, it wasn’t until, uh, I I, and I’d heard myths about like the southern strategy and oh, Republicans appealed to racist southern Democrats, um, to win the south. Well, the south didn’t actually fully flip to Republicans until the aughts. So if they had a southern strategy to win racists as a.

That as that being the primary point of a campaign like that was a pretty sign significant failure. Um, and it didn’t start in the places that were, that you would most expect, um, to have, uh, to have serious problems with racism. Um, instead it was sort of a, a, a mobility change and it was upwardly mobile, um, middle class people who started to trend positively toward the Republican economic view.

Um, and Democrats held the South for a very, very, very long time, um, and continue to hold major cities in the south. Um, continually like has not been interrupted by Republicans since. Um, the recon since reconstruction. So that, that was something that I grew up sort of hearing, like, okay, well this is one motivation, but then I started diving into academic literature and polarization and the racial resentment scale is everywhere, and it seems to underlie almost every major studies conclusion that Republicans are racist.

That this is how Republicans have come to be popular. This is why we’re so polarized. One of the bullet points in almost every academic piece about polarization, um, on the right, says the right is more polarized than the left because they appeal to racial resentment. 

I’m going to read you Main, and that was the main, uh, thesis basically, and Ezra Klein’s book, which is super popular.

The Why we’re Polarized book, it plays a role in, in so many of the. Liberal leaning, um, conceptions of, you know, what polarization in America is about. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: I argue that the racial resentment scale is truly begging the question on whether you believe in a conservative frame on human nature or a more liberal frame on human nature.

That is, that human nature is more self-interested or human nature is basically good. And other interested. So I’m going to read the statements on the racial resentment scale. Irish, Italian and Jewish ethnicities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Black should do the same without any special favors.

Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve. It’s really a matter of some people just not trying hard enough. If blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as white.

Then sometimes they add to further statements in a later expanded version. I think this expanded in the 1970s, I wanna say 76, but I might be off by a year or two. Um, government officials usually pay less attention to a request or complaint from a black person than from a white person. And most blacks who receive money from welfare programs could get along without it if they tried.

I would argue that those first four questions especially, but even the last two also, really it’s just asking the question, do you believe that government is helpful to improving people’s circumstances? Mm-hmm. And if you are a Republican, if you’re a conservative ideologically, and you do not believe that government actually helps people improve their circumstances, and that giving people special favors makes them worse off instead of better off, of course you believe that blacks should do the same without any special favors.

If you believe in equal rights, in equal treatment under the law, of course you believe that blacks should do the same without any special favors. Generations of slavery and dis discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class. You’re in the 1970s, you’re being asked about slavery, especially as we get further into the data.

If you’re in the 2010s and you’re being asked if you think that slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class, um, you’re just being asked about how to what degree you believe systemic racism plays a role in individual outcomes.

And that’s not a question of whether you believe that one group of people is less capable than another group of people based on their ethnicity. It’s a question about. Whether you believe the role of government or society has substantially impacted and continues to substantially impact the ability of certain racial groups to get ahead you, that that changes with politics and it’s not about it.

It’s not about a belief in, in, um, one race’s superiority over another race. It’s about a different conception of individual versus collective guilt about whether government help is effective or hurtful About how much, um, an individual’s. View of themselves as a victim versus empowered can change individual outcomes and about your beliefs about individual outcomes.

It, it’s just a really, really horrific scale to measure whether or not someone is racist. Yeah. You’re basically just asking whether or not someone agrees with conservative ideology and calling it racism. 

Mm-hmm. And I’ll throw in, you know, and, and for people listening to this, I’ll include in the entry for this episode on my [email protected].

I’ll include resources related to this because Yeah, I’ve done in, in my book, diffusing American Anger, I have a long section about this, exactly what you’re talking about. And you know, there’s academics who examine this, like Musa Garby, I don’t dunno if you read his paper Race in the Race for the White House.

He does a great examination, which. In this paper about the bias in these areas from, you know, liberal academics who basically are, you know, describing conservative views as racist, basically exactly what you’re saying. And I think that his paper is one of the more important ones for understanding how liberals and, you know, slash Democrats have contributed to toxicity.

I think that’s very important for people to understand and to understand how upsetting that is for conservatives to constantly be told they’re racist, right? Like that is a very, that is a very upsetting thing. And, and to understand the American divides, you have to be willing to understand why that’s so upsetting and how that can be viewed as an ultimate kind of undemocratic smear campaign, right?

Like. Uh, so yeah, just to say there’s, there, there’s many things to, to say there, and I think it’s very important to understand that aspect of our divides. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: And also incredibly frustrating to me now is that it has opened the Overton window incredibly wide to allow actual races to sneak into society, um, and to sneak into acceptability because it’s not just Republicans that stopped considering racist to be a serious smear.

Normal average Americans recognized that people were being smeared as racist who weren’t, especially in 2020. Um, it became totally unavoidable. Even the term white supremacist lost its power, lost its meaning, and now there are no superlatives left from which to expel. With which to expel people who have actually horrendous condemnable views on race.

It’s the boy who haven’t, 

boy who cried wolf kind of effect written it is 100%. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. The boy Who Cried Wolf 

For, for, for lots of things, for authoritarian, for fascist, for undemocratic, all the, all these kinds of labels. It’s like, I mean, it, it feel, yeah, it feels like so many of these things have been weakened, which I think helps explain, explain, you know, how, how, how these things unfold in conflict, where everyone just gets burnt out.

When you see so many labels like that thrown around and then, then, then it’s becomes increasingly hard to distinguish what’s going on and what actually is the bad things versus what’s being overstated. Right. It, it, it just creates this extremely confusing environment where, you know, I, I, I read the paper and I constantly have to do my own work to determine is this, is this a really bad thing or is it a standard thing that’s being blown out of proportion?

Right. So, yeah. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. And frankly, most people aren’t doing that. Most people are not. You and I, when someone is called a white supremacist, going to check, is this person actually a white supremacist or is this person being accused of white supremacy because they violated a progressive taboo? 

Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.

And you either get one side or the other, you get cancellation without cause, or you get acceptance without warrant. And neither of those is a good situation to be in. You want your words to have power, you want to be able to say that someone is very bad and have people take you seriously. You want to be able to say, this person’s views are abhorrent to a polite society.

And have people say, yes, that means something. ’cause right now we’re in a world, I’ve been called white supremacist twice. Once by a ginger in a workshop because, uh, we didn’t, we, I wanted to stick to the schedule allotted for a particular exercise within the workshop. I’ve been called a white supremacist because I advocated for a group of parents to be allowed to reinstitute a policy that was in the public school in my district until 2020 that required the school district to notify parents when the school was going to be discussing a controversial issue.

Yep. I think, uh, neither 

Elizabeth: one of those things are white supremacy. 

I, I, I’ve been called all sorts of names doing this work, um, myself. Yeah. Um, so I, and I think some people listening to this might think like, oh, what do, what do these kinds of. Negative, you know, pessimistic views even, even if they are bad.

What does this have to do with undemocratic things? You know, people who, liberal people who are thinking about things they view as undemocratic on the right, or from Trump. But I think it’s very important to understand how all of these things are related, right? Like ultra pessimistic treatment of our opponents can be viewed as, uh, as undemocratic, as unfair, which can in turn, lead to not caring about, you know, things that might be bad on your own side.

So just to say like, yeah, all, all these things are related in the sense that 

Elizabeth: the other side is doing their worst, so why wouldn’t we do our worst? 

Right, exactly. Yeah. And it’s like, why should we care when you guys didn’t care about how we were treated, et cetera, et cetera. So I, I, I think it’s very important to understand that’s how, that that’s just how things get worse in a conflict.

In in general. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: And further, like the, the abuse of extreme terms is. Directly related because you have terms like antisemitism, terms like authoritarianism terms like fascism that mean something in a technical sense. And that should be scary to people. That should be a red flag or a flashing neon sign, let’s say.

You should be afraid and you should check yourself, and you should be cautious about what you do from here. And those words no longer have meaning because they were used to describe things that they weren’t, they were used to describe normal process. That was a normal policy. It was just in disagreement with progressive monoliths.

Mm-hmm. I’m sorry, progressive shibboleth. 

Mm. I was 

Elizabeth: thinking monolithic thought and shibboleth at the same time. And what came out was not the right thing. 

No, no. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I would get that confused too. Um. So, yeah. Okay. Uh, do you want to, I know you had some other bullet points. Do you want to hit a few more?

Uh, if we don’t get to all of them, uh, I can always add in into the, uh, 

Elizabeth: uh, yeah. How much time do we have? Actually, I just, I should have asked. 

Well, I usually, yeah, we should have established that, but usually I aim for about an hour or so. Maybe we could just hit a few, like spend a few sentences on your remaining ones.

Um, and, and maybe you can go in order of ones that jump out as the most, uh, upsetting. 

Elizabeth: Uh, yeah. So let’s say the obsession with Christian nationalism, without an acknowledgement, the progressives are actually more politically active than conservative Christian, politically conservative Christians, or that many self-described Christian nationalists and evangelicals, according to data from Ryan Burge aren’t even regular church attendees.

Um, lots of leftwing authoritarianism exists. Uh, nonetheless, until very recently, academics refused largely to even acknowledge that leftwing authoritarianism was a thing, because authoritarianism is right wing government to its extreme on the political scale, and so you just can’t have left-wing authoritarianism.

There’s no such thing as left-wing authoritarianism. 

Right, right. Which, and both of those things you just mentioned, you  know, the ultra pessimistic things about Christian nationalism, which I also write about in, in my books about, um, you know, the overstatement of that in the, in the worst case, filtering for that and, and the, um, yeah, the, the liberal, uh, side, uh, so-called liberal, so-called, um, you know, authoritarianism.

I, both of those things are related to the, to the racism thing we just talked about where it’s these, these are all things related to like ultra pessimistic framings of, you know, worst case framings of. What’s driving the other side and, and deducement about like what these surveys mean, you know, taking the worst case framings of what these surveys mean and all these kinds of things.

So, uh, yeah. Carry on. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Um, just incredibly frustrating. This was especially frustrating during 2020 when I had state and federal government telling me whether I had to wear a mask and what circumstances I had to wear a mask, how many people I could have inside my own house at any one time, even though all of those people agreed of their own volition to come hang out together and understood the risk of covid, nope, the government needed to make those decisions for us.

But that’s not left-wing authoritarianism, apparently just incredibly frustrating. As someone conservative, all I want is an acknowledgement that there was in fact, and continues to be broad. Um, broad desire for left-wing authoritarianism, whether it’s over the economy, whether it’s over people’s lives in an emergency, what is considered to be an emergency situation, whether the government construes something as an emergency or not, and what they use that emergency to do.

You know, kind of going all the way back to 2012, hurricane Katrina, um, I’m sorry, 2005, hurricane Katrina. Um, where you have the, the government confiscating people’s firearms, personal firearms that they are using for self-defense in a lawless situation because it’s allegedly an emergency. This, this sort of stuff is left-wing authoritarianism, but it is not acknowledged as such.

And it’s incredibly frustrating to only ever hear about authoritarianism on the right and have it be completely ignored on the left. And not just ignored, but actively treated as though people who say it exists are making it up a gaslighting of conservatives who complain about it. 

Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: Uh, 

I think that’s, um, yeah, I think I, I, I think it’s especially angering to people, the, the feeling that they’re being gaslit, like that people aren’t taking their concerns seriously.

Because I think it’d be one thing if we had these disagreements and people talked about them, right. And, and, and, and talked about them in good faith. But I think the, getting to the whole toxic conflict thing, it’s especially angering to people on, looks like I lost you both sides of a lot of these contentious issues when they feel like the other side is just now listening to what they’re.

Are and, and, and denigrating them and treating them like, you know, like there’s no, like, there’s nothing to see there basically. Right. I can’t hear you anymore. That’s, that’s what really takes it to this level of like, it’s, the 

Elizabeth: recording is being saved locally, 

then they’re not even gonna like, acknowledge my frustrations and my concerns and fears and such.

Right. 

Elizabeth: I hope it’ll come back.

Oh, did we freeze up? Oh, I think we froze up.

Oh, are you back, Elizabeth? There we 

Elizabeth: go. 

Oh yeah, it, it froze. It froze up. I don’t know where it froze up for you, but, um, 

Elizabeth: uh, almost as soon as you started responding, it told me that you were experiencing connectivity issues. Gotcha. And it was being saved locally. 

I think it got yours. Um, your response. So, yeah.

Actually I, I think I’ll just leave off mine ’cause I was just elaborating on your point. So, um, okay. Well maybe we can, um, yeah, do you want to pivot, um, back to your, uh. Some of your, more of your bullet points about undemocratic, uh, views, concerns? 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Um, I had it open, but 

lemme know if you want me to drop another link in.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I’ll get it in a second. For some reason it disappeared on me. Do do. Okay. I have back open. Um,

I want to, before we close, um, 

oh, what about, uh, oh, what about the, uh, effort to remove Trump from the, the ballot? Would you think of that or what it, what were your, what were your takes on that? 

Elizabeth: I was mildly annoyed by it. Honestly, I was a lot less frustrated with it than a lot of my republican friends were.

Hmm. 

Elizabeth: Um, because it went through the correct channels. 

Hmm. 

Elizabeth: Um, people sued, it went to court, the courts followed the law, um, and correct determinations were made in a place of law that was really in question. Um, as far as how this actually works, is it self-executing? Is it up to state governments? Is it up to the federal government?

Is it, um, something that local counties can decide? How is this enforced? Is it, can we actually stop people from voting For someone like lots and lots of. Actually interesting constitutional questions there. Um, which is why I think you saw, like even the Colorado court that is, um, very blue, completely split over what the right way forward was.

And so, so long as we’re actually following the process, um, through the courts, I have no problem with challenging law. Mm-hmm. Um, what I have a problem with is ignoring law that exists in the first place. Hmm. Um, and or openly and flagrantly violating it. Um, and not even challenging it, just waiting for someone to enforce it against you.

Um, if you think the law is bad, sue to change the law. And so it, because it went through the process, it honestly, it didn’t, it didn’t bother me as much as it bothered other, um, Republicans. 

Um, I often hear on the right, the, um, they’ll say things about the Democrat Democratic party, you know, not, um, calling them undemocratic because they, you know, didn’t hold a primary for Harris.

And, uh, covered up, you know, biden’s decline. Basically painting the Democratic party is not really listening to the, the will of the people and such. I, I don’t know if you wanna talk about that, that, that, that kind of stuff. I’m a bit, I don’t really, uh, understand it. Some of it seems like just. Objecting to some pretty standard things about how political parties operate, but I, I, I wonder if you wanna talk a little bit about that view.

Elizabeth: I mean, that’s also basically my stance, um, because I have been very involved in party politics for, uh, half of my life at this point. Um, I, I think it’s ironic that the Democratic party is too small, our Republican, to solve its internal problems. It has too much locus of control, um, at the top and, um, too much king making, um, not enough small democracy.

And meanwhile, the Republican party is too small de democratic to solve its internal schisms and become more representative of the American public. Um, I think that parties though, get to set their own rules, so I don’t think it is a bad thing per se. Um, that Democrats have made their party non-representative of the American people.

Just like, I don’t think it’s a bad thing per se, that the Republican party has made its own rules. Um, and they are non-representative of the American people’s views. Um, but I do think that both have resulted in bad outcomes, um, particularly for the Democrats in the 2024 election cycle because they prioritized people giving people power who have extraordinarily atypical political views.

Um, that’s gonna hurt your outcomes. But I do think also parties are motivated by winning elections. And so if you lose enough elections, eventually you change the way that you do things. Um, and I think that’s sort of the reckoning that you see Democrats are going through now. I think they didn’t do this previously when Trump won.

Because, uh, he didn’t win the popular vote, and so it was really easy for them to just say like, oh, he didn’t actually win Americans. Right. He just won the electoral college and rural people and it’s different. Um, but when he, they treated it like 

an anomaly when they shouldn’t have, basically. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: Yes.

And now that you won the national popular vote, even though it was really narrow, it’s forced them to actually reckon with their non-representative views. 

Yeah. That’s interesting to hear you, uh, talk about the party, uh, you know, the, the criticisms of the Democratic party or parties in general, because I often hear people, you know, denigrating the Democratic Party, or I hear people really angry at parties in general.

And at some level it just seems to me like you’re, to me, it feels like you’re angry at the wrong things because at some level you’re gonna have parties and the American system of government kind of pre-select the system, just kind of like. For better or for worse seems, seems to have, uh, systematically produced this two party outcome.

And so at some level, you’re gonna have parties doing party things. So a lot of the anger I I see around that is, is kind of like th you know, these are just parties doing party things. Like we can, we can, we can get angry at them and feel like they’re doing things wrong, but the end of the day it’s gonna be imperfect.

No matter how you slice it. It’s gonna be jostling for power in various ways, you know? So I, I feel like some of the things I see there are just kind of like not focused on, because I see in the polarization space, sometimes I’ll see people say like, the entire problem is this two party thing. And I’m like, is that really the problem?

I don’t think it’s the problem. I think the problem is all this contempt we have for each other, right? Like, uh, yeah, 

Elizabeth: I think it’s the contempt. I think it’s a lack of trust. But also I do think that, um, one of the problems with parties is not that we don’t have enough of them, I think we actually have. A lot of factions within the United States, um, depending on how you slice and dice between four and five major factions in the American public, uh, among voters.

But most of those are not actively engaged in the parties. And the entire idea of the party structure is that people would be actively engaged in selecting candidates through the parties. So I think when people are angry at the parties, they think of them as like evil machines that are trying to subvert the will of the people rather than people run organizations who have particular desired ideological or reactionary outcomes.

Um, and because only those few people are involved, you end up with bad political outcomes. We have the power to change this. All you have to do is get involved in the local party. It’s genuinely not that difficult to change the balance of power at the county level. Um, it happens very regularly. Um, but it is a thankless, tiring, obnoxious job and people will be terrible to you.

And so nobody wants to do it. It’s much easier to point fingers than it is to get your hands dirty. 

Yeah. And, and, and the, the anger I see some people express the extreme anger. I see some people express it like parties or it, it strikes me as simplistic and, and similar to other extreme angers, people express about like, it’s all the rich people’s fault, or it’s all, you know, Republican’s fault, or it’s all Democrat’s fault.

It’s like there’s all these simplistic framings of like casting blame and it’s like we, this is a very complex system and like, you know, you. I, I think that’s what strikes me about some of these things. Whenever, whenever I see somebody extremely angry and kind of burn it all down, I feel like they’re just approaching the thing from like looking for a scapegoat for, you know, the dysfunction they see.

And it’s hard to easily find clean scapegoats, I feel like, in such a complex system. ’cause everything’s related, right? 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I’m sorry. I know it’s already a love node too. And so we’re Oh, I’m okay going over 

if you are. Uh, you know, I just, I mainly, for your sake, I didn’t want to draw out too far, but if you want to go through a few more points, feel free.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I’m okay. I don’t have anything more on my calendar until this afternoon, so, um, okay. I’ve got, I’ve got some time, um, but there are a couple of things in particular that I want to highlight here. Sure. Um, I don’t know if you wanna get into talking about, um. How people feel about the current administration at all.

Um, but kind of on the same track that we were going. Um, I can wanna talk about it, a specific experience that I had at Western Washington University because, uh, I finally found the video up. And I think it’s really emblematic of, uh, the anti-constitutional left. So people tell me like, oh, well, sometimes I’ll hear people say, who are the leaders that are pushing this?

Um, I don’t, I don’t see who you mean, like who’s saying that this is a good idea. And to my thinking, like it’s not, it’s not even all political leaders, it’s a, it’s a movement, right? It’s a cultural, 

it can be dispersed culturally. It doesn’t, doesn’t necessarily require a. I think that’s the important to understand too, is like some of the things that bother people, it doesn’t, it doesn’t require like major leaders expressing it.

It can be like culturally dispersed, right? 

Elizabeth: Yeah. So it’s, uh, it’s a couple of months ago a guy presenting to 60 local Bainbridge Islanders who are fairly influential people, um, about why the national popular vote compact is a good thing and they can, they should support it. It’s, uh, I was at Western Washington University, um, at a seminar on sustaining democracy last year in October.

Uh, and one of the two keynotes, uh, said, quote unquote, uh, quote, I’m advocating that we should repeat the process that we got our current constitution by and say let’s ignore the current constitution. Um, in response to me pushing him on. Whether he was concerned about a tyranny of the majority, if we moved into more of a small D, democratic government.

Um, he said, I don’t see any way to construct any meaningful aspect of the people that inserts states into that, and that the sovereignty of states doesn’t really fit into a democratic conception of government. The states after the first 13 are an arbitrary construction. Construction of Congress states don’t really have a place in democracy, in my opinion.

And yes, I think we should subvert undemocratic institutions and improve them or replace those with democratic institutions. This is a guy who is a professor at University of Wisconsin Madison, who is flown to Washington State, to Western Washington University, who is regularly instructing students.  In different places around the country about how democracy should best function.

And he is telling them, he is teaching them in a dispersed way, not as a political leader, not as a guy with a super big name. That actually, yeah, the Constitution is bad. The US Senate is bad. Even states really don’t make any sense, and we should just have a direct democracy where the majority rule and it’s better for majority rule than minority rule because those are really the only two options that he sees.

Mm-hmm. Like 

Elizabeth: that. 

That 

Elizabeth: is what I am concerned about. 

Right, right. Yeah. It’s not 

Elizabeth: just Chuck Schumer complaining about the Supreme Court in a press conference. It’s also. Every political science professor across the country telling their students that our American Republic is bad. 

Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: The way that the Constitution has established our government is wrong and undemocratic, and they should undermine it and destroy it and replace it with something else.

Mm-hmm. Explain to me how that is different than the people at the Capitol on January 6th, 

which gets into understanding, you know, Republicans, uh, Republican side, uh, anger at academia and colleges and such, which is sometimes you, that’s what bugged me about Ezra Klein’s bookie. He literally in, in, in his wide, we’re polarized book.

He devoted like a single page and basically scoffed at people being upset about, you know, things that were happening in colleges. But I think it’s very important for liberals to understand colleges represent something like they represent, you know. What, what republicans would see is indoctrination into these views that they oppose.

Right. And like, if tho if tho if those are being, those ideas are being passed to people who will play a significant role in the country’s future. You can, it, it should be easy to understand, even if you disagree with it, why, what bugs Republicans about, that kind of thing. Right. Like, because it’s a very influential thing.

Even if it’s not right now, you know that many leaders doing it, it’s like it also represents what future people will think and do and all these things, right? 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Right. Um, it was amazing to me. I believe it was in 2023, but it might’ve been just last year, I think it was 2023, finding an article about Tufts College that was trying a radical new experiment, which was having a class that taught conservatism

at elite colleges in the country. I. People should learn how to understand literally the other half of the country. Mm-hmm. And instead, it’s a radical experiment to explain how the other side of the country thinks. 

Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: That is a wild thing to say. Mm-hmm. That is a wild thing to have happening in the country.

Mm-hmm. And that’s something that is just that, yes, this is what Republicans are upset about. It is, it is the way that progressive ideology has migrated into every single aspect of culture. And it is only in government, mostly because of the Federalist society and the pro-life movement that Republicans have built power in every other place.

Democrats are in control. Right. And that is what you’re seeing pushed back against, particularly in 20, starting in 2020, you’ve got a whole bunch of the old labor left people, the, your Bernie Sanders to Trump voters who were incredibly frustrated with identity politics, who didn’t normally vote, but if they did vote, they can, they voted Democrat.

They considered themselves generally Democrats, if they were pushed on it. Um, but then they felt like the Democrats turned on them. Um, and now they’re voting for Republicans. And now I’m lumped in with them, um, as a, as mega Republican or whatever. And it is unrecognizable to me as a traditional conservative.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, I think the, yeah, I think it’s important to understand too the cultural, the feeling that Republicans have of. Of being culturally dominated helps explain support for someone as aggressive and, and, um, you know, um, who, who, someone like Trump, who engages the way he does, I think feeling like we are the underdogs.

And I’ve written, I read about this in my book, uh, my books about polarization, where I think it’s very important to understand if you feel like you’re the underdog and you feel like academia and entertainment industry and news industry is all aligned against you and treats you like, you know, you’re, you’re some alien, uh, contemptuous group, then you can be more supportive of more aggressive approaches like somebody like Trump embodies, right?

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Uh, 

Elizabeth: yeah, I don’t think it’s right. I think authoritarianism is bad from both sides of the aisle. Uh, it’s why I find myself more politically homeless at this moment in time than probably any other time in my entire life. 

Right. 

Elizabeth: Um. But that is how people feel, 

right? It’s not, it helps explain why, why things happen.

And I think we more people should be curious why things happen the way they do and not just filter through the worst case interpretation of like, it’s happening this way because they are bad and they are malicious and they have the worst impulses. And, but that’s what, that’s what these, these conflict lead leads more of us to do is filter for those worst case interpretations as, as opposed to understanding like, oh, I do understand why they’re okay with this, or why they, you know, uh, why they vote for X, Y, Z, why they’re okay with X, Y, z.

You know, the, the curiosity, yeah, the curiosity is important, but so, so few people, you know, fewer and fewer, fewer people become curious. Right. Uh, 

Elizabeth: uh, and I think this goes directly to the kind, the final thing that I want to touch on, if you’re okay with that, if you’ve still got a little time. 

Sure. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: Um, this end part that you mentioned, um, the.

Tendency to speak in ways that make things seem normal and less chaotic than they are. Um, 

yeah, I can set that up a little bit. You know, I, I often see it, it, it’s something in the polarization space and bridge building space specifically, because I often feel like there can be a tendency to understand each other, which can kind of come across, or even actually be kind of like this feeling like we’re trying to normalize everything, or it’s like everybody’s, everything’s okay.

Let’s try to understand each other. But, you know, the, it, I think it is important to see, even while we’re trying to understand each other, to see that polarization, toxic conflict does distort and der the way we think, right? Like it leads to more team-based thinking. It leads to more authoritarian behaviors and people justifying things, bad things on their side.

So it’s kind of a tough line to thread when you’re talking about, I. Trying to resolve polarization, toxic conflict because it’s like you do want to understand each other while also seeing that toxic conflict has a way of making us behave in, in worse ways. Right. And, and both the, I think we can thread that line.

It’s like, ’cause, ’cause to resolve, it requires us to try to understand or understand each other more, even as our derangement leads us to instinctually be like, I don’t want to resolve this. They’re just bad. Right. But I think it’s kind of threading that needle is important to me. But yeah, go, go ahead and say if you want to say something about that.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So this is where I think I, uh, always find myself at an Alexander Sol Nitin quote. Um, and apologies if I completely butchered that last name. I. Um, I have only read the name. I am doing a homeschool thing and that I’ve never heard anyone else say his name. 

Yeah, I don’t know it myself, but yeah. 

Elizabeth: Uh, but he wrote in, uh, the Gulag Archipelago, um, which is about, uh, Soviet slaughter, basically.

Um, the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart and even within hearts, overwhelmed by evil, one small bridge head of good is retained, and even in the best of all hearts, there remains an uprooted small corner of evil.

And he has another quote in the same book, if Only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart. 

Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: Um, more and more and more in an era where so many people are willing to exercise authoritarianism against people that they see as bad and evil. I see the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Um, people do really, really horrendous things.

Promote and advocate for incredibly bad things with the best of intentions. I have had people tell me that the Uyghur Muslims deserved their genocide because they wouldn’t give up their religion, which started with a conversation about how, you know, wouldn’t the world just be so much better if we all could understand each other?

And we didn’t have things that got in the way and polarized us like religion. This is motivated by good, motivated by the idea that it would really be nice if we could all get along. Yeah. And therefore the genocide of Uyghur Muslims is okay because, you know, they could have just given up their religion and that that would’ve then we would’ve all been able, then they would’ve all been able to get along.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, and I see those, I see these kinds of messages regularly in the polarization space. ’cause I see messages from the public and some people who will be like, why can’t we reduce these toxic divides? It’s all the fault of these evil people over here. You know, like, it’s like you’re behaving toxically, but you want to reduce, you know, its, it can be hard to understand that, but yeah, you’re, it is true.

People’s good intentions can lead them to reaching for very, um, bad ways of thinking. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: Just, just over the weekend, I had a guy tell me straight up that he supported the Houthis. Why did he support the Houthis? Well, because he really believes that the Israelis are just out there murdering children, and the Houthis are trying to stop them from murdering children.

And whoever is fighting against the murder, the wanton murder of children, uh, they are doing something that is good. Again, the road to utter hell is paved with good intentions. 

Yeah. 

Elizabeth: People want to do things that they think are righteous, but the justification of self-righteousness leads to extremely dark places.

Mm-hmm. For all of the people that you can condemn as unrighteous. Mm-hmm. This is a lesson of Christianity. Um, I’m a Christian, so it always has resonated with me. Um, but it is also the libertarian message of self-transformation, of individualism, of individual accountability and of the belief that we are all self-interested that we are.

Not oriented toward just doing good things for other people, but that we are oriented toward doing things on our own self-interest. And we are oriented toward justifying those things as being good. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We have to transform ourselves. We cannot transform others for them. When we seek to transform others for them, it’s not really for them, it is for us.

Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: It is for us to feel good about ourselves. It is for our own benefit to accomplish some good outcome. Mm-hmm. But that road leads to hell. Mm-hmm. That road leads to some really, really, really dark policy places where we do not wanna go as Americans. Mm-hmm. And I think the degree to which people have started to believe that.

We can just punish the evil people in society. And there are evil people, there are evil automatons that are trying to destroy the country. That is the darkest place and also a deeply inaccurate place for us to go. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm Mm. 

Elizabeth: And it is an example of with the best of intentions doing extraordinarily horrendous things.

Yeah. Yeah. Well this has been great Elizabeth. Um, if people wanted to follow what you do, is there a place they can follow your work or 

Elizabeth: they can, I have a substack. It is understanding politics.substack.com. Great. And also they can find me at Braver Angels, where I run the Braver Politics program. 

Awesome.

A talk about hypnosis and mind control with Martin S. Taylor, a well known British hypnotist (hypnotism.co.uk). Martin is known for his stage hypnosis act but also for educating people about hypnosis and removing the illusions and mystique surrounding it. 

There are some people who make astounding claims that they can control and manipulate people using hypnosis; that they can get people to do things against their will and their ethics. Some of these people claim they can do this quickly, within minutes, and that they can teach you to do the same. There are clearly some impressive things you can do with hypnosis (as Martin will attest) — but there are also clearly many unethical and deceptive people in the NLP/hypnosis/influence space who exaggerate what you can do with it. In this talk, Martin and I try to separate fact from fiction — reality from bullshit. 

Topics discussed include: How did Martin get into hypnosis? What’s going on in a stage hypnosis act? What psychological factors lead to people acting in unusual and extreme ways in those settings? Is there such a thing as a hypnotic “trance”? Is it a special state? Martin’s thoughts on hypnosis used for therapy and self-help. MK Ultra and other government programs related to mind control and brainwashing. The importance of being skeptical about grand claims about hypnosis and mind control. 

Episode links:

• YouTube (includes video)
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:

• Martin’s hypnosis site
• Another interview of Martin
• Book I recommend on MK Ultra “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate”
• Episode of my podcast: a talk with magician Anthony Barnhart
• Episode of my podcast on NLP and hypnosis, and why deceptive, low-quality practitioners/trainers can impress people and get good reviews
• Allegations against hypnotherapist John Connelly of inappropriate behaviors with patients

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast aimed at better understanding other people, and better understanding ourselves. 

This is an episode about hypnosis and trying to separate the real from the fake. Since I was young I’ve had a lot of questions about hypnosis; what exactly is possible with it; what’s bullshit and what’s real. It’s actually pretty hard to get answers to these questions via online research, from what I’ve found, because there are so many people who peddle hypnosis and influence bullshit who speak in deceptive and exaggerated ways about what’s possible with hypnosis. 

But in this episode I talk to someone who I think will help us separate fact from fiction. His name is Martin S. Taylor; he’s a stage hypnotist but also someone who approaches hypnosis with a lot of realism; he calls what he does “hypnotism without hypnosis” because, during his shows, he transparently explains the psychological factors behind how so-called hypnosis works, and still gets the results associated with stage hypnosis shows. When I was asking around for someone who’d be good to talk to about hypnosis and separate fact from fiction, his name came up a couple times from psychology researchers as someone who’d be good to talk to. Also perhaps interesting; if you know who Derren Brown is, Derren got the idea for his act from Martin. You can learn more about Martin Taylor at his site: https://www.hypnotism.co.uk/; you can watch some videos of his stage act there. 

If you’ve been following my podcast, you know that I’ve been examining the many lies and exaggerations of someone named Chase Hughes, who promotes himself as an expert at influencing people. My investigation into Chase’s immense amount of bullshit was the reason I initially reached out to Martin a few months ago. To give you a sense of the kinds of things Chase Hughes peddles, I’ll read a little bit from his website (https://web.archive.org/web/20141012081856/http://www.chasehughes.com/covert-psychology.html ). 

The CIA developed enhanced mind control methods as a matter of public record

The CIA programmers experiments ranging from programming sexual slaves to creating hypnotic assassins, even involving teenage girls

The methods they used were elementary at best

The Ellipsis Manual contains WORLD-FIRST information available no where else on planet Earth

A person CAN be hypnotized against their will

A person can and will perform extremely violent and anti-social acts under hypnosis, without their consent or knowledge and will disregard safety, morals and law

Using the Ellipsis Manual gives an operator complete access to the psychological compromise of almost any human being they encounter

The Ellipsis Manual teaches operators a world-first set of methods ranging from covert creation of multiple personality disorder to developing mental slavery scenarios, wherein a subject will disregard all beliefs

Farther down this page it reads:

A subject can be controlled for behavioral engineering within as little as three minutes.

A deliberately-induced multiple personality (dissociative personality) can be created in less than an hour.

Farther down it reads: 

From the first day, you will be able to read the thoughts of people you interact with, and you will eventually learn to control them as well. This is most assuredly a life-changing experience that will continue to grow with you forever. The feeling that comes with knowing your words will work like covert instruments of psychological control is an incredible and powerful feeling. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the many amazing, astounding things Chase claims he can do and teach people to do. I have a previous episode examining Chase’s many lies and unethical behaviors, which helps make some sense of these kinds of claims. 

And Chase is still promoting these ideas to some large audiences. Chase was recently on Joe Rogan, which to me represented one of many amazing low points for Rogan in terms of guest selection. Rogan clearly doesn’t care much about vetting his guests for obvious red flags and unethical behaviors. 

Chase: “All I’m doing is get you to comply, comply, comply, comply. And that’s just the first, like 30 seconds. I’ve got you to comply with me 15 times. We haven’t even started the hypnosis thing yet. And so it’s just you’re, you’re not aware that you’re becoming compliant. You just think I’m going through some motions”

Rogan: “it’s just hijacking the mammal brain.”

Chase: “Yeah. So it’s compliance, compliance, compliance.”

…

 Rogan: “And it’s not like just guessing. It’s like there’s real programs that they were involved in that were absolutely doing that kind of work.”

Chase: “hundred percent.” 

Rogan: “Yeah. And that’s really crazy to think of.”

Chase: “ And I, and it’s, it gets deeper, like there, there are step-by-step programs they have for creating a Manchurian candidate.”

Joe Rogan: “Okay. Like what’s step one? How do you know when you can get a guy to be a Manchurian candidate? Can you do anybody or do you have to get a vulnerable guy? Do you have to get a guy with a family?”

Chase: “I don’t want to say everybody. I think some of this could be misused”

Chase also talks to Rogan about being able to create multiple personalities in people, which he has referenced on his site. 

Chase: “And then another time they give somebody what they watch a gun being loaded, they split the personality and like do some kind of slide of hand to unload the firearm.

And then they’re told to like, pull this firearm out and go shoot this person in the face. And when the trigger is given to you, like a guy tapping his pencil or something and they do it.”

Rogan: “and this is just hypnosis that caused them, they’re not using any psychedelic drugs or psychotropic medicine or”

Chase: “It’s easier than you think for some people. Right. High authority on one end from of the person doing the program and high suggestibility on the other, then your skills don’t need to be that good. You don’t need to manufacture suggestibility. If you, if they say, here’s this guy, I need to split this guy and he’s not very suggestible, then your skills have to be high.

 But if I have high suggestibility in the target, high authority in the person doing the programming, I have ultimate results.”

“I mean, I may be the number one guy in the country on the mind control stuff. I think I probably am.”

…

So that’s some of the stuff Martin and I will talk about; these kinds of over-the-top, amazing claims about hypnosis and what’s possible with it. Because there are just many people peddling these kinds of things. Chase is just one of many in the neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis space who tries to promote such skills and trainings. Here’s one random example I found on a quick search: https://www.udemy.com/course/conversational-hypnosis-covert-secrets/?srsltid=AfmBOoqCrSvk7oH4ktYSGtJkf_V1pX8A6R4h1vseS6ZA8hiQ4eQ05pI5

A video course for $44.95 by someone named Scott Jensen titled “Hypnosis: Covert Hypnosis Mastery”. The description reads “The A-Z guide to use COVERT hypnosis to create hidden hypnotic trances with everyone you speak to in seconds.”

Here’s a course at a site coverthypnosis.co.uk/: 

INTER-PERSONAL NEURAL SYNCHRONY = Covert Hypnosis, Conversational Hypnotism, Influence, Persuasion, Negotiation, Rapid Seduction & NLP Mind Control Secrets with Hypnotist Dr. Jonathan Royle & Behavioural Analyst Mr. Paul Gutteridge

Farther down it reads:

Dr. Jonathan Royle – The British Bad Boy of Hypnosis, a name synonymous with hypnotic mastery. With decades of experience, Dr. Royle has unearthed the deepest secrets of the human mind. He is your guide to the mesmerizing world of covert influence.

Mr. Paul Gutteridge – An acclaimed Behavioural Analyst, Body Language Expert, and Consultant in Covert Persuasion & Influence Techniques. Paul’s expertise is drawn from his close association with top-notch intelligence agencies, equipping you with insider knowledge of persuasion.

Some of the things will be seen as clearly silly and over-the-top by most savvy people; not much different than ordering X-ray specs from the back of a comic book.

 But, at the same time, clearly some impressive things are possible with hypnosis. That is obviously true. Even stage hypnosists can do impressive things, as we all have likely seen or heard about. Martin will talk about how he got impressive results his first time trying to hypnotize someone, to his own surprise. This can make it hard to discern fact from fiction.  Which is where the questions come in: Some impressive things are possible so why not these other impressive things? What’s real and what’s bullshit? Where are the lines drawn? How do we know someone making big claims about hypnosis and their abilities is likely full of shit and who’s not? How do we know someone is being ethical or if they’re likely trying to exploit us? Those are the kinds of things I wanted to talk to Martin about. 

** I’ll read from Martin’s site: 

Martin S Taylor has revolutionised stage hypnosis with an astonishing new approach – hypnotism without hypnosis.

He has performed shows at universities and colleges for over twenty years and his new venture – lecturing to schools on the psychology of suggestion – is already massively popular, too.

…

A Hypnotist Who Doesn’t Use Hypnosis?

Let’s just say that again in case it didn’t sink in. Martin Taylor is a hypnotist, works as a hypnotist, has been a stage hypnotist for over fifteen years. Yet he doesn’t use hypnosis. So what’s going on?

Recently psychologists have dramatically revised their ideas about how hypnosis works, and the modern theory is that of social compliance. *** Broadly, this means that there is no altered state when you are hypnotised – no trance, no sleep, and nothing mysterious at all. Hypnosis simply works because the subjects believe it will.

On stage, it works through the hypnotist’s skill in combining three factors: 

And then he goes on to talk about those three factors: Suggestion, peer pressure, and simple obedience. 

He has many reviews for his act and for his educational lectures his site. One review from a teacher read that Martin quote “first explains his profession in astonishingly open terms, but having stripped away much of the false mystique, proceeds to elicit amazing reactions from his volunteers and send the audience into hysterics.”

Okay here’s the talk with Martin S. Taylor:

[MORE COMING SOON]

In March of 2024, the newsman and sports commentator Keith Olbermann tweeted that the “Supreme Court had betrayed democracy” and called for it to be “dissolved.” This was the second time he’d called for the Supreme Court to be dissolved: he did that also in 2022. This is a review of some of Olbermann’s more unreasonable and incendiary behavior over the last twenty years, with a focus on his political rage and how that relates to America’s toxic polarization problem. Because clearly there are many people around us, like Olbermann, with extreme contempt toward their political opponents, and a lot of biased, unreasonably certain takes about all sorts of events and happenings. What might we learn from Olbermann’s behavior?

Episode links:

• YouTube (includes video presentation)
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Related resources:

• Transcript includes resources mentioned in this piece

TRANSCRIPT

“The Supreme Court has betrayed democracy. Its members including Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor have proved themselves inept at reading comprehension. And collectively the “court” has shown itself to be corrupt and illegitimate. It must be dissolved.” (https://x.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1764672353378652544) 

That was a reading of a tweet posted by Keith Olbermann in early 2024. He was upset that the Supreme Court had ruled that Colorado could not remove Trump from the presidential ballot; 

When I saw Keith Olbermann had called for the Supreme Court to be dissolved, I was pretty shocked. I hadn’t thought about Keith in a long time; so it got me curious to know what he’d been up to. So I went down a Keith Olbermann rabbithole, checking out the outlandish and incendiary things he’s said over the years. So this episode will be a look at some of the more weird Keith Olbermann moments over the years, with a focus on his political rage and how it relates to our toxic polarization. This won’t be any comprehensive compilation; it will mainly be just some interesting things that stood out to me as I went down the Keith Olbermann rabbithole. 

Now some people will assume that I’m picking on Keith because I’m conservative, because I’m pro-Trump, these kinds of assumptions. But no, I’m not. I wanted to do an episode on Keith because I think he’s an example of someone who’s been deranged by conflict; I think there are many people out there, with all sorts of different political beliefs, who have been deranged by conflict; that’s what conflict tends to do to us, especially I think people who already have a good amount of narcissistic traits. In a previous episode, I talked about the polarization of Elon Musk, and I’d name him as another person I see as having been deranged by conflict; he’s someone who seems to see himself, like I think Keith does, as engaged in a good-versus-evil fight, where anyone on the quote “other side” is horrible and irredeemable. There are a lot of similarities between how Elon and Keith speak: both are quick to insult and dehumanize; both speak in certain and superlative ways; both engage in confident mind-reading about their opponents, claiming to know what’s in their hearts, when clearly other explanations can suffice. For example, you can often find Elon claiming to know with certainty that Democrats’ more lax approaches to immigration are about Democrats trying to get votes and retain power. He just knows it, you see; “to hell with the fact that there are clearly other explanations for the various stances people have around us; to hell with the need for evidence to prove such a claim. Anyone with any quote “common sense” can see how bad these people are.” So that kind of thinking goes. They may not even believe all they say, but they might see their deception or exaggeration as the “ends justifying the means.”

So hopefully that helps you see that I’m not focusing on Keith out of some desire to denigrate the quote “left” or for any specific political reason.  I also don’t do this to insult or demean Keith as a person. I actually feel sorry for him; just as a I feel sorry for Elon Musk. It can’t be a pleasant way to go through life, or then again, maybe it may seem exciting to them, as they’ve convinced themselves they are the hero in their own exciting good-versus-evil story; they might see themselves as on the hero’s journey, in a Lord of the Rings world, surrounded by villains. It might be fun in the same way a mentally ill delusion can be fun. But I think really, it’s a tragic way to experience the world; one that separates them from the people around them, one that amplifies their narcissism and prevents connection, in all sorts of ways, not just with people on the quote “other side” but with people they may actually have a lot in common with. 

As Arthur Brooks wrote in his book Love Your Enemies: “If you have contempt for ‘them,’ more and more people will become ‘them.” I think that sums up the problem with this kind of contemptuous, warlike mentality. It makes people more miserable, more hateful, less empathetic of many people around them; and that will play out in many areas of one’s personal life. 

I think what’s happened to Elon and Keith is what has happened to many people around us. It is just the kind of thinking that many of us fall pray to this kind of thinking when we’re in conflict, even as few of us have big national audiences from which to spew our contempt. The truth is that this is just what serious conflict can do to us. And then, on top of that, we’ve got social media, which maybe is the core cause at the heart of this; the way that social media makes the conflict more visceral; all the fighting Elon and Keith have done online make it easier for them to feel they’re entrenched in a good-versus-evil battle, surrounded by evil enemies on all sides. 

I think some people might feel like I’m picking on someone’s who is clearly mentally unwell. You can find a lot of people saying that Keith is unwell, even his political opponents. I think that’s true, but I also don’t find his warlike mentality as much different from what many people, on the left and right, think and say these days about their perceived enemies. I don’t find him any more mentally unwell than I do Elon Musk, for example. The simple fact is that this is what many people are like these days, even as some people who feel these ways perhaps hold in the bile and emotions and insults more than does Keith.  

I’d also like to say, if you’re someone in the conservative, pro-Trump camp, hopefully you don’t watch this with only the intent of saying “yeah, hes’ crazy.” I hope you consider how these kinds of approaches are present on the right; for example, you can find Elon saying similar outlandish, hateful things on his social media platform. You can find Trump himself saying such things often. Now obviously you believe what you believe, but I hope you are able to see that there is plenty on the Republican side to agitate and disturb people in these areas and to make people think “these guys are outta their minds” in the same way many think “Olbermann is outta his mind.”

Having said that, I also know the defense from the Republican side would go, “But Trump and Elon and others are just responding to such things on the left; that is why they are like that.” I myself even have a previous episode trying to get liberals to have more cognitive empathy for Trump voters and even for Trump himself, in terms of the many overly pessimistic and insulting things that are thrown that way from liberals. I realize that we all make excuses for these things, on both sides. That is the nature of conflict; we justify why it’s okay when our side does it. But that’s the problem; we all keep justifying and going “what about this stuff over there” and it all keeps getting worse. I just hope a lot of people watching this, no matter their politics, agree these things are problems, no matter who does it. 

If you like the themes in this video, please consider checking out one of my books on polarization, which you can learn about at www.american-anger.com. Or sign up for my Substack, which you can find at defusingamericananger.substack.com. I’m actually working on these things full-time these days, so I appreciate any paid subscriptions or other financial support you can send my way. You can send me money via my Buy Me a Coffee page: https://buymeacoffee.com/zachelwood 

As we go through this, one thing I’d like you to think about: Do you think Keith has helped create the very things he’s upset by? Do you think his two decades of insulting and dehumanizing the entire “other side” has been a factor in making similar behaviors on the right more likely? I certainly do. 

[include image of polarization cycle]

“The man who sees absolutes where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning is either a prophet or a quack.”

Thank you for that observation, Keith. I agree.  

SUPREME COURT STUFF 

So let’s go back to Keith’s statement about the Supreme Court. 

In March of 2024, after an unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court that said Colorado couldn’t remove Trump from the presidential ballot, Olbermann wrote his post on Twitter about wanting to dissolve the Supreme Court. 

Now keep in mind that was an unanimous ruling. Keith is basically saying that there was no legitimate reason why the entire Supreme Court, including the ones seen as liberal-leaning, would vote that way. He allowed no room for disagreement. And that’s the wild thing about what polarization does to us; it makes us more certain, more team-based in how we think about the world. Does Keith really believe there were no solid reasons for all the judges to vote the same way? Does he really believe it was a case of corruption and incompetence? Or does his rage and frustration just lead him to speak in extreme and superlative ways? Hard to say; I don’t pretend to know, but either way it’s what we see more and more people do when they’re highly emotional and in conflict. 

That tweet thread is a microcosm of how people on both quote “sides” rile each other up and serve as the basis for each other’s rage. 

Gunther Eagleman, a rightwing account known for bullying and insulting and trolling people, wrote: 

Cry more… 9-0

Referring to the unanimous ruling of 9 justices. 

Keith responded: 

Those aren’t tears, Fascist. They’re urine. I’m sure you enjoy being bathed in it.

In a video about this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ8tctICURY ) titled “Cenk Reacts To Keith Olbermann’s Idiotic Post”, the hosts of the politically progressive show Young Turks discuss Olbermann: 

00:42 There you have Keith Olbermann arguing that a major part of our system of

checks and balances should absolutely be dissolved because they had a unanimous

decision that he didn’t like. Insanity. Yeah so I think he’s lost his mind. 

1:52 In this case they were unanimous for a reason. Because nobody adjudicated Trump as an insurrectionist except for a few random Democrats in 2-3 states. That’s not how the process works. That’s not how the process should work. But guys like Oberman who are have are blue Maga have lost their minds ju that’s why you call them blue Maga right red Maga thinks Trump won the 2020 election Etc lost their minds in that way it it detached from objective reality and blue Maga is just as detached

3:06: Jank we have a growing group of people on both sides who just do not

want to accept reality and that makes that makes everything so much more

difficult and what drives me insane is that the media has become super partisan

so you either watch leftwing media or right-wing media and audiences have

become so accustomed to hearing oneideologic side that once they get any information

that uh dispels preconceived notions you know they don’t react well to it and I think that’s part of the problem

This was actually the second time, that I know of, that Keith has called for dissolving the Supreme Court. Another time was in 2022, in response to the Court’s ruling overturning New York’s concealed carry restrictions (https://www.foxnews.com/media/enraged-keith-olbermann-calls-supreme-courts-dissolution-after-new-york-concealed-carry-ruling). He said (https://x.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1539983585406484480) : 

It has become necessary to dissolve the Supreme Court of the United States. 

The first step is for a state the “court” has now forced guns upon, to ignore this ruling.

Great. You’re a court? Why and how do think you can enforce your rulings?

#IgnoreTheCourt

The following is from a Fox News piece about this:

Olbermann’s strong rhetoric brought intense mockery from conservatives, with online critics saying he sounded “unhinged” and also taking exception to his call for lower courts to ignore the ruling.

“Sounds kinda insurrectiony, Keith,” Substack writer Jim Treacher quipped.

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 

Over the last few years, Keith’s audience has dwindled a lot. He now seems to reach some tens of thousands of people on his YouTube channel and other social media, whereas he used to reach millions years ago when he was on primetime TV. 

To give you a sense of the kinds of incendiary stuff Keith shares, here’s one clip from October of 2024: 

[Caption copy from his post: 

HOW DO YOU NOT LISTEN TO HISTORY? It would seem to be obvious that the last thing that even Pro-Nazi Trumpists would want to do would be to invoke February 20th, 1939 and the German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. It didn’t go exactly as the Nazis planned. The Garden was surrounded by ONE HUNDRED thousand ANTI-Nazi protestors who three times nearly broke lines manned by 2500 police. So what have Trump and reprobate garbage Garden/Knicks/Rangers owner James Dolan scheduled for October 27? A NEW Trump-Nazi rally at the new Madison Square Garden. Trump hopes 20,000 will attend. Has he or this idiot Dolan considered how many people will be outside the Garden THIS time?]

In the copy for that post, he refers to the rally as a “Trump-Nazi rally.”

Keith often compares Trump to Hitler and his supporters to Nazis. Here’s one from November of 2024, after Trump’s election, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mSPxhF8Dn4, in which he tells Hispanic Trump voters that Trump will come after them eventually even if they’re legal citizens: 

2:40 he will Deport people from the same place you or your folks are from he will Deport people who have the same names you do he will Deport your relatives and friends and when he runs out he will change the laws and he will Deport you and your parents and your children. 

He goes on to say this about Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration advisor: 

3:41  

So he hates Hispanics exactly the way Hitler hated Jews and Trump who hates them but less fervently because hating them takes time away from talking about himself he listens to Steven Miller and and he hears more votes and not only does he get elected president while his brains are draining out his ears like a runny yeast infection but the very people he is going to torture and Deport vote for him. 

After Trump’s election, Keith could be found saying that the Russians had stolen the election, which was the same thing he did in 2016. This is from a YouTube video from November 2024 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd-M_Jf3Ltc): 

00:08 Russia has committed an act of war against this nation and our form of government we were attacked last night as certainly as if they came across the borders or as if they had bombed polling stations 40 or more polling stations 32 Russian origin bomb threats just in

Fufton County Georgia alone and what are you going to do about it President Biden what are you going to do about it Meritt Garland or are you Meritt Garland in another coma regardless of the outcome of the presidential election there is realtime evidence of Russian interference in that election Russians trying to decide who becomes president.

After Trump’s election in 2016, Keith said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAFxPXGDH4E the following:

We are at war with Russia. Or perhaps more correctly, we have lost a war with Russia without a battle.

We are no longer a sovereign nation. We are no longer a democracy.

We are no longer a free people. We are the victims of a bloodless coup, so far a bloodless coup engineered by Russia with at best the traders in defense of the republican party and Donald John Trump, a man who to borrow a phrase from another December long ago will live in infamy.

He said that he was certain that Russia had gotten Trump elected. https://www.facebook.com/gq/videos/how-i-know-russia-stole-the-election/10155510663528098/ 

00:53 

It might be worth saying that there’s no conclusive evidence that Russia’s actions affected the outcome of the 2016 election. There’s no evidence, for example, that Russians succeeded in hacking voting machines or changing votes. Keith’s extreme certainty here seems misplaced, as it often seems to be. 

I write about liberal-side election distrust in my book Defusing American Anger, and why that’s a bad thing, and even something that made conservative-side election distrust more likely. 

Many people think that the Russian social media misinformation played a role in shifting the election. But there is no evidence it shifted things. 

A 2023 paper that looked into this was titled “Exposure to the Russian Internet Research Agency foreign influence campaign on Twitter in the 2016 US election and its relationship to attitudes and voting behavior.” (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9)  They concluded, “We find no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”

In a New Yorker article (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump) about the idea that Russia influenced us, Brendan Nyhan, a professor of public policy, argued that: 

though the number of Russian-sponsored messages during the 2016 campaign might sound alarmingly large, the universe of information that most voters are exposed to is so vast that the impact of fake news, and other malicious online misinformation, is diluted.  He noted, “Twitter, for instance, reported that Russian bots tweeted 2.1 million times before the election—certainly a worrisome number. But these represented only 1 percent of all election-related tweets and 0.5 percent of views of election-related tweets.” He concluded, “It’s hard to change people’s minds!”

Some people may disagree; but the point is that there are knowledgable people who do not think Russia succeeded at having a significant impact on our election, and that simple fact shows that highly certain takes that they did are opinions and are not conclusive. 

Also, as I talk about in my book Defusing American Anger, it could be that Russia’s primary goal was simply to make us distrust elections as a way to increase animosity and destabilize us. It would be difficult for Russia to impact our election; it’s a lot easier to get a country to distrust their elections by making it obvious you’ve tried to manipulate an election. So when we allow our animosity and distrust lead us to too easily believe and spread “the election was rigged” ideas, we might be basically doing exactly what Russia hoped we would do. And our election distrust will in turn trigger more election distrust; our opponents will be more likely to think, “well, they do it, too.” 

I won’t spend a lot of time in this video debunking Keith’s incendiary and highly certain claims, as there are so many of them, but I thought this was a good spot to show that for many of Keith’s incendiary takes, emotion and unreasonable certainty seem to play a big role. 

Back in 2017, Keith also said that he was certain that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEOhXhj1QXI . The title of that video, which got more than 387,000 views on YouTube, was “Case Closed. Collusion Has Been Proven.”

 00:26 Four titanic facts have now emerged. Their importance cannot be overstated. The conclusion they lead to cannot be avoided. We have all been right, all this time. The essence of the conspiracy case against Donald Trump, his Presidential Campaign, his Presidential Administration and the Government of Russia, has for all intents and purposes been proven.

I won’t play all that or describe it, but long story short: No, there is not conclusive evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. If you believe that Trump and Russia colluded, then at the very least consider that there are many smart, anti-Trump people knowledgeable about such things who do not believe there’s good evidence for that. That at least helps show that high certainty here is wrong. 

But we are surrounded by people like Keith Olbermann, on the left and right, who speak with high certainty about all sorts of things related to our divides. When you hear highly certain statements about things someone can’t be certain about, that other knowledgeable people have different takes on, and when you hear such certain takes frequently from someone, that’s a good reason to be highly skeptical of that person as a source. Certainty is the mind killer. Certainty can be the country killer. 

REMOVED FROM SOCIETY 

In 2020, Keith said that Trump’s enablers and supporters must be quote “removed from society.” 

As you’d expect, these kinds of things from Keith get a lot of attention from conservative news outlets. That video I just played was posted on the Daily Caller Facebook account and had 400,000 views. This is the kind of stuff that convinces Republicans of how evil their opponents are. We can see Keith as being part of a self-reinforcing conflict spiral. 

St. Louis Cardinals 

In mid-2024, Keith said he wanted to disband the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team and demolish their stadium. Here’s someone talking about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEZ5utgYqMQ

Keith Oberman needs to get off my lawn he cries P this segment could last all week given the plethora of vile commentsMr Oberman has made over the years but we’ll start with the most recent following the assassination attempt of President Donald Trump several major league baseball players celebrated home runs by holding a fist in the air and and a hand over their ear this prompted quintessentially unhinged responses from former Sports commentator Keith Oberman who first posted quote a remind that there is still no evidence Trump was hit by a bullet and still lots of evidence he is lying about it unquote this was followed by a call to disband the entire St Louis franchise as well as to destroy its ballpark he goes quote attention MLB ban these guys from baseball for Life confiscate the Cardinals franchise and implode the stadium implode the stadium are you serious and you wonder why gunshots are being fired at a former president he continues quote Cardinals equal Trump Nazis stick to sports F the St Louis Cardinals America has had enough of this blank unquote I’ll tell you what America has had enough of the hateful and ignorant driil which spews from your mouth decade upon decade your actions are beneath the standard for  what should constitute a professional and they are beneath my standard for what constitutes a man.

Here we can see another aspect of what conflict does to us: makes us interpret things in the worst-possible way. Because he is so hyper focused on all things related to Trump and our political divides, Keith was primed to see that gesture by the Cardinals as support for Trump and that set him off. We can see this kind of thing all around us; people filtering for the worst-case interpretation possible, and then somehow becoming certain of that worst-case interpretation. Conflict amplifies our negativity bias; our tendency to filter for negative stuff, especially the negative stuff about quote “them.”  

Honestly, if I was more paranoid, if I was as paranoid as Keith Olbermann, I might start thinking his behavior was part of a plot to turn people against liberals. Maybe Steve Bannon and Russia have incriminating dirt on Keith and are forcing Keith to say these things to increase support for Trump. To hell with “maybe.” I’m actually sure of it. You heard it here first: I’m 100% certain Keith Olbermann is a Russian asset.” Sorry, just kidding; please don’t take that clip out of context. 

PETTY STUFF, OHIO STATE, MORE 

In November of 2024, Ohio State tweeted: “Congratulations to Vice President-elect JD Vance, an alumnus of The Ohio State University and native Ohioan.” This led Keith to say “Wasn’t before, is now: Shit School”: https://x.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1854888019188220414 

This was reminiscent of him getting in a fight with another school back in 2015. He had a penchant for mocking Penn State students and family members; this was apparently caused by him mocking the school for their conduct during the Sandusky scandal. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/02/26/keith-olberamnn-worst-person-in-the-world-penn-state-thon-twitter-fight/ 

He told a Penn State student mother that Penn State was quote “pitiful.” He also told someone “Again – get your $ back – you didn’t learn how to read. PSU students are pitiful because they’re PSU students – period.” This kind of interaction from Keith over the years just really show how far gone in general he is, apart from the political stuff. It’s just so unnecessary and so mean. 

In 2019, Keith got in some hot water with his then-employer ESPN for saying some harsh things about a hunter (https://nypost.com/2019/03/27/keith-olbermann-shames-hunter-for-killing-turkey-during-hunting-season) 

A news article featured a hunter who had shot an all-white turkey. Keith tweeted, ““It be rare and beautiful so me should kill it… This pea-brained scumbag identifies himself as Hunter Waltman and we should do our best to make sure the rest of his life is a living hell.”

Keith later apologized. ESPN said in a statement: “We have spoken to him about not making personal attacks.” 

So much of Keith’s life seems to revolve around attacking people on Twitter. It does make you wonder how much social media has been a negative influence in his and other people’s lives. Pre-social media, how would Keith and Elon and others who do similar things have spent their time? Where would they have gotten a similar fix in terms of fighting with people directly? I think at the heart of these things is how conflict affects us, but social media makes the conflict more visceral; it puts us in the middle of it. It allows us to strike out when angry; and then that will be seen by others, who will attack us, and so on and so on. I see the internet as a conflict amplifying machine; a place that aids in the creation and distribution of insults and threats. And there are many people who think that. If you’d like to learn more about that, check out this piece of mine on the ways that internet communication derange and divide us: https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-does-internet-communication-divide. 

ASSORTED CRITICISMS 

And many people know of Keith’s turn for the worse and have spoken about it. 

Here’s progressive activist Kyle Kulinski in 2024 summing up the Keith Olbermann situation, as he sees it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aASvrelsLXY) :

he had a a decent following at the time he got some good numbers so they allowed it to continue right but one of the things you always heard Whispers behind the scenes that Keith alberman is crazy that he’s just a total nutcase and uh everybody I know who’s been in his vicinity says the exact same thing the guy is off his rocker so anyway he went to current TV for a while he was a diva and a prima over there you know he’s bounced between ESPN and other places and uh remember when he did that show was it with like GQ or Vogue or something he did some weird political show at the beginning of the Trump years and it was the most cringe thing you’ve ever seen in your life basically every idiotic Trump argument one could think of he would lean into that and ignore the proper criticisms right so he would like Rush aate all day long as opposed to hitting him on like his tax policy and his neocon foreign policy so anyway the guy really really Fell From Grace. 

He then examined a tweet Keith had made that was really, really bad; what Kyle called a “new low.” Keith was trying to defend Biden after Biden’s really horrible debate performance. 

1:45 

here’s the Tweet today’s Yuga of CBS poll should Biden stay in the race yes 55% to 45% should Trump stay in the race no 54% to 46% that says it all any effing questions now if you just read that you think oh okay fair enough decent point just wait for it wait for the specifics so should Biden be the nominee that question was of democratic registered voters should Trump be running for president that’s of all registered voters so you see how he rigged the game  as it says here and by the way I don’t even think he rigged the game I just think he was Bree breezing through this stuff and thought he found a gotcha and he tweeted it without actually really looking too closely at what he was posting. 

And here we see a very mature thing from Kyle; it would have been easy for Kyle to ascribe the most malicious motives to Keith; that Keith purposefully posted something untrue. But Kyle maturely doesn’t do that; he sees that it’s probably more likely that Keith’s mind is just rattled; that Keith is acting too quickly, posting too quickly, because he’s highly emotional. 

We can see the same things, by the way, from Elon Musk; who often posts and shares incendiary things and then his own platform’s community notes correct him, and it’s obvious he just went off half-cocked about something. And then he just leaves the posts up anyway; he doesn’t seem to care; just as Keith doesn’t seem to care about the many untrue things he leaves littered around the internet. 

Anger is a hell of a drug. Fear and anger are the mind killers. They’re contagious mind killers, too. If you’re curious for more about that, watch my previous episode about Elon’s polarization; it’s much shorter than this. 

You can find a bunch of conservatives posting videos and posts about their interactions with Keith, where Keith insults them in vicious ways. https://www.facebook.com/OutkickTheCoverage/videos/keith-olbermann-going-crazy-loses-it-on-clay-over-twitter/146067096955576/

00:43 “Guy is just unhinged. To be honest, I feel bad for him. Seems clear to me he is clearly losing his ability to make any kind of rational sense.”

He then goes on to describe their covid-related social media beef. 

2:36 

“I wonder, on some level, does Keith have anybody that cares for him in his life. I don’t think he’s married; I don’t think he has kids. He sits around on his phone, constantly sending out insane things every day. It’s quite clear he is mentally deranged. I really want him to get help. I think this is the case for a lot of people; social media is not good for people with any kind of mental instability. I think it makes mental instability worse, because it’s an emotional medium. I am convinced that the reason the country has gone so haywire over the last 8-9 years is directly connected to social media and the ability of all of this is playing in our psyche all day long. 

4:12 For people like Keith Olbermann, it’s been a disaster. I really hope he gets the help he needs. 

It says a lot that even a lot of the people he has gotten in fights with mention that they think he’s mentally unwell and express pity for him.

You can find all sorts of people fighting with Keith online over the years. In 2023, when basketball player Angel Reese mocked another player, Keith tweeted, “What a fucking idiot,” which prompted Shaquille O’Neal to tell Keith “shut your dumb ass up.” Just a lot of fighting on Keith’s feed over the years. 

CURRENT TV 

Keith has been fired from a lot of places. In 2012, he was fired from Current TV, after only being there about a year. Current TV was a short lived TV station aimed at becoming like the Fox News of the left. 

Reading from Keith’s Wikipedia:

Olbermann was fired from Current TV on March 30, 2012. In a statement from Current TV, they stated that “Current was […] founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.” 

According to Politico, Olbermann’s professional reputation suffered greatly as a result of his dispute with Current, which accused Olbermann of making “material breaches of his contract, including the failure to show up at work, sabotaging the network and attacking Current and its executives.” Purportedly, despite actively shopping other networks for offers, Olbermann was unable to find an outlet interested in hiring him. According to Politico, the fact Olbermann had been rendered unemployable as a result of the dispute, factored heavily during settlement negotiations between his attorneys and representatives from CurrentTV

SALON ARTICLE 

In 2011, Salon ran an article https://www.salon.com/2011/01/23/stanage_olbermann/ by Niall Stanage about Keith’s departure from his Countdown show at MSNBC. The article emphasized an important point and one that I often emphasize in my work on polarization: that we can largely agree with someone stance-wise while thinking their approach to disagreement is very, very bad. In my op-ed I got published about Elon Musk in The Hill, that is a point that I focused on; that one should be able to largely agree with Elon while see his approach to conflict as very bad, unhelpful, and even as helping create the pushback one is working against. But we too often conflate people’s stances with how they view and speak about their enemies. We conflate political beliefs with approaches to conflict. 

Niall wrote: 

I cannot imagine I am the only viewer who is basically simpatico with Olbermann’s worldview, but who had come to find him and his show utterly insufferable. The glibness, the pomposity, the narcissism — all these foibles had, of late, reached gut-wrenching proportions.

He went on to write:

There was a bigger problem, too. Olbermann rose to prominence in large part through attacking other media figures — most notably Bill O’Reilly — for both their gloating self-regard and their rhetorical recklessness.

Olbermann’s claim to the moral high ground here was strictly relative. This is a man, after all, who once reported an allegation that Paris Hilton had been punched in the face under the tagline “A Slut and Battery.” Hilarious, no?

Later silliness — the risible condemnation of then-Senator-Elect Scott Brown as “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence” — only strengthened the impression that Olbermann had morphed into a mirror image of those he so often attacked.

There were several pieces around that time that pointed out Keith’s hypocrisy. 

A 2011 piece in Variety (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olbermann-more-like-his-f_n_109906) read: 

While it was initially amusing watching Olbermann playfully try to nudge O’Reilly off the deep end, there’s a significant difference between that and self-indulgently using his forum as a pulpit to bash enemies, which actually makes him more like his Fox counterpart than he would care to admit.

SCOTT BROWN 

So that thing Keith said about Scott Brown that was just mentioned; that’s one of the more interesting highlights of Keith’s career. This made a big splash; he was mocked even by many on the left for this; and I think was kind of the moment when Keith really began going downhill. This event happened in January 2010. Now 2010 also happened to be the time when many people were starting to spend a lot more time on their mobile phones; social media apps were just getting really popular around that time. 2009 was the year that Jon Haidt points to as being significant in terms of social media apps, mainly Facebook and Twitter, changing their algorithms to make posts, especially highly emotional posts, spread more virally. 

I looked up the first tweets Keith made on Twitter, and they were in April of 2010: https://x.com/search?q=(from%3Akeitholbermann)%20until%3A2010-04-10%20since%3A2007-01-01&src=typed_query&f=top  So the Scott Brown proceeded this a bit. To be clear, I’m not saying that I think Keith’s conduct can be traced to social media, as clearly he’s been doing this stuff for a while, but I do think it’s at least possible that the emotional environment that social media created around that time, making it easier for Keith and others to see all these messages from across the country, to see all these messages and thoughts that made them angry, and that they could then focus on more in their shows and such; I think it’s possible all this stuff contributed to Keith becoming even more polarized and unreasonable than he was. 

Looking back at his first posts on Twitter is interesting. Assuming he didn’t delete some older tweets, from the beginning of joining he was tweeting many times a day. He was tweeting a lot. On April 11, i counted about 70 tweets from him. And many of these were of the insulting, angry variety. Keith really liked to reply to random people on there; you got the sense he really really liked being able to engage with people. But if your instinct is to lash out at people often, and if that then in turn provokes people often lashing out at you, I think it’s easy to see how that creates a maddening user experience. I think it’s easy to see how these things can amplify people’s existing narcissism and us-vs-them mindsets. 

So anyway, on to this Scott Brown thing. 

In 2010, before the Massachusetts special election, Keith ran this segment about Republican candidate Scott Brown. As a reminder, this was when Obama was president; Obama was elected in 2008; it was also when the Tea Party had become a thing, and Keith often lashed out at the Tea Party movement as being motivated by racism: 

[PLAY CLIP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAy211oqPwc ]

here’s the second of tonight’s quick comments lost in the angst about Obama &

Cokely is the little recognized real headline of this vote you have heard

Scott Brown speculating talking out of his bare bottom whether or not the

president of the United States was born out of wedlock you heard Scott Brown

respond to the shout from his supporter that they should stick a curling iron

into ms coke leagues rectum with the answer we can do this you may not have

heard Scott Brown support a constitutional amendment banning

same-sex marriage or describing two women having a child as being quote just

not normal you may not have heard Scott Brown associating himself with the Tea

Party movement perhaps the saddest collection of people who don’t want to

admit why they really hate since the racists of the south and the 60s

insisted they were really just concerned about states rights you may not have

heard Scott Brown voting against funding paid leaves of absence for Massachusetts

Red Cross workers who had gone to New York to help after 911 in short in Scott

Brown we have an irresponsible homophobic racist reactionary ex new

model teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians

with whom he disagrees in any other time in our history this man would have been

laughed off the stage as an unqualified and a disaster in the making by the most

conservative and conservatives instead the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is

close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States

Now there’s a lot to say about that, but long story short: Keith was really reaching for some unfair and extremely worst case interpretations of many things there. It was such an egregious moment that it led to many in the business , even on the left, criticizing Keith. 

Joe Scarborough, his colleague at MSNBC called the comments “reckless” and “sad.” Various pundits criticized him.  

In March, Jon Stewart talked about this, playing Keith’s segment and then talking about why this was so bad and what Keith missed. I think it’s worth including Jon’s points as they help us see just how bad and biased Keith’s thinking is. 

 [PLAY JON STEWART CLIP 8:05 into episode to 11:50 ]

I won’t play all of this but you get the idea; Olbermann was, as he often does, really exaggerating the bad things one might be able to say about Scott Brown. I’ll cut forward a little farther in to the segment. 

13:30 Now you’re just kind of calling people names. You said this of Joe Liebermann: “ a senatorial prostitute”, of Roger Ailes “fat ass,” Chris Wallace: “a monkey posing as a newscaster.” Rush Limbaugh: “a big bag of mashed up jackass”. Michelle Malkin: “a mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic, mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” That, my friend, sounds more like violence against women than anything Scott Brown ever said. You can’t resort to childish attacks as hominem as they are nauseum. You’ve ceded the high ground and now you wallow in the fetid swamp of baseless name-calling and as we both know, sir, that’s my thing. 

RALLY TO RESTORE SANITY 

Later that year, Jon Stewart held his DC rally, which was called the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_to_Restore_Sanity_and/or_Fear . This rally was aimed at reducing toxic polarization; at trying to help people see that people like Bill O’Reilly and Olbermann, outlets like Fox News and MSBNC, were polarizing us, and making us see the worst in each other and hate each other. Regardless of the implementation and what one thought of how it played out, one has to love the attempt by Jon Stewart to work on this. I think Jon was focused on the right thing, and sadly way too few people hear the message. To many people, just as today, when they’re told “this media environment is amplifying fear and discord; we need to do something” most people just think “the other side’s media is horrible; I agree they need to be stopped.” There is very little actual contemplation of how there’s a lot of blame to go around for these things, regardless of if you believe “the other side is much worse.” 

At Jon Stewart’s DC rally, they played a clip of media on the left and right that they saw as toxic and dehumanizing, and that clip included some of Keith Olbermann’s work.  

This prominent feature of Keith led to Keith, a little after that, in November of 2010, announcing he’d suspend his “Worst Person in the World” segment on his Countdown show (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_to_Restore_Sanity_and/or_Fear)  in the interest of turning down the volume and anger. But defended the content of his show by claiming that MSNBC (the network that hosted Countdown at the time) differs from Fox News in that “sticking up for the powerless is not the moral equivalent of sticking up for the powerful.”

Now of course, this is how everyone justifies contemptuous rhetoric, in any conflict. “The other side is worse so it’s not the same when I do it.” There is a fundamental way that conflict makes us into hypocrites. The political philosopher Robert Talisse has a great segment about how polarization makes us into hypocrites in his book Sustaining Democracy https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sustaining-democracy-9780197556450?cc=pl&lang=en& , which I recommend for anyone trying to understand how they can be a good citizen, and can work for their goals while avoiding amplifying contempt and discord. And so much of these things have a self-reinforcing aspect; when someone like Keith behaves contemptuously, they will understandably be seen as hypocritical by his political opponents, which will increase their rage; they’ll be more likely to engage in contemptuous actions, some of which Keith and others will see as hypocritical, and in turn increase Keith’s rage, and so on. 

WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD 

In a really interesting detail, Keith brought back his Worst Person in the World segment only three weeks after he said he’d get rid of it based on the criticism of him. 

[Play clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj3g2K36ei0&t=34s ] 

Clearly he pretty quickly decided that trying to reduce political toxicity wasn’t really a plan he was onboard with. 

So what was that segment? 

Worst Person in the World was a segment that Keith started in 2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worst_Person_in_the_World_(book) on his Countdown show on MSNBC. It featured a variety of political opponents Keith didn’t like; Bill O’Reilly was often mentioned, sometimes picked as the worst person multiple times in the same segment. It sometimes featured random citizens doing stupid things; it had a humorous flare to it often. 

I think his choice of that title really says a lot about Keith. It’s just such a maximally polarizing and conflict-amplifying choice. 

In 2006, Keith put out a book titled Worst Person in the World, and it goes into detail about why he chose that title for the segment. He claims it had a humorous background, based on the comedy duo Bob and Ray having a bit called ‘Worst people in the world.’ He claims it was meant to be humorous, not that serious. But really I think this is just cover for Keith’s highly angry way of viewing all disagreements. I think he wants to rouse righteous judgment; at some instinctual level, he really hates a lot of these people around him. I think the comedy history stuff is just cover for his obvious tendency to reach for extreme insults and righteous judgment. 

Another interesting detail here is that Keith says he got the idea to do the segment in response to a critic harshly criticizing Tucker Carlson, who at the time was a colleague of Keith’s on MSBNC. So to recap, the Worst Person in the World segment started out of a desire to defend Tucker Carlson. Which I think is kind of interesting in terms of the polarization and changes amongst these various news people since that time. 

YELLING AT BUSH 

During GW Bush’s term, Keith got a lot of attention for hating on Bush. One famous incident involved him telling Bush to shut the hell up.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvz9jyf4gUk&t=2m30s

QUESTION: Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

BUSH: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as—to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

KEITH: Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you six and a half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you. . . . It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next January 20th will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heartfelt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice . . . when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead. This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!

Again, we can see Keith taking the worst possible interpretation of someone’s words. I mean, I am not a fan of GW Bush, by any means, but he was asked directly about golf; he didn’t bring it up out of the blue. And I respect him for trying to be forthright about it; it seemed like he was genuinely trying to do something good and sensitive there; would we have preferred him to lie and deflect about his reasons for not playing golf? 

I see this kind of thing around us everywhere, though; this tendency, on both quote “sides” to reach for the maximally pessimistic interpretation of everything, large and small. And I see that as a self-reinforcing cycle of toxicity and contempt. Where’s the empathy? Can’t we try to empathize with and understand even people we very much disagree with? It’s a pretty easy thing to do, I think. 

The following is from a 2008 New Yorker article about Keith titled One Angry Man (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/23/one-angry-man) : 

The jeremiad against Bush was a signature Olbermann effort, the sort of stylized, mocking tirade that has lately made him a cable-news sensation, the Edward R. Murrow of the Angry Left. Olbermann was pleased with the script, and the next day, before going on the air with it, he posted excerpts on the liberal blog Daily Kos, which is a fairly good representation of the Olbermann fan base. The Kossacks wholly approved. (“You excoriated the bloodyhanded, warmongering imbecile.” “This country cannot survive without you.” “Dude, you’ve got a pair of steel ones!” “I’m gonna print it out, hang it up and memorize it.”)

At MSNBC, the feedback was slightly more cautious. Olbermann’s original script identified the “cold-blooded killers” as everyone at the Pentagon and in the Bush Cabinet; when a colleague noted that that would include such relative moderates as Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Olbermann modified the line. Phil Griffin, the senior vice-president in charge of MSNBC (“Phil thinks he’s my boss,” Olbermann says), raised the matter of tone. Why did Olbermann need to end his commentary by telling the President of the United States to “shut the hell up”?

“Because I can’t say, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ that’s why, frankly,” Olbermann responded. The line stayed in.

O’REILLY CLIPS AND OTHER CLIPS 

Keith’s Countdown show on MSNBC ran from 2003 to 2011. As you’d imagine, it included all sorts of incendiary and insulting content and rhetoric, things similar to what we’ve examined thus far.

One thing that stood out to me, on watching a few of these segments: he was prone to picking out individual citizens’ behaviors and holding them up as significant and worthy of political rage. Here’s one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj3g2K36ei0&t=34s 

This is what polarization and conflict lead us to do: we are prone to filtering for things that represent the badness of our opponents, as we see it, and then we’ll hold those things up as significant, even though in a country of 340 million people, there will be no shortage of horrible behaviors of citizens and leaders. It begs the question: what does the action of an individual mean in a country of 340 million people? Should there be some responsibility to try to put such things in context? To say: this is only one person.   To be clear, this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t criticize bad things; or that there can’t be trends. I’m just talking about the tendency people have to hold up such incidents as highly significant, to bolster us-vs-them types of narratives and framings, to drum up anger, no matter how rare those incidents might be. 

Another thing that stood out on watching those segments was just how petty there were. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk34_hIHlRc&t=15s

As someone who’s worked in TV news and knows how common such things are, I have to say that for Keith to nitpick such misspellings for political points is one of the more sad and petty things I’ve seen. I mean, Keith knows more than anyone how common and meaningless those kinds of mistakes are. 

One thing this reminded me of was some research I was reading recently on so-called “reactance,” also known as persuasive boomerang. https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-does-our-anger-at-them-create Research has found that poor arguments attempting to persuade someone can inadvertently make people go the opposite way and be more committed to their beliefs. Conflict and high emotion make many of us issue very poor arguments, which in term cause anger and which in turn make people more committed, not less, to working against their opponents and their opponents’ stances. Just another of the many aspects of how conflict toxicity can be self-reinforcing. 

NAZI OUTFIT 

An interesting moment in the Bill O’Reilly vs Keith Olbermann war came in 2006. I’ll read from a Guardian piece about this (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/26/usnews.broadcasting): 

But now a long-running feud between O’Reilly and his less-watched rival, Keith Olbermann, has boiled over into open warfare between networks. At a meeting of the prestigious Television Critics’ Association in California, Olbermann, who works for the MSNBC network, donned an O’Reilly mask and gave a Nazi salute, provoking a furious response from Fox’s chairman, Roger Ailes.

“Clearly he has no viewers except those he gets when he attacks Fox News,” said Mr Ailes, a former image consultant for the first president Bush. Olbermann’s Nazi gesture, he said, had gone “over the line”.

The confrontation came after several months of on-air goading by Olbermann, a professional ironist whose style contrasts sharply with O’Reilly’s populism and “no-nonsense” approach. The MSNBC presenter has given O’Reilly his Worst Person in the World award no fewer than 15 times, and frequently returns with glee to a sexual harrassment case the Fox host settled out of court in 2004.   [end quote]

This apparently led to a letter of protest from the Anti-Defamation League. 

Later, in 2008, that New Yorker article about Keith included this detail about their feud:

“Bill O’Reilly made Keith Olbermann,” Phil Griffin says. Olbermann concurs, saying, “I really do owe him a percentage of my salary.”

BULLIED OR NOT? 

Another interesting moment that stood out to me was a GQ interview of Keith in 2013 where Keith talked about being bullied. https://www.gq.com/story/keith-olbermann-interview-espn-november-2013 I’ll read that exchange. 

GQ: You’ve spoken in the past of being bullied in grammar school. Do you feel at a certain point you became the bully? That you crossed over?

Keith Olbermann: No. Because a bully is fighting out of a need to dominate. And is usually unwilling to take the consequences.

GQ: Was being bullied a formative moment?

Keith Olbermann: Well, here’s the background to it. I was a big kid for my age and well advanced intellectually, to the point where I was skipped in the first grade. When another kid did not operate at my level of response—”Steven? Hey, Steven? Steven?”—I’d hit him to get his attention. And my folks enrolled me in a judo class to work out my aggressions. So I was like a potential… Bully is too strong a term. It was frustration. I had potential over-aggressive problems.

So basically, Keith had apparently claimed to have been bullied in the past, but upon repeating the details of the bullying, it sounds more like Keith was bullying other kids. Here he only mentions his aggression towards other kids; he doesn’t even mention other people being mean to him.  

That was just a really strange thing to reveal and I think it says a lot about Keith’s perceptions of the world. Was he bullied or was he the bully? Did he maybe just not mention the ways he was bullied? I don’t know and we probably can’t know. Maybe it was a combination of both. But it does seem like Keith is someone prone to being seen as the victim; at excusing his aggressive actions as justified retaliation for other people’s perceived harm or disrespect to him. 

Another thing he said in that interview: 

Keith: Television is a mental illness. Wanting to be on television is a mental illness. Wanting to be president of the United States, wanting to be an actor—these are degrees of the same mental illness. If you need to be approved of simultaneously by more people than are in this room now, there’s a problem. I don’t know what would happen if television—or fame—stopped tomorrow for all the people who are pursuing it, what they would do. I suspect the idea of the zombie apocalypse is based on that.

I’m gonna eat your flesh unless you applaud me! And that’s the predicate here of my own self-analysis. But you find yourself at various times in your life being fearful, because you don’t know how to function in some environment in which you’re not being applauded by a thousand people or more at once. So many times I’ve looked back with a kind of sympathetic disgust at my personal conduct till age 40.

SPORTS AND POLITICS 

Another interesting moment that stood out was from Keith’s Charlie Rose interview in 2014.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buv7_U6beDQ 

Keith talked about his obsession with sports when he was a kid; he was extremely into memorizing baseball stats, and collected tons of baseball cards, and annoyed his family with his obsession with sports. Then Charlie gets him on the topic of how he sees his sports obsession relating to his political commentary work: 

8:09 it’s a great it’s a great uh training ground in terms of determining cause and effect um you know a ball game ends and somebody won and somebody lost I was going to say that that there’s always a winner and a loser and you can’t you may be able to say at the end of a0 to 119 basketball loss that it was moral victory that you were able to do that well but you can’t can’t go and claim that you won the game and the reason that I think that almost everybody who goes from Sports into politics is I think it’s fair to say you just don’t go and cover politics after you cover Sports you cover it acerbically and doubtfully and dubiously because because there are people claiming that they won the game when they lost. 

I think there’s a lot of clues here about what drives Keith so crazy about our political divides. I mean, I myself am very upset by various things around us. 

I think Keith is someone who very much desires order and clean boundaries; we could see that in his obsession with baseball and sports stats; as he mentioned here, he likes the clean boundaries of winning and losing in sports games. The world of people and politics is obviously much more messy; people behave in team-based and emotional ways, and us being polarized leads people to behave in even more team-based and emotional ways. It leads to things like people not caring about, or even enthusiastically jumping on board the bandwagon of things like Trump’s promoting distrust of every election he’s been involved in, no matter how unreasonable that behavior is and no matter how damaging to the country it may be. 

A lot of things about politics are irrational, just as many aspects of the world of people is irrational. And it’s easy to see how deranging that messy world might be for Keith. It’s easy to see how there are real defensible things that can drive him a bit crazy; I mean, I’m often quite angry and upset about assorted things in the political realm. There are plenty of real, maddening things happening. But I try to keep in mind that this is what humans do; they get entrenched in these toxic cycles of conflict where they act more and more aggressively; it’s kind of our thing, as people. We have to accept that this is standard for us, and see that at some level we’re getting angry at fundamental human dynamics. We must see that how we react to our divides can play a role in shifting our divides. 

The things Keith is angry about can lead him down a rabbithole of not caring about his own conduct; of seeing anything biased or incendiary that he does as minor compared to the horrible behaviors he sees on the quote “other side.” He doesn’t see or doesnt seem to care that there are people on the “other side” filtering for grievances and reasons to be upset, too; who will look at Keith’s conduct and be equally maddened and outraged; who will use such conduct and rhetoric as a way to confirm “people on the left have lost their mind.”

ROSS DOUTHAT 

I’ll end with a 2009 piece by Ross Douthat in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2009/03/rush-and-olbermann/56011/) Ross made the case for why it was a bad thing for these kinds of approaches to get mainstream political support, as it had with people like Rush Limbaugh among Republicans:

the point of calling Rush an entertainer isn’t to say that nobody should ever listen to him or care about what he has to say. The point is that by virtue of being an entertainer, and having the incentives of an entertainer, he’s a poor candidate to fill the role of spokesman (and ideological enforcer) for the conservative opposition – a role that he seems eager to take on, and that Barack Obama is very eager to see him occupy. I don’t think Limbaugh is a less serious voice for conservatism than Keith Olbermann is for liberalism. But that’s because I don’t think either of them should be taken all that seriously – because they’re media personalities whose primary loyalty is to their image and their audience, and whose primary purpose is to provoke and get attention. And I think it should go without saying that American liberalism would be in serious, serious trouble if someone like Olbermann were occupying the kind of role on the left-of-center that Limbaugh seems to be shouldering his way into at the moment.

If you enjoyed this episode, let me know in the YouTube comments. Consider checking out my books on polarization, which you can learn about at www.american-anger.com. You can also sign up for a paid subscription to my substack at defusingamericananger.substack.com. You can also send me a gift using my BuyMeACoffee page: https://buymeacoffee.com/zachelwood 

Thanks for watching.

I talk to Dr. Jess Snitko, who has researched online dating and other online communication, about the signals and messages we send, intentionally and unintentionally, with dating app profiles and pictures. Jess earned her Ph.D. in Media, Technology, and Society from Purdue University in 2020. Topics discussed: Factors in pictures and profiles that cause people to swipe right or swipe left; the so-called “duck-face” expression some girls make in photos; men’s shirtless photos; men who post pictures of holding a fish or posing with dead animals; bathroom mirror selfies; pictures of partying and drinking; group photos and problems with those; cropped photos where an ex is being removed from the picture; how first impressions can be prone to errors; and more.

Episode links:

• YouTube (includes video)
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:

• Jess Snitko’s LinkedIn
• Jess Snitko’s research on dating apps
• Related episodes:
  • Jury selection
  • Reading relationship “tells”
  • Getting clues from dating profiles (part 1)
  • Getting clues from profiles (part 2)

TRANSCRIPT

Zach Elwood: Hi there. This is the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast aimed at better understanding other people and better understanding ourselves. You can learn more about it at behavior-podcast.com. 

This episode is about online dating: specifically it’s about the signals we can send, intentionally or unintentionally with our pictures and profile copy on dating apps. I talk to Jess Snitko, who has researched online dating and online communication. Topics we discuss include: women who use pictures with the so-called “duck face” expression; guys who use shirtless pictures of themselves; people who use selfies of themselves taken in the bathroom mirror; guys who post pictures of themselves holding a fish or posing with other dead animals; pictures that can give the impression of being a big partier; and more. We talk about what makes people swipe left or swipe right; what they find attractive and unattractive. 

Whether you use dating apps or are just interested in the conclusions we reach about each other and the signals we send, I think you’ll like this one. I have a couple past episodes that are also about online dating, so if you like this episode, you might like those. I’ll include links to those in the entry for this episode on my site behavior-podcast.com.  

A little more about my guest: Jessica Snitko conducts research about computer-mediated-communication and the reciprocal relationship between online interaction and public perception. She’s interested in the online development and maintenance of romantic relationships and how mobile dating apps impact modern dating culture. She also owns Snitko Communication Consulting, which specializes in trial consulting, strategic communication, and brand management. I’ll put a link to her LinkedIn in the entry for this episode. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-snitko-welch52291/ 

Okay here’s the talk with Jess Snitko.

Zachary Elwood: Hi Jess, thanks for joining me on the show.
Dr. Jess Snitko: Thanks so much for having me.
Zach: Maybe we could start with how we got to talking to each other. What interested you about it? Because you reached out to me, maybe you could mention what interested you about my work.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I recently started doing jury consulting a little under a year ago. When I was doing research for that, I was looking up different resources and one of those was podcasts about jury consulting and trial consulting, and one of your episodes was one of the first ones that came up. So I listened to that, but then it was all of these different episodes about conversational analysis, psychology, all things that are relevant to my work and things that I’m interested in. That kind of just led me to listening to a bunch of your shows. And I think that some of the work I do might be interesting on this show, so I reached out and thought maybe you’d want to interview me as well.
Zach: Awesome. Yeah, and thank you for that. I wanted to mention that too, just to say to anybody listening or watching, if you do have interesting ideas for a show or an interview, do let me know because I’m always open to those ideas. And the interview you mentioned, Christina Marinakis who’s a jury consultant, that was one of my favorite interviews. So, people interested in jury and trial consulting should check that out. Yeah, maybe we can talk a little bit about your dating research.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I became interested in researching mobile dating apps… Actually, the interest started way back when I was an undergrad. I think this was probably 2011 or something, and I was in an introductory communication theory course, and I remember hearing about Dr Joseph Walther’s hyper-personal model of communication. That’s what really got me interested. The overview of that model is basically that the communication that people have on the computer-so, computer-mediated communication-is actually more intimate and more intense than the communication that often happens face to face. I remember being really interested in that and I thought it was really surprising. There’s a couple of reasons that that happens that I’ll go into because it is directly related to dating apps.
A few major reasons that this happens is, first of all, you have the sender. Let’s say that it’s two people communicating in an online platform, and I’m the sender. Because of the way that it’s situated, I am able to present myself in the way that I want to, right? It’s called selective self-presentation. That means that I can hide any of my undesirable qualities, but that I can emphasize or display any of my desirable qualities. That happens a lot in online dating, right? You want people to see the good things about you, but you’re hiding the things that, you know, maybe you’re terrified of spiders or something. You’re not going to advertise that. You’re going to advertise other qualities.
Zach: I guess the extreme version of that is like catfishing, where you’re completely misrepresenting.
Jess: Right. There’s a lot of research that goes into that, too. It’s like there’s this line between, yes, you want to present yourself in a positive way, but you still want it to be authentic. Right? So when we’re talking about the hyper-personal model, you’re still being authentic to who you are, but you’re highlighting the best parts about you. Similar to how you would in a job interview.
Zach: Right. Because most people know they might actually get to know somebody, so they want to be realistic. They just want to present the best… Yeah.
Jess: Exactly. Because for most people-well, for a lot of people on dating apps who are using them for their intended purpose-the end goal is to meet face to face. So you don’t want to say like, “Oh, I’m an astronaut and I’m 6’5″,” if you’re not. Right?
Zach: Yeah, few people are lying to those extreme degrees. Yeah.
Jess: Right. And those are mostly the people that are just kind of on there for ‘it’s a form of entertainment.’ They’re not really using it for its intended purpose. So, that’s the one component of the hyper-personal model, it’s that I can present myself in positive ways. The other thing is that receivers, if they have a favorable first impression of you-for example, this goes back to dating apps as well-if I have a favorable first impression of someone, then in the process of getting to know them, there are all these blanks that I need to fill in because I don’t know a lot about them yet. If my first impression was good, I tend to fill in those blanks with more favorable things. So in the hyper-personal model, when you’re first starting to get to know someone online, you’re only getting the best information or their best presentation of themselves. Then you’re filling in the blanks with more favorable information, and then they’re actually exaggerating the ways in which you are similar and downplaying the ways in which you are different. Because as humans, we’re just more comfortable talking to people who are similar to us and who agree with us about things. And that just leads to more positive interactions, right? So it’s in our best interest to do that. It makes sense that we do that.
The other thing about the hyper-personal model is that because of the channel, so it’s asynchronous communication, meaning that it’s not happening simultaneously, it means that you can spend a lot more time crafting your messages. If you and I were sitting and having a conversation, I couldn’t pause for five minutes to craft a really good response to give back to you if we’re talking in person. That would be awkward. But it happens all the time when you’re getting to know someone through texting or dating apps, that there’s a five-minute delay between your responses. That’s just normal. During that time, sure, someone could be busy, but they could also be writing a response and editing it and deleting it and asking their friends for feedback. And so the actual quality of communication that you’re having is a lot better. You’re also not having to worry about things like interrupting each other during face-to-face conversation. Like the first date, that beginning conversation can always be a little bit awkward, even if people do come with good intentions and are fairly socially adept. There will be things like interruptions, there will be lulls in conversation, maybe there will be weird things like having to think about eye contact and having to think about what you’re doing with your hands. Versus when you’re just talking online, you’re only focused on the quality of the words that you’re saying. So that leads to better conversation that happens online. And I was just really interested in that.
Zach: To rephrase it, these are all things that lead to the study that you found about extremely quick bonding that can happen in online communication.
Jess: Yeah, so this is what really sparked my interest in it. Learning about this hyper-personal model is what inspired me to go to grad school and start studying dating apps. And I actually caught it at the perfect time. So, Tinder came out in like 2012. I started grad school in 2014. And there’s a couple of year delay when things first launch. It really didn’t start getting popular until 2014 or so it’s when people were really on dating apps. And so it was kind of the perfect timing of I’ve been interested in online dating, but now there was this brand new thing of mobile dating apps that was perfect for me to research for my master’s thesis and then for articles beyond that. So, what really got me interested is that there were thousands of people using dating apps and they had become really popular, but very few of those people were actually meeting face to face. They were using them, but they weren’t using them for their intended purposes. That led to my research of, okay, they’re having all these great conversations like the hyper-personal model says, they’re using the apps, but they’re not meeting. So, why are they using the apps?
Zach: Right, what’s the point? Yeah. You had written about how some of that was about validation and almost like a game-like approach entertainment to using the dating apps. Maybe you could talk a little bit about those motivations for using the dating apps.
Jess: Yeah, definitely. For my master’s thesis, I looked at the reasons that people are using dating apps. So, they use the Gratification Theory that says that every media that we use, we are using it to gratify some need. The reason that we watch TV at night, a lot of people watch TV just for entertainment, some people will watch the news to get information, but you’re not going to use a form of media unless it is satisfying some type of need for you. So, if people are using dating apps, that means it’s satisfying a need. So my master’s thesis looked at why people were using them, and I found four primary reasons. Like you said, one is validation. People are using dating apps because it makes them feel good about themselves. Women are more likely to use it for this one because women get on dating apps, they upload pictures, and all of a sudden they’re bombarded with messages about how pretty they are. Right? So validation is a big reason for using them.
Zach: Yeah, I’d like that. Yeah.
Jess: Yeah, right? It’s like, okay, you’re having a down day, let’s have some strangers online tell me how pretty I am. Right? Another reason is entertainment. This is often used in social settings. Maybe people are just with their friends and they decide to open Tinder, and they’re swiping left or right but together. Like, the whole group is deciding, “Oh, swipe right on him. Swipe left on him.” It can be a group activity, right? Or it can be something instead of doom scrolling while you’re waiting for something to happen or if you’re in line at the grocery store, instead of doom scrolling online, maybe you’re swiping on a dating app. In those instances, they’re still on it, but it’s more so just like something to do. It’s like in place of playing a video game, it’s in place of being on Instagram. Those are two reasons, and those are the main ones that my research found that women use them. That being said, that research is about 10 years old, so I think the users have evolved since then. I did find that there’s two main reasons that men use them, which are different. Men are specifically using dating apps for relationships. Those could be serious relationships or just friendships, and they’re using them for hookups or casual sex. It differs a little bit based on gender of why people use them, but I did create this scale. It’s a 17-item scale. Think of it as a BuzzFeed quiz. You could take it, and your score would indicate what your main reasons are for using dating apps.
Zach: Oh, interesting. Is that something people can take online? Have you put that online?
Jess: Yeah, it’s on Google Scholar. I could send you a briefer version of it if you wanted to post it on your website or something.
Zach: Yeah, that’d be cool.
Jess: It’s just 17 items, like, “Agree or Disagree with all of these questions,” and then that will give you the reasons that you’re using dating apps.
Zach: Oh, you should turn it into a Facebook quiz, you know, one of those button-clicking kind of… You know? People love that stuff.
Jess: People love stuff like that. Yeah, I really should.
Zach: When it comes to the more validation entertainment things, you said that was more significant amongst women. How much more significant was it? Was it a really small percentage of men who do that kind of thing?
Jess: Yeah, a really small percentage. A lot of that has to do with the ways that dating apps are being used. A lot of men aren’t getting much validation from dating apps. There are significantly more men that are using them, and so just from those numbers alone, there’s a much wider pool of men to compliment women. And we’re talking specifically about heterosexual cisgender people right now. There’s a much wider pool of men to compliment women than vice versa. So a lot of men actually struggle with lower self-esteem when using dating apps because they’re not getting a lot of that validation. They’re sending out messages that aren’t getting responded to.
Zach: Like reverse validation.
Jess: Right. I’m sure that there are some who use it for entertainment, like in groups with their friends like women do, but if people aren’t responding, then it’s less entertaining. Women, the reason they can use it so well for entertainment, is they’re getting bombarded with all these messages. They can respond to them without putting a lot of thought in, if they don’t really care, just to see how the guy’s going to answer back. Versus with guys, if you’re just sending out silly messages and most of them don’t get responded to, that’s not as entertaining.
Zach: Did you get the sense that that would explain that during COVID when people were talking and not meeting up, did you get the sense that men were wanting to meet up but women were just not as willing to, and that helped explain why there was still so much activity on dating apps?
Jess: I haven’t looked at a lot of research of it during COVID. I would say that’s probably part of it. But also, people just needed social interaction during COVID.
Zach: And the hope of meeting up even if they wouldn’t do it immediately.
Jess: Right, maybe eventually meeting up. I know some people that would do virtual dates. They would meet on a dating app, and then their first couple of dates were over Zoom. I do think that probably men were still more wanting to meet up than women were during COVID because that’s pretty like standard for the case. But I do think that a big part of it, too, was just needing that social interaction. There was probably an increase in the number of people using dating apps. I downloaded TikTok because of COVID.
Zach: Something to do online. Yeah.
Jess: It’s just something you do because you’re stuck in your living room. Yeah.
Zach: To your point about it being a group fun activity, I actually heard there was an entertainment show in Portland-it might have been a traveling thing, I’m not sure, but a woman basically does an examination of guys that she’s seen on dating apps, and they all as a group, they all mock the guys and what they said and how their interactions went. Which struck me as kind of cruel, you know? But then again, they were defending it because they were like, “Well, these guys were really bad to us, or said really bad things.” It reminded me of using those things for entertainment, all crowding around and being like, “Let’s go through this together.” Yeah, it’s just kind of an interesting thing that stood out to me.
Jess: I was going to say I think that is a tricky thing because, on the one hand, yes, sometimes men are sending crazy stuff to women on dating apps. But then you also fall into this area of cyber bullying and public shaming. I don’t think either one is really right.
Zach: Yeah, there’s some gray areas I feel like where it’s like, “Was that really that bad what that guy?” There’s those gray areas where it could be debated, like, did he deserve all this?
Jess: Did he deserve that?
Zach: Maybe he was even having some… A lot of the public outrage things, I think some of them boil down to mental health things too, where it’s like, I don’t think that person is mentally well. The things that they’re sending people, should we really pile on publicly? You know, some of those things get in that area too.
Jess: And we’ve all said dumb stuff in conversations with strangers, so now that it can be so amplified-especially those Tiktok influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers, if they were to get on and say this one guy said this one rude thing to me, I don’t know if necessarily the outcome or backlash always matches what was happening. Yeah, there’s a lot of gray areas and a lot of different variables there.
Zach: Definitely room for debate on some of the instances.
Jess: Yeah.
Zach: I’m curious, do you want to talk about what you found most interesting in your research? For example, we had talked about discussing what causes people to swipe left or right. That that’s one topic. But I want to leave it open to anything that came to mind that was most interesting in what you’d researched.
Jess: Yeah, definitely. I can talk a little bit about the swiping right and left article. That’s one that people find really interesting. It’s one I teach in college, it’s one that I share with my college students because it has these really cool graphs and people think it’s interesting.
Zach: And it’s most practically useful for people using dating apps.
Jess: Yeah, people can look at it and use it as a guide of what to or not to include on their dating app profile. Right? For anyone who’s not familiar with dating apps, swiping right means that you are interested in someone, swiping left means that you’re not interested. Historically, we found differences in what men and women prioritize when looking for romantic partners. And so I was interested if that held true on dating apps as well. Just because it is more modern times, maybe people’s priorities are shifting. Also, when using dating apps, you’re not necessarily looking for a long term partner and so the things you’re interested in or care about might be different. So I asked one thousand college students, basically, what makes them swipe left or right, and I created- It’s called a semantic network analysis, but basically, I summarized all of their responses. When it comes to swiping right, it’s no surprise, both men and women, their top priority is attractiveness. If they find someone physically attractive, they’re more likely to swipe right on them or indicate interest.
I think that people will often see that result and say, “Oh, people are so shallow now.” Well, partially, maybe yes. But also, you have to think about the interface of dating apps and the information that is available. Most dating apps, the main thing that you can see is pictures. Right? Sometimes there’ll be maybe a couple little prompts with their responses to them, maybe a short bio of 200 words tops, but the main thing you have access to is pictures. And so if that’s all the information you have to go off of, of course it’s going to come down to physical attraction.
Zach: And haven’t people always been shallow in that regard? I mean…
Jess: Yeah. Sometimes people just make the argument that technology or social media has made people more shallow. I always go back to, you know, wealthy men used to pay people to paint pictures of them in front of their desks, and then they’d hang those paintings on their wall in their office.
Zach: Yeah, the appreciation of attractiveness has always been a human thing. But to your point, it is the one clear signal we get from the dating apps. Yeah.
Jess: Right. We can see what they look like, and that’s sometimes all the information we have to go off of. So physical attractiveness was a big thing, but men and women both also value people who have shared interests and hobbies with them. Those were big indicators of whether they were going to swipe right. I thought that some of the things for swiping left were more interesting. So, what people are saying like, “Oh no, that’s an automatic no.” For both men and women, things like smoking and drug use, they were swiping left on, which I thought that makes sense. But also things like bad spelling and grammar, people were really swiping left on bad spelling and grammar.
Zach: That’s interesting. Yeah.
Jess: Yeah. And the reasons for that, I think we can get more into the psychology of that in a little bit, but I think there’s reasons behind that that explain it more. People also really don’t like group photos. So, when people post a picture of a big group of them and their friends, they don’t like it. The reason for that is that you don’t know which person is the person you’re swiping right on.
Zach: Oh, interesting. You need like an arrow in there. [chuckles]
Jess: Right, you need an arrow or a circle or something. Because people don’t like having to play detective and figuring out which one in the picture you are.
Zach: That’s funny.
Jess: Yeah. Political affiliation also came into my results. Men were likely to swipe left on women who they described as super liberal. Women would slay left on anyone who had pictures of Confederate flags. Women also didn’t like people who seemed like party animals, and they also didn’t like… They described it as dead animals. But a lot of men will post pictures of the deer they shot or the fish they caught, and the pictures of the fish is the-
Zach: Yeah, the fish. That’s a cliche. They’re holding up the fish, right? I’ve heard that is a cliche.
Jess: Yes. That’s a real thing that happens, and women do not like it. So any men who have pictures of dead animals on their profile, I think they do it to show that they’re outdoorsy and they have these different hobbies. For whatever reason, most women do not like that.
Zach: They’re a provider.
Jess: Right. They’re a provider. We can take care of you. We can go kill our own food. We’re outdoorsy. But yeah, women don’t… Yeah.
Zach: There’s probably a scale of badness from like an oyster up to trophy game hunting for badness perception. It’s like the fish is probably better than “I killed this lion in Africa.”
Jess: Right, I would say so. I think that women would probably be more accepting of a fish from a fishing trip, versus, “Oh, I went on a safari and killed a zebra.” [chuckles]
Zach: Just put it out there to clarify the scale that we’re working with.
Jess: Yeah, I would definitely think there’s a difference between those two.
Zach: I harvested this oyster. It’s probably the least offensive on the scale of providing, if you want the providing photos. Yeah. Anyway, carry on with the…
Jess: There were other things. Men didn’t like a lot of excessive piercings or tattoos, which I thought was interesting. I thought that was also a symptom of where I collected the data. When I talked to college students, they were all in sort of rural parts of Indiana in the US, and I think that their responses may have differed if we were in like LA, for example.
Zach: Portland, for sure.
Jess: Yeah. I think the thing with the piercings and tattoos, that really depends on the sample of the population that you’re talking to. Men also didn’t like duck faces.
Zach: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. That’s an interesting one. Because I get the sense a lot of women think that’s an attractive pose, but…
Jess: Not for guys. And I think it’s because when women make that face, it makes their face look slimmer, and so they think that it’s a more flattering angle because it makes your cheekbones stand out more and so it makes your face look slimmer. That’s a lot of the editing they do in beauty magazines that’s kind of seen as a standard of pretty, and so making that duck face makes your lips look bigger, which big lips are seen as pretty, and pronounced cheekbones are pretty according to just Western beauty standards.
Zach: Do you feel like there’s a scale there, too, where there’s probably better forms of the duck face, but too exaggerated? Is there some art to the duck face, basically?
Jess: I would say there’s definitely an art to a duck face. [both chuckle]
Zach: We need to research this.
Jess: Yeah, we should research the art to a duck face. Because I do think that the duck face is really just a pronounced pout, where a pouty lip look can kind of be seductive. And still is doing that same shape with your face. Duck face, I think, maybe came out of people over exaggerating that or maybe making fun of it.
Zach: Yeah, they’re doing an exaggerated Zoolander kind of pose or something.
Jess: Right, like this Blue Steel or whatever it was.
Zach: Yeah. I try to emulate that, but I can’t remember what it was.
Jess: Yeah, I don’t remember what it looks like. So I do think there’s an art to it, but yeah, guys are not a fan of the duck faces.
Zach: Yeah, interesting.
Jess: Women tend to also be pretty picky about the types of photos that men are posting. Not only are they not fans of group pictures, they don’t like low quality photos like things that are blurry. They don’t really like a lot of mirror selfies like standing taking your picture in front of the mirror. Shirtless selfies were also on there. I think that that depends on the context. It seems that women don’t like… They don’t like shirtless pictures if you’re only shirtless just to be shirtless. If you’re on the beach and you look good shirtless and it makes sense for the context, that’s okay. But if it’s like you’re in your bathroom and you just pop your top off and take a picture, they seem less receptive to that.
Zach: Yeah, I want to ask you about this. Maybe it relates to these unintentional signals we send, kind of thing. But for the mirror selfies, the thing that strikes me there why people might not like that is it signals you’re trying too hard. Maybe it signals you don’t have real photos to use, maybe you don’t have friends or a social life or something and maybe you have to resort to taking selfies in your bathroom. I don’t know if that’s maybe a signal that it sends, or what do you think people don’t like those?
Jess: Yeah, I would definitely agree with it. I think that’s part of it, especially if that’s all your photos. If all your photos are either you and your bathroom or your car, it’s like, okay, this is a person that doesn’t go places or doesn’t hang out with groups of people. Maybe they seem like a loner or maybe they seem like a homebody. I think it also signals vanity.
Zach: Yeah, like you’re sitting around taking photos in your bathroom, and that’s…
Jess: Like, “Oh, look at me in the mirror. Look at me in the mirror.” And I think that one thing that we do unfairly, but this is just like a psychological thing that everyone does, is with signaling theory or over attribution theory. So if we’re if we only have access to small amounts of information, we emphasize the significance that that information has. Everyone looks in the mirror every day, right? But if I have a picture of myself looking in a mirror, that may be subconsciously signaling to people like, oh, that person is vain. Right? Because they posted a picture of themselves in a mirror, and that just seems vain. The same thing as if, okay, we all get in our car every day and could potentially take pictures of ourselves in it, but if all your pictures in your profile are just pictures of you in your car, it’s like, oh, this person seems boring or they’re not going anywhere interesting.
Zach: Right. When you say it’s the same, I imagine it’s the same for a lot of these things. Like the shirtless photos from men, it signals a similar kind of like you’re trying… If there’s not a context for it, or even theoretically, if there was a context for it, the fact that you would post it kind of signals a vanity trying-too-hard-to-impress kind of signal. Do you agree with that?
Jess: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think that it’s also attached to men who are just looking for casual sex, rather than more long-term things. Because if people are… The women they are are trying to attract with that, I think that subconsciously, people are thinking, “Oh, if you’re just going to post a bunch of shirtless pictures, it seems like you’re after something very specific.”
Zach: Right, which could be sophisticated on their part. They know what they’re trying to do, so they’re only attracting the people they want kind of thing.
Jess: Right. Yeah, and if that works, then great.
Zach: If it works, it works. Yeah.
Jess: Right. But then maybe women who are interested in something more serious aren’t going to slip right on that, because that signals to them that the man isn’t interested in something serious.
Zach: Yeah. And I think to your point, we can be prone to reading things wrongly, like putting too much emphasis on certain signals, like you said. Because there’s only so many signals we get. I think that accounts for some of the people being too picky in some cases where they’re like, “Oh, I read this thing as communicating something.” Let’s say the grammatical errors or something. Like, “I read these signals as communicating something significant about this person,” when in reality, it might not be that significant. The grammatical errors could be due the fact that they’re ESL and they’re actually writing English and speaking English at a very high level compared to, you know, they’re doing well on that front but we could be misinterpreting it. Or they could just be posting a picture at the beach because they thought it was a good photo to use and it doesn’t indicate that they’re vain or seeking a physical-only relationship. Just to say we can be prone to misinterpreting those signals. I’m not sure if that’s something that you’ve thought about or worked on in the signal theory dating areas.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I do teach, actually, my own intro to Communication Theory class now, and this is something that we talk about. It’s that a lot of times, what you think you’re signaling about yourself maybe isn’t what other people are receiving. So I think going back to the grammar and typos thing, how a lot of people said that they would swipe left on that, well, that’s because people value intelligence. Right? Or especially because these were college students, they value education. And so because we’re over-attributing just this one typo, now we’re saying, “Oh, this person’s dumb.” Well, it could have literally just been a typo. I’ve sent typos in emails all the time. I’ve spelled my own last name wrong in emails. And so it doesn’t mean… But because we only have such a small amount of information, that’s what we have to go off of. Same thing with just pictures of the beach. Maybe you’re like, “Oh, this was a really fun vacation and I thought the beach was really pretty behind me, I happen to be in a bathing suit because I’m at the beach and I’m going to upload it. But maybe people are interpreting that differently.
So I do think that one common mistake people make when they’re creating profiles is if they’re not getting as many matches or as much interest on their profiles as they expected or would like to, the first thing I always tell them is to go back and really pay attention to the messages you think that you’re sending because that might not be how people are receiving them.
Zach: Right. Yeah. And you’ve done some consulting for people that want to improve their getting profiles. Is that true?
Jess: Yes. And it all just started with some of my friends that I would see at coffee shops and stuff, and we would just be having casual conversations or someone would be like, “Oh my gosh, people never message me back.” And I’d be like, “Well, what first messages are you sending me?” And they’re like, “Oh, I just sent hey.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s why.” Right? So, yeah, I actually do some consulting work and I’ll have people give me like 25 bucks and I’ll look over their profile, and I guarantee results. If you don’t see an increase in the matches that you’re getting or in the messages that you’re getting back, I’ll give you your 25 bucks back. It’s just a fun little side hustle that I’m doing.
Zach: No, yeah. And it’s must be fun too.
Jess: It’s really fun.
Zach: And based on what I’ve seen, I actually interviewed a couple of people a couple years ago about their dating app experiences and I was talking about this one anecdote from an acquaintance-a woman I know-who was describing this guy who her and her friends knew and she just happened to see him on the dating apps. We were talking about his bio or his profile, and it was just so bad. It was like he was so clueless in how he came across. He came across as really bitter. I think he was trying to be funny, but he came across as just really bitter. It was almost like he was trying to be sarcastic about his bad experiences or something but it just came across very clueless and you’re like the chances of somebody being interested based on this profile of content that he wrote would be so slim. But yeah, to your point, it’s like there’s clearly a lot of people that could really benefit from looking at their profile from an outside perspective and thinking about those things. Because getting back to the incorrect perceptions we have, it’s like some of these things that we think indicate something really bad about people are just superficial, and if we actually hung out with them in person, they a lot of times might be much better than we assume.
Maybe that’s a way to segue into… I wanted to ask you about this ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ idea. I read some research on [00:36:11] Michael Norton had done some research on this and how it related to social media, which I think relates to dating apps too, where it’s like we can- Kind of the opposite of what you were talking about how we can bond really quickly when we start interacting, I think what can happen at the surface level on social media or dating apps is we see one thing that turns us off, and then we kind of write those people off too much, whereas if we actually got to know them, we’d see much more positive things and even the things we dislike might be perceived in a more positive form. That was the gist of that ‘familiarity breeding contempt’ research was that we can be prone to alienating ourselves from other people. I think it applies to the political polarization sphere too, in how we wrongly perceive acquaintances from one thing as being completely against us in all these different ways, or whether it’s just for personal relationships too, like how it impacts our personal and romantic relationships and such. But I wanted to ask if you thought much about those aspects and how maybe dating apps are doing similar things in the social media sphere of driving us away from each other a little bit too much.
Jess: Yeah, there is this problem of… One of the side effects of dating apps is that we are overwhelmed by choice. You can just get on your phone and swipe through hundreds of people in a matter of minutes. It’s led to what they’re calling ‘throwaway culture’ where maybe I go on one date with somebody and the first date goes well, but maybe I said one thing that I didn’t like. And because I’ve got fifty other matches on my phone, then I’m automatically dismissing that person. It also can lead to people being overly picky on dating profiles, where it’s because they have so many choices available to them that maybe because someone’s religious feelings don’t completely align with theirs, they’re going to automatically just swipe left on them. Whereas it used to be if you had fewer choices, maybe that’s something that you could compromise about, right? Or maybe that’s something that you could work through. But on dating apps, because we have so many options…
There’s a the psychological phenomenon in communication where you are less civil. You’re more likely to be in civil online than you are face-to-face. And we have all seen people saying crazy stuff in comment sections online that they would never say if you were together in Target. And so it also has that effect that happens on dating apps as well, where we’re more likely to just dismiss people because of small things because of this throwaway culture. And we’re more likely to be really rude about it because we have this distance between us. We’re protected by a screen, so we’re not seeing direct consequences of our actions. If we were face to face and I said something really rude to someone, I would have to see what that did to them in their body language or them just turning and walking away. But when you’re protected by a screen, you don’t have to see the consequences of that.
Zach: I’ve seen some of that in some of those viral things that they share where people are rude to each other in the dating apps. Some of those have the sense of escalation, where it’s like one person says something that’s not really that bad, and the other person kind of ramps it up a bit and the other person ramps it up. I have a feeling that must be happening. Just like in the political spheres, there’s this escalation cycle where we take the other person’s statement in the worst possible way, especially because we’re distant from each other, and then it just goes haywire from there.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I have actually done some research in political discussions on different social media platforms, and what you’re describing is an incivility spiral where one person will say something that’s maybe just a slight disagreement, but then it will spiral into name-calling and threats and all these crazy things. That can happen on dating apps as well because, like you said, people are interpreting things potentially in the most negative way possible. When it comes to text, the actual words we write are communicating very little of our message. So [00:40:38] Media Richness theory tells us that just like sending emails back and forth or sending texts back and forth is not a very rich form of communication, meaning there aren’t a lot of signs or signals that are getting sent besides just the words. So going back to your point about how some people are trying to be funny or sarcastic on profiles, sometimes that can come across as really jaded or rude, because humor is just difficult to- [crosstalk]
Yeah, it’s hard to get without tone. Right? I think that’s another reason that incivility spirals happen so much online. Maybe people are joking around or being sarcastic or being kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, but we’re interpreting it as literal and offensive. That can quickly spiral out of control.
Zach: Yeah, there’s just so many ways to misunderstand people when it’s only text. I actually keep a Google Doc of examples of colleague or work-related misunderstandings based on saying something completely innocuous and the other person taking offense of it. Because I think that’s very interesting, and it’s much more prone to happen when it’s text only.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely.
Zach: Do you want to talk… I don’t know if we exhausted all your points about things that really bothered people in the dating profiles. Did anything else stand out as surprising things to you?
Jess: Um, let’s see one thing. I guess this wasn’t surprising, but I feel like there’s more to talk about with this one. So, women would say that men who seemed like they were party animals, they would tend to swipe left on. They weren’t interested in party animals. And I think it’s interesting that you could identify someone as a party animal just based on four pictures and maybe responses to a couple questions. And I think again, that goes back to over attribution of you only have so much to go off of. I even do this. When I used to be on dating apps-I don’t drink alcohol, so if someone had more than one picture of them holding an alcoholic beverage, I’d swipe left. And I know that’s not fair. I know it’s not fair. Because it could just be they like the picture of them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that like drinking is important to them. But because they only have so few pictures, I’m like, “Oh, if one quarter of your pictures is you holding a cocktail…” And I was doing it too, knowing that I was doing it.
Zach: Right, which I think gets into… I mean, for better or for worse, there can be value to using stereotypes even if we know that they’re not accurate. Because if you only have limited time on a dating app, it’s like, sure some of those people that you categorize as a party animal might not be. But you only have limited time yourself, so using some sort of algorithm to deduce things is an understandable approach. Which gets into the importance of why it is important to think about the signals you send.
Jess: Yeah, it’s narrow information processing, which means that we don’t have time to study every aspect of your profile. Especially on dating apps, I think it’s like within two to three seconds of looking at the profile, most people make up their mind about whether they’re swiping right or left. I think I used to take a little bit longer than that, but on average it’s two to three seconds. So we’re relying on all of these cognitive shortcuts to decide whether we’re interested or not, and sometimes it can just come down to, “Oh, does this person give a…” A lot of times it comes down to vibes. People be like, “Oh, do they give a creepy vibe? Do they give a party vibe?” So I do think it’s useful to have someone look at your profile and give feedback and say, “Hey, did you mean to sound this way right here?” Or, “Oh, the fact that you have only pictures of you in your living room, why would you not post something from your trip to Paris last year?” Sometimes I think it just takes an outside perspective.
Zach: Yeah, it’s almost like if you see a red solo cup and a ping pong ball, you make some deductions about that person’s lifestyle.
Jess: Right, and often unfairly. It could just be them and their best friend in the picture.
Zach: They just went to a cool party.
Jess: Right, they love their shirts in that picture.
Zach: Yeah, they like their face.
Jess: Yeah.
Zach: What about photos? How many people post photos where it crops really hard, like they cut their ex out of the picture? Does that come into play? [chuckles]
Jess: That’s a thing. I find that men do that a lot more than women do, and I think that’s mostly just because men take fewer pictures.
Zach: Yeah, exactly. I was going to say it. Because I can relate to that, where it’s like I don’t have that many good pictures because I take very few pictures, so I’m reduced to thinking about, “Can I crop people out?”
Jess: Right. You’ll see where clearly they had gone to a wedding together, and then oops! And it’s cut and that’s the end of it.
Zach: Hard crop.
Jess: Right, hard crop. And I think that cropping them out is better than leaving them in. Women are more likely to swipe left if there are both genders. Both groups are more likely to swipe left if there’s someone of the other gender in their pictures.
Zach: Yeah, because you’re like is it just a baggage thing of there might be some hang-ups if they’re using that photo or something?
Jess: Right. Or maybe this is their best friend, and maybe you don’t want them to have a hot blonde as their best friend.
Zach: It’s some sort of obstacle of some sort. Yeah.
Jess: Right, it sends some type of signal and there could be a lot of reasons for it. But a lot of times, I think that it’s a sister or an aunt or something, and if they don’t specifically say that, then you’re getting swiped left on because they think it’s like, “Oh, he hangs out with all of these women, that seems interesting.” [chuckles] But yeah, I do think that it’s very common for men to have really close crafts, or I see even them put just an emoji over the girl’s face. And it’s just because they’re not taking as many pictures of themselves, a lot of those times, those pictures are the ones where they were the most dressed up and think they look the best.
Zach: Right, makes sense. Yeah.
Jess: So maybe if you are on dating apps, make more of an effort to just take some pictures of just you. I think that all men could benefit from just taking more pictures of themselves.
Zach: But not necessarily in the mirror in the bathroom.
Jess: Yeah, not necessarily topless in the mirror.
Zach: Yeah, topless in the bathroom. That’s the worst combo. Holding a fish in the bathroom is even worse.
Jess: [laughs] Fish in the bathroom. Yeah, we don’t want that. That’s a bad combination.
Zach: I was going to ask… Oh, yeah, it made me think that you could probably create a pretty cool algorithmic… Sorry, there’s a loud bird. I don’t know if you can hear that. You could probably create a pretty cool algorithm using visual identification or picture identification algorithms, where it’s parsing people’s profiles for liquor bottles, red solo cups, a hard crop, all these kinds of things we’ve talked about that would automatically analyze and reduce it to some sort of stereotype, which is kind of like emulating what people are doing on their own. But it just made me think there’s probably some interesting algorithm where you could analyze somebody’s lifestyle just from the pictures and run it through some app.
Jess: Yeah. No, you definitely could. There are.. Which one is it? Hinge, I believe will go… If you give it permission to go through your Camera Roll, it will select your best photos for you.
Zach: Oh, wow, interesting.
Jess: But it’s not a super smart algorithm. Sometimes it doesn’t realize who is you and if that’s a really pretty picture of your sister. So you do have to double-check it.
Zach: But it’s helping you. Because it knows what works. The apps know what kind of pictures work and get the-
Jess: Yeah, the apps know what’s working and so it can go through and be like, “Oh yeah, these four are your pictures that are most likely to get good responses.”
Zach: Yeah, that’s interesting. Anything else you want to mention that we haven’t covered that you find really interesting in these areas?
Jess: Um, let’s see. Is there anything else? I don’t think so. We’ve talked about… I have some notes here I’m going through.
Zach: I think we covered a good amount.
Jess: I think we did too.
Zach: Do you want to mention… You’re doing some jury trial consulting? Is that the same? I was wondering, is jury consulting the same as trial consulting?
Jess: Sometimes people use them interchangeably. Jury consulting is like a subcategory. So, trial consulting is like every process of the trial you can be a consultant for. Jury consulting is specifically related to aspects of the jury. That could be the jury selection process, it could be looking at mock trials to see how the jury responds, it could be prepping witnesses specifically to talk to specific jury members. But yeah, jury consulting is just a little bit more specific than trial consulting. Trial consulting could be the whole grand scheme of the trial.
Zach: Were you doing the jury consulting?
Jess: Yeah, I was doing specific jury consulting. My first case that I was brought on for was just one year, and then a little bit of witness prep in terms of we helped select the jury and then came up with kind of some of the best techniques of how witnesses could explain their side of the story in a way that was going to resonate the most with the jurors. Yeah. It also helps to once you know who the jury is, there are certain things that attorneys can do too that are going to relate to that jury more. So I think very often the attorneys think, “Well, we’ll just give them the facts of the case.” Facts sound a little bit different and are interpreted differently based on who you’re giving the facts to. If you have someone who has a lot of experience maybe in healthcare, and you’re doing a medical malpractice case, and one of your jurors works in healthcare, you’re going to want to approach that in a certain way. So some of what we do is looking at who the jury is, coming up with some of their demographics and their characteristics, how they’re likely to believe or how they’re likely to feel about certain things, and coaching the attorneys on the best way to present the facts. And really, what about the story to emphasize that is going to resonate with the jurors most?
Zach: Yeah, that stuff is very interesting. I was remembering the interview I did of Christina Marinakis, the jury consultant, and that stuff is very interesting.
Jess: It’s so interesting.
Zach: Well, maybe we can talk about that one day in the future, your work on that front.
Jess: Yeah.
Zach: Yeah. Well, this has been great. Anything else you want to add before we sign off, Jess?
Jess: No. Just, if anyone is interested in consulting, whether that’s trial consulting or they would just want some quick feedback on their dating profile, you can just message me on LinkedIn.
Zach: Okay, thank you.
Jess: Thank you so much.
Zach: That was a talk with Jess Snitko. You can get a link to her LinkedIn at the entry for this episode on my site, behavior-podcast.com, and that entry will have links to other things that we talked about in this episode. I’m Zach Elwood, thanks for your interest in this podcast and for watching it. Okay, bye-bye. Music by small skies.