We're Living in the Gaslit Era | Jennifer Fraser | Ep.456

Summary

Cleared Hot Ep. 456 - "We're Living in the Gaslit Era" with Jennifer Fraser

Release Date: June 29, 2026
Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Dr. Jennifer Fraser

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Episode Overview

Andy Stumpf sits down with Dr. Jennifer Fraser, award-winning author and advocate for trauma-informed leadership, to unpack her newest book, The Gaslit Brain. Together, they dive deep into the cultural and psychological dynamics of gaslighting in modern society, the neuroscience of manipulation and abuse, the alarming rise of mental health crises, and the urgent need for compassion and critical thinking in a "gaslit era." Drawing from Fraser’s research, personal stories, and Andy’s life experiences, the episode explores how gaslighting pervades institutions, relationships, and media—and what it takes to resist it and lead well.

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. Cultural Time Warp & The Pandemic’s Aftermath

• [00:26] The episode opens with Andy and Jennifer reflecting on the altered sense of time post-COVID and how those years impacted perception.
• "Are you still in a time warp? Since COVID I still haven't gotten my time normal."
• Both unpack how collective crises can shift public reality, set up denial mechanisms, and fuel new narratives—prime conditions for societal gaslighting.

2. Gaslighting Defined: From Comedy to Crisis

• [02:12] The pair banter about jokes and activism, segueing into what gaslighting looks like today.
• Definition: “The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one's own advantage.” (Fraser, [18:26])
• The conversation moves from pop culture examples to real-world abuses of power, setting the framework for more in-depth discussion.

3. The Erosion of Trust & Sanity

• [12:18] Jennifer connects the epidemic of lying and manipulation in politics, workplaces, and society to rising rates of mental illness.
• “The way we define sanity versus insanity is our relationship to the truth.”
• Youth suicide and depression statistics are discussed ([13:18]), with Fraser citing CDC data showing a 57% rise in youth suicide (2000-2018) and an 83% spike in youth depression after the public launch of Facebook ([15:21]).

4. Personal Story: Chronic Pain & Accidental Gaslighting

• [17:48] Jennifer details her younger son’s rare genetic disorder and the unintentional gaslighting he endures due to invisible pain—misbelief, blaming, and the harm of unchecked assumptions.
• “If it's happening because your doctor didn't have the training...that's not gaslighting, that's misdiagnosis.” ([18:23])
• The difference between intentional manipulation and systemic lack of awareness is made clear.

5. Gaslighting in Institutions, Sports, and Education

• [39:49] The chat unpacks how abusers—often in positions of authority—use classic techniques:
  • Isolating victims
  • Favoritism among targets/favorites ([83:14])
  • Humiliation as control
  • DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) ([66:18])
• Real examples include abusive sports coaches and complicit administrators.

6. Dark Tetrad Personalities

• [28:39] Introduction to the “Dark Tetrad”: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Sadism.
• Everyday sadism is explored—those who hurt for pleasure, not just in criminal settings ([30:01]).
• “Gaslighters are experts at exploiting that space within us...” (Fraser, [27:57])

7. Masking, Charisma, and Victim Blaming

• Psychopaths and narcissists are often charismatic and effective at hiding true motives ([35:51]).
• “They seem like the most wonderful colleague or leader or teacher... Then you close the door and you see the other side of them” ([35:51]).
• Victims are often blamed or pathologized; Fraser urges a shift of focus to the perpetrator.

8. Cycles of Abuse & Brain Science

• [71:50] Discussion on how abusers perpetuate cycles due to their own damaged empathy, often from early childhood abuse ([38:00]).
• The neuroscience of empathy: affective (emotional) empathy vs. cognitive (analytical) empathy, and how abusers lack the former ([38:00]).

9. Gaslighting in Media & Society

• [86:25] Andy and Jennifer examine how gaslighting is not just interpersonal, but institutional and media-driven.
  • Examples: diverging news narratives (CNN vs. Fox), manipulated facts for clicks ([87:02]), and how propaganda thrives on repetition, not evidence ([93:05]).
• “You need to aggregate out your research and you're probably going to have to find an average of sources and the answer is going to be somewhere in there.” (Andy, [96:47])

10. Critical Thinking & Self-Agency as Antidotes

• “Seeing is believing” vs. “Believing is seeing”: how cognitive bias narrows our understanding ([80:33]).
• The classic "invisible gorilla" psychology experiment is revisited to highlight selective attention and how authority manipulates focus ([104:01]).

11. Leadership, Accountability, and the Gaslit Era

• [145:06] Real leadership is defined as "the capacity to look one's own failures in the eye," challenging the drift toward self-protection and denial.
• “There's a difference between being a leader and being in a leadership role.” (Andy, [145:14])
• Leaders must reject gaslighting, own their failures, and promote critical, collaborative environments.

12. Empathy Under Attack

• Contemporary figures (Elon Musk, Gad Saad) are critiqued for labeling empathy as a “civilizational weakness.” Fraser passionately rebuts, citing brain science:
  • “Empathy is a superpower for humanity... when your empathy is eroded... you can do extreme cruelty.” ([126:33])

13. Competitive Suffering & Healing from Trauma

• The dangers of “competitive suffering” and comparisons, from veterans to survivors of severe trauma ([139:30]).
• “If your standard for suffering is surviving the Holocaust... you look lose. Nothing is going to compare to that. ... you’re setting yourself up for failure for life.” (Andy, [140:26])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Defining Gaslighting:
  “It is defined since 2022 as the act or practice of grossly misleading someone for one’s especially for one's own advantage.” (Fraser, [18:26])

• On Victim-Blaming:
  “You were bullied because you were dealing with the dark tetrad... not because of any weakness in you.” (Fraser, [67:12])

• On Leadership:
  “Self-leadership has to come first or you can never be a true leader.” (Fraser, [163:31])

• On Critical Thinking:
  “If you really want the truth... you gotta go that extra mile. It takes resources … You want to just go with the faster version because it takes less brain-body resources. But you can't.” (Fraser, [91:49])

• On Abuse in Institutions:
  “Institutional complicity happens because leaders focus on their own story of integrity rather than facing failure and abuse on their watch.” (Fraser, [143:24])

• On Empathy as a Superpower:
  “Empathy is a superpower for humanity. ...when your empathy is eroded, you can do extreme cruelty to people and animals.” (Fraser, [126:33])

• On Reclaiming Agency:
  “You have no control over what happens to you in your life, but you have total and complete control over how you react to it. And that is something that you should never surrender to anybody.” (Andy, [162:52])

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Timestamps by Topic

| Time | Segment | |---------------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–02:00 | Catch-up, time warp, and pandemic reflections | | 02:00–07:00 | Gaslighting, public narratives, and activism | | 12:00–16:30 | Lying, mental health, and social media impact | | 17:50–24:00 | Personal stories of pain, misdiagnosis vs. gaslighting | | 28:39–32:30 | Dark Tetrad explained: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism | | 35:42–40:49 | Masking, manipulation, and victim focus shifted to abusers | | 66:18–67:12 | DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender) and strategies for resistance | | 71:50–76:00 | Abusers’ childhood trauma & empathy circuits | | 86:25–92:09 | Media, misinformation, aggregation of sources | | 104:01–107:00 | Invisible Gorilla experiment and selective attention | | 145:06–148:00 | True leadership vs. position, accountability & self-authority|

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Memorable Moments

• [54:44] Andy describes a business relationship gone awry and walks through how he realized he was being gaslit—“the recognition of it and then realizing that it’s almost like a game of ping pong…if you don’t engage, they lose their shit.”
• [139:30] Deep exploration of “competitive suffering”—how it pervades trauma communities, families, and military culture.
• [168:52] Andy reads aloud a scathing one-star review of his book, reflects humorously on internet criticism, and discusses the futility of trying to please everyone.
• [80:33] Fraser on the neuroscience of belief: “Believing is seen.”
• [84:49] The four hallmarks of abusive cultures: favoritism, bullying, humiliation, retaliation.
• [126:33] Impassioned discussion: “Empathy is not an emotion. It’s a brain structure...when empathy is eroded, you open the door to cruelty.”

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Practical Takeaways & Antidotes

• Awareness: Learn to spot gaslighting by patterns, not isolated incidents—repetition, manipulation, denial.
• Collaboration: Build teams that check reality together—abusers thrive on isolation.
• Critical Thinking: Don’t default to trust or media narratives—aggregate, pause, cross-check sources.
• Empathy: Protect and cultivate your own empathic capacity; don’t let it be weaponized or eroded.
• Leadership: True leaders own failure, reject denial, and build cultures of truth—even under pressure.
• Support Victims: Believe those who bring evidence of abuse; don’t default to leaders’ narratives.
• Parenting: Teach kids to question, to understand their own worth, and to recognize abuse—start small, build vocabulary.
• Self-Compassion: Surviving and resisting gaslighting starts with self-trust and resisting isolation.

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Where to Find Jennifer Fraser’s Work

• Website: bulliedbrain.com
• Books: The Gaslit Brain, Bullied Brain, available via Amazon and major booksellers.
• Workshops/Speaking: Details via her website.

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Final Thoughts

The episode wraps with encouragement to leave reviews for authors (good or bad—even “bad” reviews feed the algorithm) and a strong call to practice self-leadership, critical thinking, and compassion in the modern “gaslit era.” A memorable, sometimes humorous, often sobering dialogue—essential listening for anyone striving to resist manipulation, support others, and lead well in a confusing world.

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Additional Resources

• Jennifer Fraser’s Substack: For ongoing writing and thought leadership.
• Recommended books: The Mask of Sanity (Hervey Cleckley), Blind to Betrayal (Jennifer Freyd).
• Podcast referenced: Joe Rogan Experience (re: Elon Musk on empathy).

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This summary covers the main themes, arguments, and emotional high points of the episode, attributed by timestamp and speaker, and is a resource for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

[A]

Okay, I got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south west of the smoke.

[B]

West of the smoke.

[A]

Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now.

[B]

Oh, wait a minute. Give it to me.

[A]

I mean, it cleared.

[B]

Hot coffee.

[A]

Clear not. Why is my book on the table? This is about your book slash books.

[B]

I have some questions for you.

[A]

Fire away. Well, first off, let's catch up about. When did you come back on? I know it was at least two years ago.

[B]

Yeah, I feel like it was 20, 23 maybe.

[C]

It says three years ago.

[A]

Three years, wow. See, out of the darkness comes the truth.

[B]

So yeah, it does seem like a long time ago, man.

[A]

2023. Let's see. Were we officially through the pandemic at that point or was that the tail end of it?

[B]

It must have been the tail end because I was able to come down here.

[A]

So it had to shut down travel for a little bit. But then it was masks, the distancing.

[B]

We didn't have masks on when I came. We were just.

[A]

It was in the tail end then.

[B]

Yeah, it was near the end. Yeah, we. Are you still in a time warp? Since COVID I still haven't gotten my time normal.

[A]

It feels like it was closer but yet farther away than it actually was, if that makes sense. It was a really bizarre 18 to 24 month time period.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I wonder 20 years from now what tales will be told of that time, how it will be described.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Stickers on the ground, social distancing. Stand here.

[B]

Well, you know, I. I'm at sort of more doom and gloom than you. And I figure in the next 20 years we're going to have more if we continue treating the. Oh yeah, if the way we're treating the planet, the kind of.

[A]

What are you talking about? I heard we're doing pretty good with the planet. Yeah, I heard it's healing itself.

[B]

From who? This could be our first example of gaslighting. I'm looking forward to this.

[A]

I'm just being contrarian more than anything. I don't really have any data to support my position.

[B]

The comedian Nate Barghetze has this whole thing about he's the best.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You look at other planets, he's the best. Look at Mars, it's doing way worse than us. I think we're kind of first right now.

[A]

I think we're gonna figure out the planet stuff. What I worry is that realistic issues get thrown into activism and in doing so they lose the vast majority of people. I mean, for clarity, I think everybody, since we all live On Earth, we have a vested interest, but when it starts getting super doomsdayish, super activist e. And there's nothing wrong with activism, but not everything can be an activist approach. Otherwise nobody's going to pay attention to anything. I think we're going to figure it out, though. I mean, or we're just all going to die. So it will sort itself.

[B]

Exactly. Either way. Either way. The Prime Minister, Mark Carney of Canada right now, he's a really great example of what you're talking about, where he's. He's very much economy and industry and very much an environmentalist. But his whole thought process is, why don't we make them work together? Why don't we. Why don't we not say that it has to be one or the other? Like he's good at not that binary thinking. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

That is the modern social optic is you're either for capitalism or you're for the sustainment in thriving of planet Earth. And I don't think it's that black and white. Your previous prime minister is apparently just traveling around the world dating a pop star. What's going on there?

[B]

That I cannot comment on.

[A]

You absolutely can. You're the authority on Canada.

[B]

In the room, I said to my husband, I said, have you seen this? Justin Trudeau is like hanging out with Katy Perry. And worse than that, they're posting all this stuff about themselves on Instagram. My husband just goes, what a idiot.

[A]

I like your husband.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I tried to make no sense of either of those two, but. Or their lives. But an odd pairing, for sure. I didn't see that one coming. Not that I saw or spend any time thinking about who Katy Perry may date next. I was surprised at that one.

[B]

I know, but she left the. The. What was his name?

[A]

The Orlando Bloom.

[B]

Exactly. I was going to say the Elven. The Elven. Star of Lord of the Rings.

[A]

You know, he is a handsome man.

[B]

He's very handsome. And you know, Justin Trudeau has made everyone in Canada, or many people in Canada frustrated because he. He came in sort of with all of this potential and then he just was kind of a coasting for about 10 years. Nothing happened in the country. We didn't achieve things. I mean, some things, yes, of course, you can't say that, but he just could have done a lot better.

[A]

So how do you get elected so many times then?

[B]

Well, it's always around the person. It. You have to have a really good contender to make a change. It's hard to make change. We like to, you know, the person that is a known quantity is always going to lead. But there just wasn't a strong enough contender until Mark Carney came in and then it was like, hm, this guy has everything.

[A]

Is he moving the needle for you guys?

[B]

Absolutely. He's doing a great job.

[A]

Are the US and Canada friends again? Well, first off, on this side of the table, they were never not friends.

[B]

I know.

[A]

So I the Albertans, for people not familiar with the geography, I live in Kalispell, Montana, which is about 60 miles south of the Canadian border. Many Albertans have approached me to become the 51st state. So they seem like they've always been on board. The farther east you go that that theory seems to shift a little bit. You get near Toronto and there it's a kind of the. They'll give you the number one signal, meaning the middle finger. But today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. Let's talk about what's going on currently because they are moving fast. The Montana folding knife. Yes. They're sold out. If you go to the website, you're not going to find one. I don't have any at the coffee shop. I think we'll probably have some as the subsequent releases come out. Fantastic folding knife. They are making more, I can tell you that much. Inside spit. When that's going to be, I don't have any idea. But I do know they're trying to make more. If you head over to their website right now, they have have culinary sets that are on sale. That was their latest sale. They just did. And as you scroll through their website, what you're going to see are blades that they have in stock. And if we're coming across the top, we have the chef knife, Magnacut, Mini Speedgoat 2.0 Traditions Knives, Mini War Goats, Mini Speedgoats, flat tails, Mini Stone Goats. You can click on the old view all. Not sure that that's going to net. Oh, that is all of the ones that you can see for what they have in stock. If you click up here to shop knives, this has got everything. These things are really hard to get. This brand is amazing. It is growing. The loyalty is unbelievable and there's reasons for it. It's how they're made, it's who it's made by and where they're actually making them. Should be no shock. It's in Montana, obviously. Montana Knife Co. Founded by Josh Smith, the youngest master bladesmith. Sharpening for life. Customer service. Send things back in. It's an amazing brand and if you're in the Missoula area. They also have a black rifle coffee right in the front entrance of their store. So you need to check it out. If you are Traveling through Montana. Montanaknifecompany.com Go check them out. I feel like nothing changed except for the rhetoric at the political level. I love Canadians. Canadians are awesome.

[B]

And Canadians love Americans. It's. It's exactly as you say. I must. When I looked out my window from the hotel, there was the Canadian flag, the Montana flag, and the American flag. And I was like, all is right with the world, which we don't feel that much anymore.

[A]

That's pretty common up here. Yeah, it's. I'll be honest, I didn't realize the Canadian affinity for Target. Oh, it's not a good store.

[B]

No, I've never shopped there.

[A]

The number of Albertan plates that will be seen at Target is shocking.

[B]

Is Target American?

[A]

Yes, it's an American store, I'm pretty sure. What I do know is they don't have them in Canada, so therefore they think there's something really awesome about Target. And I feel like, be better than Target. Yes, we can do better.

[B]

I.

[A]

You guys make the journey. The all white Albertan plates are often seen on the Target parking lot. And I don't know why.

[B]

I don't know. With Alberta, it's, It's. I think it's frustrating to be in an enormous country, same as what you have in the States, with incredibly diverse people. And that model of trying to all work together just is grading on everyone's nerves and nobody knows how to do it differently. And Alberta, that's. That's been a real shame for, For Canada. We've had it previously, of course, with Quebec, where they wanted to separate. And it was very.

[A]

We're talking about that right now.

[B]

Well, and it was very close at one point. Big referendum. It's what Alberta wants to do now. And I don't know, I. I think it would be pretty tragic for this country if we lost any of our provinces or territories.

[A]

If they were successful, would they become their own country? Well, I don't understand what would happen.

[B]

They don't seem very clear on that, actually. And the other thing that's being talked about a lot is there's been a great deal of foreign encouragement. They sort of think it's all Albertans talking about Alberta. So they. There are a little bit. There's a conversation around misinformation, disinformation, manipulation, you know, the same things we've seen on social media when it comes to wars, when it comes to elections, they. Alberta seems to be getting a lot of that messaging right now. So it's in other people's. It's to the advantage of foreign operators, obviously to destabilize our country.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's a shame that people. It's so hard to discern these days what's true, true and what's false.

[A]

I mean, it's getting harder too.

[B]

Yeah. And it's going to get worse, I think.

[A]

What do you think the solution to that is? Other than I feel like we will have to deploy AI tools against AI or people will have to voluntarily detach from these electronic devices and platforms, which I don't know if that's possible or a good idea to isolate yourself like that.

[B]

There's a couple of researchers, one's a lawyer and one's a neuroscientist. So Tali Chereau and Cass Sunstein and they do really interesting research on how when people are given an alert and it says this is true or this is not true or this cannot be verified, this, there's no evidence behind whatever this claim is on social media. It makes a huge difference. But of course you'll notice that the regulators, our lawmakers, are not doing that kind of thing and that I think that that will be the game changer and it needs to happen. I mean, when I look back at my life and as a kid, we were very sheltered by the lawmakers and the regulators. You weren't allowed to watch TV shows that were inappropriate. Everything was coordinated around. There's a certain time of day where kids shows are allowed. Certain time of day when obviously it's only for adults. There was no way to access highly destructive things for your, for your brain, basically, as a kid.

[A]

Who got to decide what was highly destructive, though it was.

[B]

I, I mean, that's a good question. There were regulators. I don't even know a better word for it. But, you know, there were really strong rules around BR broadcasting and truth telling. And you know, growing up, if I, if you'd gone to, into a classroom and a teacher had said in front of the class the Holocaust didn't happen, or they're really exaggerating when they're talking 6 million, that's a big lie. You'd be fired the next day. Whereas we're in a world where lying has become kind of the norm. You're almost rewarded for manipulation and, and lying and sort of, you know, we're in the war on truth, which I think actually is gone a step further. I would argue we're in the gaslit era. We're in an era where people in very high leadership positions manipulate. And it's public. It's public. That's the thing that gets me. It used to be this kind of like, really shameful thing, even in the corporate world, as, you know, if you're going to do something that's bad, that's morally, you know, not ethical, not fair, not right, not true, you do it behind closed doors. What's fascinating to me is the door is wide open. And, and going back to your question about regulation and lawmakers, it's like you're allowed to lie in public with impunity. And it's going to be interesting to see where that goes.

[A]

Do you. There's a, do you think there's a point where it goes too far and then it becomes irrecoverable? Because if you can't define truth or agree upon truth, how do you have a foundation for even communication at that point?

[B]

Well, that's my, that's the driving force behind my work these days. I, I became very worried three years ago because if you think about it, the way we define sanity versus insanity is our relationship to the truth. And.

[A]

Okay, you know, I would agree with that.

[B]

Yeah. And so. And I don't hear a lot of people talking about that. We talk a lot about misinformation, disinformation, gaslighting. I mean, you can't turn around without being bombarded with the gaslighting right now. So it's a very dominant force. Whether it's used correctly or incorrectly. It's a dominant force right now. But I don't hear people talking about the correlation between mental illness, which is massively on the rise in our society, and our relationship to reality and trust. Trust.

[A]

Why do you think mental illness is drastically on the rise?

[B]

Well, I, I really tend to look at youth population, for example, and so you look at from 2000 to 2018, and this is CDC, so it's American statistics, 2000 to 2018, youth suicide increased 57%.

[A]

I mean, that's, that's an insane number.

[B]

And you and I talked about suicide the last time I was here, and you said, all of a sudden, in my life as a dad, every time I go to the school to pick the kids up, every two to three weeks, there's a youth suicide.

[A]

It was gnarly. All of my children and across a variety of grades and at two different schools were having. And I'm happy to say. Is happy the right word? I'm glad to say that, or I'm fortunate that I can say that. It seems as if, at least in the local ecosystem, I'm not hearing of that. However, my children are also out of school age. Their friends are now dying occasionally for different reasons that highlight parental teaching points about decision making, which is going to happen. It sucks. You know, learning from other people's mistakes is, is not always as easy as it would sound. And trying to create a learning lesson around some of these catastrophes is pretty gnarly. But I would, I would hope that that isn't continuing from that timeline that you and I first talked.

[B]

Well, I mean, another statistic that I, I wish all young people knew. And it would be interesting to do a survey, just a random survey. Do you guys know this? Because I used to do that with my classes all the time. Do you guys know X, Y and Z? And if they didn't and it was a life threatening thing, we would stop what we were doing and I would tell them all about it. And it's this strange thing is if we don't want to tell kids because it's so upsetting, but the bottom line is they need to know. So when Facebook was released to all college kids, so first it was restricted. You could only get. Was it Stanford or Harvard or Harvard.

[A]

Edu.

[B]

Yeah, it was Harvard.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And then nobody else was allowed to see it.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

When they released it to everyone, serious depression in youth spiked up by 83%. And it reminds me of something that you've said, which is this tendency, especially of young people, all of us, but especially young people, to compare themselves. That didn't used to be the norm until you were bombarded with, look at all these other people doing what they're doing and looking the way they look. I must therefore have failed in some capacity because I sure don't look like that and haven't accomplished those things. I'm worthless.

[A]

I feel like there's. I feel like that the natural inclination to compare yourself is always there. But if I look back to my own school age years, I could only do that with my physical eyes and the proximity that I was in. And then at the end of the

[B]

day,

[A]

I left the people that I was largely comparing myself to, unless of course, you're hanging out with them in your social circle now. It's inescapable. It's in your pocket. The comparison is never ending. And I mean, makeup's been a thing forever. And I guess that would be the real world version of a digital filter, but a little bit easier to spot, I think, than a lot of the things that can fool just about everybody at this point.

[B]

Yeah. And I mean with AI to your point, it's only going to get worse. I mean, we are not quite done, I don't think, with the real deep dive into the virtual world taking over from the actual world and how it affects us.

[A]

Oh, I don't even think we're started. I think we've just opened the door. I don't even know if we have a foot in through the threshold yet. Shack in Montana. I'm telling you, it's the way to go.

[B]

Yeah, I agree.

[A]

So what have you been up to for the last three years?

[B]

I've been writing.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Writing and researching my usual nerd self in the library at my desk, reading all these books, trying to figure out the neuroscience, which I'm not a neuroscientist, so it's very slow work and hard work. It's not as if my brain has been trained to understand these things. So. But I am doing a deep dive because I don't think the science is getting out of the lab fast enough for all of us that need it.

[A]

Fair. What's been going on with family? Bring me up to speed. We talked a bit about your son, the first episode. And so the first book that you came on with was the Bullied Brain. And then we'll get to the Gaslit Brain. I love the topic, by the way, and the title. What's new with your son?

[B]

So I have two sons. As the Gaslit Brain is all about the older son, the young gaslighting people.

[A]

Is that the issue?

[B]

No, he's not a gaslighter, but he's really good at detecting it better than I am. So, yeah, it's one of those classic things where your kids teach you and you learn from them. I. I've had that so many times as a parent. But my younger son, it's been a very. I mean, it's interesting when you think about it in the gaslighting world, because he's the classic example of gaslighting by accident, which isn't really gaslighting when I define it. It has to be intentional and it has to be to mislead.

[A]

How do you define the term gaslighting?

[B]

Okay, that's. That's a good place to start. So it's defined as right now for the 21st century, and it has changed over time, so it's important for us to distinguish. But in the 21st century, it is defined since 2022 as the act or Practice of grossly misleading someone for ones especially for one's own advantage. So it's intentional and you hear a lot like I get interviewed all the time about medical gaslighting and I, I try to say, well, unless the doctor is sitting across from you lying to your face on purpose with intent to mislead you, you, if that's, if that's happening, yeah, you're being gaslit. If it's happening because your doctor didn't have the training, has biases he or she don't really aren't aware of, has been taught through a system to learn, you know, male health and is applying it to a female sitting in front of them. These are, has been taught that they have to be godlike because they can't be in front of a patient saying, I have no idea what's wrong with you. They'd rather say, I think you need antibiotics because it's X. And, and just have that be a mistake. Misdiagnosis. Absolutely. Does it have terrible consequences? Yes. I'm not trying to minimize it. But that's not gaslighting, that's misdiagnosis. So my younger son has had fabulous doctors. Not every single one, but in general fabulous. What has not been understood is the, by him as teachers and community friends, so called friends. His peers couldn't understand. We didn't understand a lot of the time. And it's only been in the last three years he's gotten a diagnosis, it went to genetics and genetics sent it off to Finland because in Canada we don't apparently have the massive hundred thousand dollar a person system to do it. So it went off to Finland. He has a repeat chromosome 16 and it's very, very rare, like beyond rare. Probably no one listening to this has ever heard of it. I certainly never had. And what it means though is it results in kidney disease. Yeah, he's got that ear, nose, throat, all kinds of problems. He's had multiple surgeries. Yep. He's got that cleft palate pharyngoplasty surgery. Yeah, he has that Celiac disease and gastrointestinal issues. Yeah, he has that. And the, the real kicker is debilitating pain. All of his muscles are contract. He has contracture in his muscles. That means they're all twisted. And so you know how when you get a migraine headache, it's because all that your neck muscles constrict, stops the blood going. This is one form of migraine.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, he has 24, seven migraine because all his muscles are constricted. So he's you know, he's six, three. He walks well, he's, you know, looks great. You wouldn't know unless you're a physician can tell within or a nurse 10 seconds of looking at him that he's in debilitating pain but the rest of us can't. And so he's had to deal all his life with this kind of doubting. Oh, are you faking it? Are you like one kid called him you're a faking faggot, he said because it was like you're just trying to get attention or you're this or you're that. When he's unable to do things, he had a teacher, a PE teacher tell him he was pathetic because he can't do it. He can't do anything without exacerbating the pain. So what you want to do in that much pain is not move.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You want to stay still and you know he goes and lifts weights twice a week. He goes to a physio, it's called neuromotion. So they're very specialized in these kind of neuro like it's all spinal. He's got a spinal fusion. It affects his brain. It's like, you know, he's smart as they come but it's been a hellish. His life has been hell and pathway

[A]

or treatment for him out of that.

[B]

No now as part of our conversation of like what will the future hold? I'm reading stuff where they are, they're actually going in and doing genetic stuff with the DNA. So maybe in a matter and I tell them all the time, you know, pain comes from the brain. It's not, it's yes the brain, it's the brain's communication with the body. But the bottom line is it's in the brain. And when it's chronic pain, it's especially in the brain, it's a misreading of what's going on in the body. So I, I think it's hopeful but he just recently met with a neurologist who's got him on new migraine medication. It's a game changer. He's got a pain specialist, a new guy who's. He gets lidocaine shots in his abdomen and it's like a 24 hour IV. It takes the pain from an eight nine down to a six and a five. And this is huge when you live in that pain world. So you know, he spends his days in a darkened room like the let. He can't have any sensory, no sunlight and these things because it's so aggravating and noise canceling headphones. That's how he spends his days. Yeah. And what does he watch? He watches cleared hot.

[A]

How did he find it?

[B]

He. He's. He loves reading. He wanted me to tell you that he's just finishing. Oh, boy. Carr. James Carr.

[A]

Jack.

[B]

Jack Carr's new book. He wanted you to know that because you guys are friends. And he. He reads 24 7. He listens to music 24 7. And he watches podcasts of interesting people. My maternal theory is, you know, psychologists in the closet. He loves to watch people fulfill their lives with activity and adventure because he can't. And so he deeply admires it. And he's also like you in the sense that he's had to have ridiculous mental toughness to survive what has been given to him. You know, he would like probably to disappear most days, and he fights that internal battle to be here with us.

[A]

What you've described that your son has gone through and is going through, just for clarity, he far surpasses any level of mental toughness that I have ever had. I do not consider myself to be an individual that would be defined by their mental toughness. Not. Not everything, especially my old job, not everything associated with that required that by any stretch, there were, I would say, short segmented timelines, perhaps, or defined times where. I'm not trying to say it was easy by any stretch, but the people who do that job are not actually abnormal. I think you could probably work most people to a place where they could accomplish those things. It's just a matter of whether or not they're willing to put in the work to get to that place.

[B]

I really. I love that statement, and I liked how you had it in the book, because one of the things I battle is, I think it's one of the biggest lies that fuels our society today. And it's that abuse is a necessary evil for greatness, and it's not.

[A]

Who says that?

[B]

Everybody. You know, you like a really good example, Michael.

[A]

Do you say those things, Michael?

[C]

First of all, I've been spreading that on my.

[A]

For clarity, he's not listening. He's doodling right now. I know exactly what he's doing. Sometimes he doesn't even switch the cameras because he's drawing hands. I fill in the rest of this stuff. He'll leave me a. He creates the palette. I finish the masterpiece for him. Classic dude stuff. It's not a big deal. Michael, do you believe that to achieve greatness you have to be punished?

[B]

You have to punish others?

[C]

No, I Don't think you have to punish others. I think you going through hardships helps, I think. Yeah. But I don't think being purposely punished.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know where that comes from.

[B]

So, you know, I used it in Bullied Brain. I don't know if you remember the. The movie Whiplash. It's a really good example of that.

[A]

That's a musical movie, right?

[B]

It's jazz.

[A]

Yeah. So it was by Damian Jones, overbearing coach. What do they call it in music? Is it a teacher?

[B]

Just a music. He's a jazz teacher.

[A]

He was a little bit over the top.

[B]

Oh, very over the top.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And it's.

[A]

Was a drummer specifically, he was going after, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And so the. And Damien Chazelle, who was the director and writer, he. And he won so many. He's the youngest director to get an Academy Award for that film. So this is where I feel like. And this is making a leap, but I feel like it really resonated with people. People. And I see it all the time in the work that I do because I study abuse cultures, and it's not hard. This would be a beautiful example of gaslighting. It's not hard to convince a group of people or a single individual that the abuse they're suffering is to make them great, which was the argument all through Whiplash. I'm going to get the next Charlie Parker by abusing you and the musicians. These young people believed it, and they, you know, the. The drummer drums until his hands are bleeding. You know, people will do that. You know that blood, sweat and tears, or one of the other, you know, this hurts me more than it hurts you. And you're like, yeah, never once has

[A]

that ever actually been the case.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

What's tough is there are shades of what those statements mean that are 100% true. I do believe that if you're going to achieve greatness in anything, it comes through hard work. But you can also do incredibly hard things that are not beneficial to you, that can destroy you, that can take you farther away from your goal. And there's also truth in train smarter, not harder doesn't mean that you can't do the smarter way very strenuously or pushing yourself to the limit. But that is sticky because like any good lie, there's a percentage of it that's true.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It's the deadly half truth. The half truth is the most dangerous lie. And Gaslighters are experts at exploiting that space within us. All of us have our vulnerabilities. We have Our weaknesses. We have the things we've done that we're ashamed of. We have our mistakes, we have our failures. We have the limits that just have been given to us by life. Well, the Gaslighter is a master at seeing that. When they look at you and when they talk to you, in many cases, they're. They are looking for those gaps and spaces to exploit. So, you know, you think that you're talking to someone who is really seeing you and listening to you, and it's not true. They are. It's almost like they're analyzing you.

[A]

Do you see a tie between narcissism and gaslighting?

[B]

Yes. Yes. There's. So it's really interesting. They have. It's called. By the experts, they call it the Dark Tetrad, or you hear dark Triad. But a woman just convinced me. It's funny. She. She wrote me on my substack and said, look. Or was it. Yeah, she wrote on the subtitle, she said, you know, you talk about the Dark Triad. I'd like you to look into sadism, and I'd like you to explore that because I really think it's important. It's an. It's the. It's a Dark Tetrad.

[A]

Of course. At the bottom is a picture of Hannibal Lecter. That's.

[B]

That's lovely.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Okay. The Dark Tetrad is a set of four interrelated malicious personality traits. Narcissism. That's another one I didn't understand until pretty recently due to personal exposure, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. I don't actually know what sadism is.

[B]

God. This is a classic example. I say sadism, which is incorrect, apparently, because I never listen to words out loud. I only read. I never am. I never.

[A]

Sadism would just be chronic sadness.

[B]

You're probably right. Sadism. I say everything, Mike drives my kids crazy.

[A]

There's a good chance that we're both incorrect.

[B]

No.

[A]

Maybe the inflection is on the eye somehow or something. I don't know.

[B]

No, you're right. You're right.

[A]

But so what is sadism?

[B]

So what was so interesting? So I was like, okay. So I went and took a look at the research, and then I wrote an article about it for Psychology Today, because, lo and behold, what did I find out? We have a tendency to think. Whenever we think about a person who's sadistic, we think of them and we think sex and, like, criminology, you know, criminality and these kinds of types of things. Well, there's an actual Application of this to. They call it everyday. Everyday. Saddest is a person who actually likes to hurt people just on the day in, day out. So you can find them in the workplace, you can find them in personal relationships. And they just actually take pleasure from seeing somebody else embarrassed or crying or humiliated. They like it.

[A]

So it's a psychological. They. They enjoy the process of eliciting psychological pain from somebody else.

[B]

Yep. Or. Or it could be physical.

[A]

If they can get away with it, that's gonna be. That's gonna be a harder thing to do.

[B]

You see it in sports all the time. I don't know if you've ever seen footage of coaches with these little girls in gymnastics, for example, and the child will be sobbing while the adult is holding their leg in a position that's obviously tearing muscles. And they, they don't care. Like they. It's so inhuman. I can't even look at the pictures. But yeah, you see that kind of thing. Especially sports, of course.

[A]

Yeah, that's. That there has to be a weird power dynamic in a non public setting. I find for that to be the case.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because the physical elicitation of pain is way easier to spot than the psychological or be held accountable for. Because you can just say, no, I didn't say that. You can gaslight them.

[B]

Oh, exactly. That is exactly how you do it. You'd be good at gaslighting.

[A]

You could be. You could be a closet gaslighter. I'm going to start a club, Gaslighters R Us. Michael, do you want me in my club?

[C]

I think I'm forced to be in your club.

[A]

Actually too nice of a guy to be a gaslighter.

[B]

Yeah, you, you actually do have to be. So when I look at the dark tetrad, these people are highly disordered and you know, psychologically. And what I find so interesting is we've known since 1941 that these people. Well, really 1938. So the first play, it was a. It was a British play, highly successful. So again, it shows you it struck a chord. And it was called Gaslight, 1938 in London. And it was the same thing that became the famous, famous movie that everybody knows about. Ingrid Bergman won the Academy Award for it in. In the 40s, big Hollywood movie called Gaslight. And it was taken from the play. But what people don't know is there was a book written by a psychiatrist in 1941. His last name was Cleckley, Hervey Cleckley. And his study was about psychopaths and what. How. And he called it this is the part I love. He called it the mask of sanity. And the thing that's so destructive about the dark tetrad is you can't identify them. And you just said the perfect way to describe it because they're another personality behind closed doors. Unless of course, they have recruited others to be mentally disordered like they are. So you will find abusers work in a little posse or team. So you'll have the coach, whose trainers and assistant coach are in on the abuse. And they, they don't care that the football player is like, you know, two weeks from dying by heat exhaustion, that they're just humiliating him in front of his peers. That can happen in a group.

[A]

How though I've had these conversations, I may or may not watch an unhealthy amount of crime documentaries. They're fascinating to me. I'm sorry, Bundy is to me. How does this happen? How is this person behind the eyes of this flesh suit walking around? And also how can I find other people like this? So I don't get wrapped up in that as well. When they, they seem to have some, not all in innate ability to find others that would be at least open to, let's say, their sadism. But it doesn't seem like they ever really have a conversation about it. They naturally have this gravitational force coming together. Why is that? Are they able to sense something in themselves that we aren't able to see because we don't have that proclivity?

[B]

Yes. So in general combination of how we're wired or how our brains are wired and how our society trains us, that's everything. Always. We are not trained by our society to identify these people. We who I bet you no one listening to this has ever heard of Cluckley's book. It was the best, most influential book, not best, but the most influential book ever written on psychopaths and how they operate. And the key thing to know is they put. They seem like the most wonderful colleague or leader or teacher or coach or partner, you know, spouse. They're just. Everybody loves them. They're the life of the party. They're charismatic, they're very, very intelligent. They are able to be sane in front of everyone. And then you close the door and you see the other side of them. The classic Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. And so this is what I really wanted to do a deep dive into because I was exposed to it and I was like, how did I find fall for this? How come I couldn't see it? And so there's a couple of Things going on. First of all, you have to be trained to see it. And you can put a psychopath across the table from a psychiatric expert. So the, the leading experts on, on them today is Paul Babiak and Robert Hare. And they'll tell you it takes about 20 minutes before they start doubting themselves,

[A]

25 minutes before the professional starts doubting themselves.

[B]

The professional in psychopathology starts to go, well, maybe I'm not seeing this right, maybe I'm not.

[A]

Their mask is that good.

[B]

They are that good. They are so manipulative. It's like a superpower in them. And we think that people who get gaslit are gullible. We think they're not educated. Absolutely not. That's why from my case studies, I chose the most untouchable people I could find that had indeed been brutally gaslit and almost destroyed by it, because I wanted to show, no, it's not that they have a vulnerability. They're not. There's not a weakness in them that led them down this path. Let's stop looking at them and wondering all these questions about the victim. Let's do what you're doing. Let's look at Bundy. What is it about him? And I think when we change our focus, we start to learn a lot more how to be safe.

[A]

Where do they learn to put such an effective mask on that it can fool professionals? Are they just out of the box, broken?

[B]

No. That's the sad part of it. So what's really sad about these people is there's. And I'm, I'm going to give you a big generalization as soon as you're ever doing neuroscience, anything, it's always complex. So, yes, there's genetic factors, absolutely. There are these complexities to it. But in general, the person who is walking around with a mask on, who likes to hurt other people, whose modus operandi is to lie and mislead and make other people feel crazy, that person almost always comes from abuse and neglect. So the abuse and neglect, what it does. And this is from the research of Simon Baron Cohen, who's a Cambridge expert in empathy. So he talks about how. And this gives you an idea of the complexity of the neuroscience. Again, our empathic regions in the brain. There's at least 10 parts of the brain that are involved in how it works. It's never just sort of one component. And the thing that's complicated about our empathy is there's two different circuits. So one is cognitive empathy and one is affective empathy. The people who are in the dark tetrad they oftentimes have eroded affective empathy. That means the empathy neural circuit that you just naturally have in your brain. You, you had a great upbringing. Not perfect, but you had parents who loved you.

[A]

You know, I might have a great mask. I might be a psychopath.

[B]

Could be. You could be.

[A]

You could be.

[B]

That's very true. But they usually come from a background of love and care and support and, and it builds their affective empathy that gives you the capacity to feel other people's pain. So it's really, it's kind of the key and it's. You could feel an animal's pain, no problem. It's just natural to you. It doesn't make you a good person. It just means that you have been blessed with this kind of healthy part of your brain. Now, the person who is in the dark, tetrad, they haven't grown up with that. And they've learned all kinds of strategies to survive. And the strategies to survive have them doing things like manipulating others, having a hidden personality behind closed doors, turning on the charm when they need to, letting it, you know, taking that mask off, which must be a relief when they don't have to put it on anymore. They have strong cognitive empathy so they can read you like a book. This is what I was talking about before. They're good at identifying your vulnerabilities. They know what makes you tick. They're usually very smart and they're very good at creating a model of exactly who you are after a number of visits. They're good at love bombing. They put another kind of mask they wear is the one that reflects you. And so you think that they care about you. You think that they're interested in you and that they.

[A]

The things you like. They like exactly. The things you enjoy doing. They enjoy doing. You're the closest friend that you've ever had. Yeah, no, I get it.

[B]

That's exactly what they do. And it's a traumatic shock when the mask comes off and you see that actually they've objectified you. So what I try to talk about to get people to understand this is, you know, they can read you like a book, but that's all you are to them. You're just an object. You know, you're a pawn on their chessboard. That's all.

[A]

Does anything mean anything to them or just them?

[B]

Just them. Just success. They love. They have a game. This is a quote, game like fascination with winning. They love to win. They'll do anything to win. But they, they. You know, you talk about this in the book you talk about the team player.

[A]

Yeah. Team guy versus a seal.

[B]

Exactly. So the person who. And we'll. We should do a deeper dive into this because it's very interesting. Their whole modus operandi revolves around the self, and it's really a brain malfunction in a whole bunch of ways. But they're not team players. They don't want the team to win. So this is a really.

[A]

Even though they would probably want to be on the team so they can fit in.

[B]

Oh, they want to be on the team because. And that's another thing that you talk about is you say you can't achieve these things without the team. The team is critical to success. You can't do it alone. So they need the team to be the pawns on the board so they can take the queen and win the game.

[A]

Yeah. But they're there for different reasons than everybody else on the team.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Damn.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. It's not team. So when a coach like this was, I mean, something I actually witnessed myself, my husband phoned me. Our son, our older son was. He was a very. He's very skilled athlete and he. Basketball was like his life and his dream and, you know, or one of them, you know, he loved the sport. He was brilliant at it. It's. He wanted to play college. Like, he. He just had joy when he played. It was like his happiest place. It's sort of like skydiving for you. The world stopped. He could just be in the moment, in the flow of playing the sport that he loved. And so, you know, it mattered to him. And my husband was, who was also an athlete and played very high level hockey as a kid and, you know, Farm, Ontario kind of hockey, which was very serious in Canada. So he phoned me and it sounded like a ghost. And he was at my son's tournament and he said to me, they don't want to win. And I could tell by the sound of his voice there was something very wrong, but I couldn't understand. He's like, they don't want to win. And I was like, what? What does that mean? And it just like the penny dropped for me. I'm like, if they don't want to win, what. What are they doing? Like, what do they want? And I now know from having studied this scenario for so long, they wanted to hurt those boys.

[A]

The coaches, you mean?

[B]

Yeah, they didn't want to win. They had. They had a pack of fabulous athletes. They could have easily won. In fact, that team beat the team that won the championship. When they allowed our son to play on the court, but they kept him off the court, he was perpetually benched, so he couldn't. He couldn't help the team win. It was like torture.

[A]

No, it was more about the position of power and control for the coaches than it was. And that's what I'm saying. You have to have. For people to really effectively publicly hurt others like that. They have to have this socially accepted place of perceived power, like a coach who has access, and you need to listen to what the coach says, and they're the gateway to fill in whatever the goal may be. Yeah, man.

[B]

And, you know, this is. This is. We talked about this with teachers back when we talked about bullied brain and we talked about coaches. And it's. It's a terrible thing that we do in the school system. It's kind of not on purpose, it's unwitting, but we. We train kids from a very early age to obey. They are trained to comply, to conform and obey. And the school system hammers it into them. It's not like you walk in the door in kindergarten and they say, you know what? There's an authority in this room that we refer to as a teacher. The teacher is a human being, and they can make mistakes and they can have flaws, they can have ignorance. They can have all kinds of things that could. Could be worrisome. And your job is to always ask good questions about their conduct. We don't tell kids that. We tell them to respect the teacher. We give the teacher the power and the coach as well, to tell kids their value. You know, that is so dangerous. I mean, think of the million times I've been a teacher for a long time. I've made mistakes all the time. I didn't know the potential of every kid, but I had to assign them a percentage, had to assign them a grade. It's one of the things I most hated about teaching and made me feel completely like I was just making it up on one level. Because how can you ever say what the value of someone is? You could write about it maybe. You know, you could talk. You could talk about they can run this fast or they can shoot this many hoops, or they can write a paragraph that looks like this, but you can't really say what their value is or what their potential is, ever.

[A]

Is that really the job of a teacher, though? I mean, I would think, sure, you're going to have tests that you will give, and you can score them against an average of their peers, but leave it at that. Like this is where you rack and stack and these particular criteria. It's not for me to assign any judgment or assessment of what your potential is. But hey, this here's your strengths and weaknesses. You keep failing calculus, but you're crushing English.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Maybe just use that as a self guiding or correcting feedback on your journey.

[B]

That's exactly how it should be. But that's not how it is. You take a look at a report card and it's telling you about your child's character. It's like, no, you're not.

[A]

What kind of report cards are you guys using in Canada? Because mine were pretty simple. I think it had six classes and it usually had something about a D or lower on there on each one of those classes for me.

[B]

And, and do you think that was an accurate representation of your potential?

[A]

Oh, I didn't look at the report card as my potential. I looked at it as my attendance in class.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

Which was subpar.

[B]

Yeah, but I mean you don't. I mean it's just indicative of. School is designed for what I call herd learners. If you're a herd learner, you do very well in whatever the school system is at the time. Sometimes it's very focused on are you an auditory learner and can you recite poetry? Yeah, by memory. Oh, that's how we're going to. Just like back when I was a kid, it was all about your handwriting. You know, if you could write nicely, if you could write nicely like girls do, you were just a star. And especially math. Math and nice handwriting. You know, if you were a boy. This is your gross generalization again. But you didn't have that kind of tidy little girl handwriting. You were considered, you know, doomed. Like, you know, there's, there's a lot of things in education we could switch up and do better.

[A]

I always just viewed education as, it's the results of how you are, how you are either receiving, retaining or your ability to utilize the knowledge in very narrow bandwidths and categories. And that's kind of it. I mean it could be a trend indicator perhaps on future potential in certain areas, but certainly not a character judgment. Yeah, I hope nobody's looking at that. I trying to remember report cards from when I was in school. And again, I don't think it had anything on there about my character other than my complete and other just dismissal of wanting to be at school.

[B]

Maybe that's, that was like, I mean, but did they write and say, you know, clearly, you know, Andy is rebelling against an oppressive system. He Finds it boring. School is boring.

[A]

Oh no, the report card just said class grade.

[B]

Oh, you didn't have a comment about, you know, Andy needs to talk more in class and oh, I definitely wasn't

[A]

going to get that one, by the way. But that would have been probably talk less. But if he was in class he should talk less. No, it was classic great attendance. That's it.

[B]

Yeah. In Canada, for some reason we think we need to really comment in bigger, bigger or more elaborate ways. And it's so stressful for teachers. It's, it's hard to do and it's, it's so inaccurate that you don't want to do it. Many of us. And yet it's a required thing.

[A]

Michael, you are the closest one to somebody who has gone to school. Did your report card have any character notes on it or was it class attendance and grade?

[C]

I think it was mostly grades. Honestly I don't really remember. But I was also such a goody two shoes that if, if there was any.

[A]

You were the kind of person that would tell on others, weren't you?

[C]

No, I wouldn't tell on others. But certainly you were a snitch.

[A]

You were 100% a snitch.

[C]

I wasn't.

[A]

Snitches get stitches, Michael.

[C]

Yeah, no, I, I mean there were times like parent teacher conferences where like a few things would come, we would have those.

[A]

That's where some more I would say that would be more in depth where you would sit down and I actually just really disliked that time period because they would explain to my parents how little I came to class because I was spending my time at home lying to them about how the school's attendance program was broken more than anything where I would try to answer the phone call that came usually around 5pm and be like, oh, my parents aren't home right now. Click. Because they would call if you missed class. Then When I turned 18, my parents signed a piece of paper which gave me the authority to write my own get outta school notes. I don't know how to this day I successfully talked them into that.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

It was one of my better moments. But other than the parent teacher conferences, I think the report cards were very cut and dry absent. And I'm actually almost certain that they were devoid of anything other than just the class name and the grade.

[B]

Well, report cards in Canada are the most stressful time for teachers because you're still teaching but you have to write about the students in such a way like you write about their projects and what they did and what worked and what didn't and how they could definitely strengthen in this area and that they're just advancing in this area. It's just really. It's hard. And you know, you've got 20 kids, 30 kids. So with every single class and you. It matters. You know, families read it, the parents read it, the kid reads it. And it. You don't want it to be wrong or. Yeah, I mean.

[A]

Did you ever skip school, Michael? Did you ever cut class?

[C]

I did actually, but not very.

[A]

I feel like it was accidental.

[C]

It was on purpose, but it was probably like less than five times in your entire.

[A]

What? That would be a good day for me at high school.

[C]

Yeah. No, I. I always went to class.

[B]

I always went to class too. I got in trouble for other things, but I was a pretty big attender of class.

[A]

Yeah, I didn't like it.

[C]

I got in trouble for minor disruptions, but I always.

[A]

Like what? Telling on other students incessantly?

[C]

No, I was just, you know, dicking off in class, basically.

[A]

I don't. There's no way. If I were to imagine you, you were in a three piece suit, front, front seat every class, several notebooks out, spiralized binder and writing down and then direct eye contact with the teacher. Right. Eye contact.

[C]

You give me a lot more credit than I am.

[A]

You were the one who said you were getting two shoes.

[C]

I was. As far as like, I don't know, I guess drugs and alcohol and stuff. But yeah, I didn't really care about my grades. Even though I did get A's and B's. But I didn't really care.

[A]

Not a big deal. 4.0. Didn't care at all. He's gaslighting us.

[B]

Yeah, he sure is. He sure is. That's why it's important, this conversation. Oh boy.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's real dangerous to tell young. To tell human beings what they can and cannot do. Especially that early from a position of perceived or real authority.

[B]

It's completely deadly. It's one of the most dangerous things you can do and we don't treat it that way. I've been. I'm always trying to think of how do you explain why gaslighting is so terrible? And one of my. I'll try out my, my thought on it with you. I think that what it does or what it can do to some people is it takes away your self belief and your self belief. I mean if we look at our kids, self belief is the fundamental level. It's. I mean this is documented in science. It's what you need to build your talent. So if you tell. If you erode someone's self belief and you think of the, the people that end up in the dark triad, they're perpetually, you know, abused and neglected and emotionally abused and put down and all these things. Their self belief is so compromised that they, they conjure up this kind of split self that, that really is just a torment on many levels to them as well. So if you, if you erode someone's self belief, they don't put in the hard work. They don't put in the deliberate practice of constant repetition. That, that hard work that's necessary to build your talent, to grow your talent. All of us can do it. We all have talent in different areas of our lives, but we all have it. And when someone takes it away, that's really the tragedy of gaslighting.

[A]

Yeah, I think it would expand on, depend on where and when you were exposed to it. We were talking about briefly before we started. I didn't know what the term meant until I'll say a couple years ago. I had heard it but didn't really pay attention to it. And I'll speak broadly about the situation just because it'll save me the ability to speak specifically about it if I need to in other settings. But a business relationship that went awry and I had a few conversations that were incredibly perplexing to me and left me with questioning my own reality, which I guess could be the sense of belief. It wasn't a belief in myself. I just was almost. I was just questioning my memory. Did I remember this properly? Did this happen? And then that led to other conversations with other people? Or you say you were there for this, right? Am I crazy or is this what this person said and did and they can confirm that. Then you go find somebody else. And conversations relatively start the same. Hey, I gotta ask you something. Am I crazy or is this what was said? So there is that questioning. It wasn't of like of me or what I was capable of, but it was of my ability to remember things as if they happened. Then I was. I forget where I was specifically, but I remember somebody was talking about gaslighting it and essentially described it as accusing somebody of doing something that you are actually doing and trying to flip the reality on them. And I'm like, got it. I understand exactly what's happening now. I had one more conversation with the person after that which was the shortest of the conversations that we had because I understood what they were trying to do. And instead of internalizing and trying to grab on what they were saying. I just left it out there and I wouldn't engage with it. And it unwound them. Not as like an explosion, but I got something else I have to do. And that was the end of it. That was the last in person conversation that we had. But the recognition of it and then realizing that it's almost like a game of ping pong, you got to hit it back at them and if you don't, they lose their shit.

[B]

Yeah. You know, one of the things they say that is interesting to me and I, I didn't put it in the book, but I've just kind of learned it through a personal experience with a colleague is you can identify a narcissist really quickly. Or the dark tetrad, we might even say.

[A]

Yeah. So again, that's malicious personality traits. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism. I didn't. This same individual, incredible covert narcissist. Didn't know what that was either until much further down the road. Talking with other people, specifically a friend of mine who had a mother that was a covert narcissist. And listening to him explain the stories in the interactions. It was as if this person was in the room for the vast majority of the conversations. It was wild.

[B]

So define for everyone covert narcissist. If they don't know what it is,

[A]

I think you might be better off doing that than me since you have a little bit of a background in this.

[B]

Well, I would just say it's another good example of the masking that they're very.

[A]

It's a narcissist, but they're really, really, really, really, really, really, really hard to figure out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because they have honed their craft to a degree where you do not catch it.

[B]

Yeah. You know, in fact, that's. That can be a good measuring stick. Is when someone is just a little bit too good. You should start to feel a little bit of sort of gut instinct. Doubt. It's like.

[A]

But that's the number one thing they're trying to get you not to feel.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Very, very difficult.

[B]

You know, I think a good example of that is Harvey Weinstein. So for people that don't remember Harvey Weinstein was the Hollywood producer who completely was like. It was a serial abuser of women.

[A]

The casting couch guy.

[B]

Casting couch guy.

[A]

Brutal.

[B]

Yeah. But what's really interesting about him going back to people that come from abuse and neglect. We can't say everyone, but it is a common background for these people. They. They Become caricatures of a human being. So with Harvey Weinstein, it's. It's a perfect example. You know, he'd put on the same towel, he'd be in the same hotel room, he'd say the same rehearsed lines. He would not be having authentic interactions with human beings. It would just be. I have to play out this scenario over and over and over again like a broken record. So we could take Dr. Larry Nassar, another example, the U.S. gymnastics. Gymnastics coach. Doctor. Yeah.

[A]

What's the dog? Athlete. A. Oh, God. I am going to actually recommend people if they are going to watch that strap in.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It is a dark, dark documentary about sustained abuse. And I don't know if I'd share that one with kids under the teenage years if you're gonna watch that one.

[B]

But in the teenage years, yes, because the more kids know about these individuals, the safer they're gonna be. Even though it's painful and horrible. And he's a really good example of gaslighting because he had so convinced everyone, including the mothers of these girls, that he was this fabulous doctor, that he was abusing the girls right in front of the mothers. And the mothers had no idea because. And this is an important brain thing, we have a very bad tendency as humans to look at the position and not look at the person. So we look at the. The position of Dr. Jekyll, Harvey Weinstein, the talented producer, who's just such a superstar, so powerful in the industry. Dr. Larry Nassar. Don' and question him. He's a leading medical. Very high level. He's the, the American gymnastics doctor. Who are you? To question him is the kind of thought process. So position, power, credibility and social standing. Like think of, you know, religious figures. They're. They're master abusers because they've got the big robe on that makes everyone think, oh, all I see is the position, you know, and really, it's just a classic sheep. Sheep in wolf's. No wolf and she's clothing. Yeah. So yeah. But Harvey Weinstein, what was interesting is to go back to Covert Narcissist. He made a big effort, which they do these individuals to be so good. So he's marching in the National Women's March. He's created a directing special program to. To really support women directors. Like, you look at the guy and you're like, he's the best guy out there. Meryl Streep is literally quoted as saying, harvey Weinstein is a God. And it's because you don't see what happens behind closed doors. And, you know, a kid growing up with a covert narcissist, oh, my God. They don't have a chance, let alone an adult in a business relationship. You're lucky you identified it before it did more harm.

[A]

You know, this person found somebody else that interested them more than what a relationship with me was able to provide. That's where the cracks in the seams started to show up, or the seams in the cracks, whatever. One of those whatever words should come first. That was the opening to, whoa, what's going on? Who is the real person? Was any of this real? And a lot of questioning of oneself trying to figure out what was imagined, what was real in those conversations. Hey, I gotta ask you something. Am I crazy or did this actually happen?

[B]

It's good that you had people that you could go to to say, can I check with you? And, you know, in abuse culture, one of the things that's most important is, is witnesses. If you have people that observe the behavior or were on the receiving end of the behavior, you're almost guaranteed that you're dealing with an abuse culture. Now, the gaslighter is very quick to say, this is a witch hunt. If we've got a number of people, it's because they're all out to get me. But if you think about it, that's pretty unlikely. You know, if you've got a number of people that saw the behavior, are able to document the behavior, you are dealing with one of these very slippery characters. And this is why, you know, like, in my son's case, my older son, Montgomery, there were 14 kids that came forward that reported the abuse culture. And that's almost impossible to do, especially for teenagers, because these people were left in power over them. And so they were put into the position. They had to speak truth to power. And teachers, as we know, these. These were teachers, they had control, Control over their sports, control over their social standing in the school, control over their reputation, control over their character, you know, but it was mostly the athletic opportunities where they. They could just do whatever they wanted. The kids would lick their boots because they didn't want to lose their position. They didn't want to be put on the bench. They didn't want to miss the. The opportunity. And so it's. It's very rare when you get 14 kids saying, yeah, all this abuse is occurring in identical ways. When a bunch of them don't know each other word for word, it's like, yeah, they're documenting the same thing. You have a big problem.

[A]

Yeah, no, it was wild. That was. Maybe I've encountered other people like that in my life, but that one.

[B]

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[A]

put a pin in that one for sure. To try to learn my lesson. And it was interesting as well. The more questions that I had, the more anger came from that person at the questions. The more volume of data that I was able to bring, the poorer the response. And then it became an accusation of me going after them.

[B]

Of course. Okay, so let's just unpack that because you just said in those few sentences, so much valuable information for people. So the first thing that I tell people, if you're with someone like that, if you're dealing with the dark tetrad, you're dealing with a gaslighter. The first thing to do is stop questioning yourself.

[A]

Now, normally not easy to do.

[B]

It's not easy. I know it's not easy.

[A]

Especially if they isolate you.

[B]

You.

[A]

That was another interesting aspect. And I don't necessarily mean they put you on an island, even though I'm not sure there's some people out there that would do that. But social circle isolation lets you and I go do this or just, just a way to just constantly control.

[B]

And you think it's connection. So they use this. Of course they use this in domestic abuse. You think that the, the connection is being built because they're. They don't want your family interrupting. They don't want the. Your friends around. They want you all to themselves because they love you so much.

[A]

The love bombing is real too.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

It's so real. And how would you not fall for that?

[A]

Right?

[B]

You think you're building this incredible relationship, but really they're isolating you. And it's a good example of gaslighting. And you have to really hear that expression love bomb, that those two words shouldn't be together ever. But they are. They are when you're dealing with an abuser. So you said, okay, you had to stop looking within to get the answers. What have I Done wrong. Did I remember correctly? Am I crazy? Stop. The second you find yourself doing that literally in these situations, it. Self reflection's wonderful, for sure. Self accountability. We all need to do it. Not right now. This is one of the times where you let the cement wall go down and you start watching them very carefully. They do not like evidence. They like to make the. And you'll, you'll see this, this is used all the time by gaslighters that we see in public, like leaders in public positions. They will say, blah, blah, blah. And then there's no evidence. And it can even be reported. It's reported by the media. They, they said this, but there's no evidence. But they know well enough that people, many people will still swing to position and go. They couldn't be in a position of power, credibility and social standing and not be telling the truth. Therefore, I believe them. I believe in the bishop of the church, I believe in the priest, I believe in the political leader. And so first of all, so the cement wall goes down, you start to marshal evidence and you start to ask them questions. Now if you ask someone a question and they start getting emotional, that's a great distractor, right? Because all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. You know, you start to, like, be empathic.

[A]

But then also, why are you upset?

[B]

It should be, it should be. Why are you.

[A]

That's what I didn't understand. And so the breadcrumbs started lining up a little bit like, this is not a, an accusation. I'm just saying here's some demonstrable X, Y and Z. Why are you getting pissed at me for bringing that up? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not accusing you of X, Y and Z. I'm just saying X, Y and Z happened.

[B]

Exist. Yeah, they don't like that. They do not like facts, evidence, none of that. That makes them completely upset. And then when. So it's, it's really good for people to remember. This is from Dr. Jennifer Fraid. She's a, an expert in this, wrote the book on this, and she was talking about child abuse. So her book is called Blind to Betrayal. She wrote it with another psychologist, Patricia Burrell, and they're in Oregon. And so Jennifer Freight is just a master at this. And she was an abused kid. So when she ultimately got old enough to say, I'm being abused in this family, her parents flipped the script, just as you're describing. They created this thing where first it was denied. No, you Weren't. Don't be ridiculous.

[A]

They.

[B]

None of that happened. Then it was attack. I'm extremely emotional about what you're saying. Don't say it. Just what you experience. And then the third part's really interesting. So she calls it darvo. So D for deny, a for attack you. And then reverse victim and offender. So as you just said, all of a sudden, the person's trying to make this your problem. You're the problem.

[A]

Or they're literally saying that what they did is what you did, and they are just having a reaction to that.

[B]

Reverse victim and offender.

[A]

And if you grab onto that, you'll go insane because that's. You'll constantly be questioning your reality. That's why I said, when I finally understood and stopped engaging and I would just let it hang there.

[B]

They couldn't.

[A]

Nuclear explosion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not. Not as in an outburst. They had to physically leave. They no longer were interested in the engagement or conversation.

[B]

Well, and they're not interested because the only interest they had in the first place, which is so foreign to the healthy brain, the only interest they had was manipulation. As soon as they can't manipulate you when they can't be the puppet master, they. There's no interest. There's no engagement, because that's all they do. They manipulate. And so if they can't manipulate, they just need to find someone else. Has nothing to do with you. This is what I tell to abuse victims all the time. You know, they really want to take it on. I'm like, you're the most random thing in the room. They don't care. They had you locked into their sights for a little while. Now that you've left and you've walked away, you. You're. You're nobody. You're random. It has nothing to do with you. People say to me all the time in my work, I was bullied because. And the second they get to that, I don't let them finish the sentence. I'm like, you were bullied because you were dealing with the dark tetrad. You were bullied because you were dealing with a Machiavellian, a narcissist, a psychopath, and a. How do we say it? Sadist.

[A]

Sadist.

[B]

Sadist.

[A]

For my own edification, what exactly is Machiavellianism?

[B]

So interesting? So in the bullied brain, I looked at the different brain structures of these people. They behave in quite similar ways. But when you look from a brain science point of view on a brain scan, you see differences in their brains. And as Dr. Michael Merzenich says, who's just my absolute favorite person who supports neuroscientist, who supports me and my work and helps me all the time out of the goodness of his heart. He's American too, of course, he says, and it's a great thing to remember. Brain scans don't lie. So the brain scan can tell you a ton of stuff. I wish we could do them more often, but. So the Machiavellian brain is what they, what the psychology of it is. The kid has grown up in a house where the parents have really high expectations, but the kid doesn't have the, the brain or capacity to fulfill them. They just didn't get the. Whatever it is these high level parents expect from the kid. It's impossible. And because the kid can't fulfill the parental dream, they get very adept at kind of manipulating things so that they can fulfill it. So for example, they will steal other people's work in the workplace. They will take things, lay claim to them, put their name on it, present the presentation as if it's their own.

[A]

They do a lot of the throne. Yes, basically, yes.

[B]

They, they want to be, they don't want to be a loser and they feel they've internalized this parental. They've failed their parents, they feel like a loser. So they'll do everything in their power to be a winner. And if that means not telling the truth, so what? Right. And the narcissist is different. The narcissist is, is not kind of. The narcissist has this odd combination of self loathing that they got from the abuse and neglect. So a lot of self loathing. But the way they, they try to compensate is through self aggrandizement. So in a strange way, everything that they do in their haughty kind of, they, they put other people down, they hurt them, they humiliate them, they degrade them, cast them to the wolves, put them in jail, they do whatever to other people. It's all to shore up their own lacking sense of selfhood. So if you marry someone like that, your marriage partner, if they have these narcissistic. Narcissistic tendencies, what they, what they need you to do is mirror them as bigger and greater and stronger and more divine than they really are. And when you can't do that, maybe you're exhausted, maybe you're the one that needs emotional support, maybe you've had a suffering of some kind and they're suddenly not there for you, the carpet's pulled out from under you and you realize, oh my God, I never was a person for them, I just was the mirror. And now that I can't hold the mirror up, they're not interested.

[A]

I feel like for the narcissist, they live their life in small time capsules because they have to go from one of those situations to the next. And you have to almost to a degree rewrite your own story for that to work. So it's time capsule to time capsule to time capsule. What I wasn't aware of at the time with the experience I had was essentially something like that. Multi year chunks, but then lifting and shifting of geography as well too, which is a perfect opportunity to rewrite your narrative, Especially if the people that you are now interfacing with have no connection to the previous world that you came from. It's another very interesting mechanism for control.

[B]

Well, and it's exactly how abusers work when they get identified. And. And what fascinates me, one of my biggest puzzles was the institutional complicity with this. So you see this all the time in the Catholic church, for example, or other religions too. But the Catholic Church really has just done kind of spectacular job of this. It's. I don't like the expression. They do it with teachers as well, but it's called pass the trash. And I don't like the expression because it's dehumanizing. And even if you have been abused and neglected and you're an incredibly destructive person, you still shouldn't be dehumanized. But it is what they do. So when. So I was abused as a child. There were three teachers involved, and for 10 years they ran an outdoor education program and they abused. I don't even know the numbers. Just unbelievable numbers of kids, me being one of them. And so I ultimately, like, I put that away in a box for a good portion of my life. I was like, I just not opening that box. Don't care. It wasn't, you know, I wasn't an abuse victim. Like, it just was gone.

[A]

But you knew that box was there.

[B]

Not really.

[A]

You buried it that deep.

[B]

That deep. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say I knew it. It wasn't. And the funny thing is I was seeing psychologists and I would. There was something wrong with me and I was doing a lot of cutting and I had an eating disorder. But those were all my fault. I was doing a lot of looking inward like, oh, what? And never once with these psychology people or psychiatrist did I ever mention the abuse done to me.

[A]

Why do you think that is?

[B]

I think it's the fault of psychology and Psychiatry on one hand, not that I'm casting stones, but I think that psychology and psychiatry, certainly back in the day, when I was young and trying to get help from them, they were too focused on the family. So they were asking me all kinds of questions about my family. And Lord knows my family is hilariously dysfunctional like all families are. And we're also super close. My parents were fabulous and they made a thousand mistakes and whatever, but I wasn't abused in the family home. But they never once asked me questions about. Tell me more about school. What happened in school.

[A]

If they had, would you have led them towards that box you had buried?

[B]

I think so. So it goes back to what you were saying about I didn't know about gaslighting. And you know what the neuroscience says, and I think this is so interesting and good for all of us to know and learn. The neuroscience says if you don't have the language, you can't tell your brain what's going on. So when you didn't have the word gaslighting, it took you longer. Luckily you were able to figure it out. Lots of us don't until it's too late. You were able to figure out, this colleague is lying to my face, manipulating reality, trying to make me think I'm crazy. Maybe you didn't have the exact term, but you unpacked it and figured it out. That takes a huge amount of brain power and it's hard to do. But if I had had the word grooming when I was a 13 year old, I would have been able to say, go home to my mom and dad and say, my science teacher is grooming me. He just gave me an A and I'm a terrible science teacher student. And he put his arm around me and he told me that I can come and talk to him anytime I want. Do you think he's my friend or do you think I should be careful? My dad's a lawyer. My mother worked in politics. Like they would have unleashed an unholy hell. But of course I never told them. I never could tell myself, let alone them, because I had no vocabulary for abuse culture, none. You know, I've had to learn it myself. So it wasn't until my son was being humiliated. So he was in grade 10. When I was in grade 10, I started to be the target of these three teachers, outdoor education teachers. Unbelievable humiliation. And it's because I wouldn't have sex with them. But I wouldn't. I couldn't put it together because I had a grade 10 brain with no vocabulary. And no experience. I had no idea. I'd never even had a boyfriend. I was like, middle aged men want to have sex with me. I don't even know what sex is. And that's really confusing. Think this is pre Internet. We knew nothing back in the day. This is in the 1980s. So. So they, they humiliated me around the clock in front of my peers because I wouldn't engage other girls my age. 15 year olds, 16 year olds, they were. And yeah, you know, I've. It makes me feel incredibly sad because I feel like if I had half a brain, I would have. So they bullied me, which drove kids into their arms because no kid at 15 wants to be bullied, especially by a teacher. You don't want a teacher saying, you're frigid in front of your peers. You don't want a teacher going, she won't slow dance with me. And making a mockery of me because I was like, slow dance with you? What? You're a dad of three kids. Like, what is this? Like, I could not understand. I couldn't understand. And so my son started being the target of. Montgomery was the target of like just relentless humiliation. And this is a terrible story, terrible parenting story to tell. But when he first came to me at the start of grade 11 basketball, he said to me, I'm the target of relentless criticism. He did not have the vocabulary to say, I am being psychologically tortured day in, day out. I am being repeatedly assaulted. They are grabbing me and holding me in for more yelling in the face. They're calling us retards, pussies. I did not repeat any of that. He said to me, I'm the subject of relentless criticism. And I said, you're lucky. That's how you're going to get better. They want you to. They know how good you are. They say you're going to be sought after on college teams. Give it your all. Just, they're giving you attention because they see your potential. Terrible mother's response. And when I said to him, ultimately, when the whole thing blew up and I'd heard now from other kids describing what had been done to him, I, I said to him, I looked up at him, he's 6 4. And I was like, montgomery, why didn't you tell me? And he took me by the shoulders and he said, I did.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he said, I hate those guys. They're freaks. And I did not hear, I hate those guys and they're freaks. As I'm being psychologically tortured D and D out in the sport. I Love. They're destroying me.

[A]

Well, it falls back into this, what I'll call is a false narrative that to achieve greatness, it has to come through torture and suffering.

[B]

Yep, yep. On at the hands of others. You know, these people are doing it for a good reason. It was like, oh, anyways, you know, there's.

[A]

There is an appropriate way to motivate people without destroying who they are as a person. There's a way to make things difficult that has a net positive with zero destructive nature. And it's not holding a kid and yelling in their face. It's not demeaning their character. It's not the ruthless and endless criticism. I. I'm remarried now, so my wife, Leah. How would I describe her? Missing the parenting of three children. She's real lucky. We do the best that we can. There is no instruction manual. And I have no doubt that I missed some cues from my kids as well. And it's not because I wouldn't have instantaneously done something about it. Sometimes you're just not attenuated properly or in the moment where they're trying to share with you. You're not present enough. Good luck to all the parents out there.

[B]

I know. It's. Parenting is the hardest thing on the planet, and you make so many mistakes and you actually care. You know, like, you didn't care about school.

[A]

You know, that is a true statement.

[B]

It's like you really care about kids, though. You care about your kids. And messing up in that regard is so painful. But, you know, I mean, my kids are super forgiving, too. My husband. My husband does less bad parenting than I do, but I have failed. But I think we all learn together. It's like when you were able to go out to those people and say, okay, look, is this real or not? Did you see this or did you see that? It goes back to being a team player. We need each other, and the best way to create reality is as a team. That's where we can have each other's backs and. And learn new vocabulary and nerd. Learn to be better. Like, discover ways to. To, you know, how do we train people to the highest level without unleashing wiring that we had that told us that this is what we needed to do to raise them up. You know, this is a great neuroscience line for everybody listening to this.

[C]

We.

[B]

We've been told that seeing is believing, seeing is believing. We're told it over and over again. But the truth of it is from a neuroscience point of view, and this should, like, make everybody stop for A second believing is seen. So whatever you believe is what you see. So when my son came to me and said, I'm the subject of relentless criticism, I saw potential. I saw fabulous coaching. I saw coaches trying to take him to the next level, really showering him with attention because they knew he was so good. I saw what I believed, and that is a big mistake. You saw a business colleague that you thought was a good person that was, you know, really connected and you guys were going to do great things together. And it turned out that that was a false narrative. And, you know, I guess we got to let ourselves off the hook for false narratives because you almost can't avoid them, you know.

[A]

Well, I only control. Could control so much. It's interesting you bring up teamwork. Collaboration, I think is the narcissist's worst nightmare in postmortem afterwards. Because these conversations of, hey, am I crazy? Would lead to other conversations, sometimes around the same person. And what I realized is that in many ways that particular individual was exerting control by isolating people when they were having conversations, which reduced the number of opportunities for you to go out and collaboratively talk with somebody for your reality check. Because they could always just say, if it was just two people, they could just say, that's not what I said. And which leads you on this self leaking ice cream cone, never ending hamster wheel. Like, okay. And then you go talk to the person again. Hey, didn't you tell me that this. Yep. That's 100% what happened. You go back this person. Nope. That they're misremembering. Definitely not the way that. And so then you go back and at some point you just throw your hands up.

[B]

Yeah. You know, it's a good thing for people to know is one of the greatest techniques of these individuals is in abuse cultures that they create. They create these incredible abuse cultures around themselves. And everybody dances. Every. They're like jump. And everyone's like, how high? They. They are masters at it. And what they do is they have to split the crowd so they have the favorites who they're connected to and talk to and have those sidebar conversations and they meet eyes and whatever. They've got their favorites and they're treated in a particular way. They're given opportunities they don't deserve, so they're beholden to the person with power. So you've got the favorites and then you've got the targets.

[A]

So the tiered system. This is how my wife describes it.

[B]

That's exactly how it is. And so the Targets are all going, oh, I must. It must be me, because they treat these guys over here, like, really well. So I think I deserve this maltreatment, and I got to try harder. I'm going to try harder and really give it my best. I'm going to work double time. I'm going to overcome all my. My weaknesses and vulnerabilities and flaws. I'm going to work. I'm going to workout harder, everything. I'm going to be in the gym shooting hoops until I'm blue in the face, because that's how I'll move from this camp to this camp. But you never will, because these people are just as dispensable as these people, and they know it. The only reason they get these privileges, like, if we're using a sport analogy, playing time, position, not screamed at. They're not called, you know, whatever. They. They are isolated and coddled and protected, but it's only because of the person with power. And so the person with power, as soon as they're displeased, they get rid of them. So in the workplace, you can easily be the golden worker until you get fired. And you will be fired because they actually don't care at all about you. You're just. You're just so important to make these people believe they deserve maltreatment. And so you can, if you think geopolitically of all the ridiculous geopolitical things we're all faced with having to look at, you know, and it goes back to what you said about reversal, which I think is a really good example. You've got Putin. Putin tells the whole world, I have to go and take Ukraine. They will come running into my arms because I have to take them because Zelensky is a neo Nazi. And you're like, wait, what? He's not. He's like. He's a child of Holocaust survivors. What are you talking about? No, he's a neo Nazi. I'm going to be the savior. I'm going to go in, I'm going to liberate these Ukrainians. And I mean, it's completely false narrative. And yet he's publicly saying it to the world, and he marshals an army to do it, and he marshals other countries to support him. That's how much we are all susceptible to false narratives. You've got an enemy that the power broker, the person that runs the abuse culture has to have four things, and it's all hinged together with gaslighting, the. The manipulation. Only four things, and everybody can do A quick check mark in the workplace, in their personal relationships. Is this what you're dealing with? Because you just need to identify them. Do you have favoritism? Check. Do you have bullying targets that are maltreated? Check. Okay, you got those two. Do you have humiliation? Yep. And is everybody afraid? The favorites are afraid they're going to get booted so they'll do anything for the person with power. And the targets are afraid that it's more is going to be heaped on them and also that it's their fault.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And gaslighting is how you make it work. Oh, retaliation is the next one. If you dare to speak up, ask too many questions, you're going to suffer.

[A]

Excuse me.

[B]

Bless you. You're going to suffer retaliation. And so you're terrified.

[A]

The Ukraine one's interesting. I think some of those allies that he rallied could give a. About the narrative. They just have ideologies that align with that. They're anti Western ideologies, essentially.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The Chinas, North Korea's. So they could have said that they needed to invade Ukraine because. To build a candy factory. And there's a certain segment depending on the alignment. But yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it when you said we are in the gaslighting era. If we define it as somebody who is demonstrably saying something that is untrue for the purpose of manipulation. Why don't you just go ahead and turn on any TV channel?

[B]

Yeah, Yep. I know, it's. It's amazing. It's amazing.

[A]

I mean, if we live in a world where. And I'll use two examples of news, I'll use CNN and fox. I am aware there's MSNBC and Newsmax and all of those things. But I'm just one, that if you're team Blue, you would understand cnn. Team Red, you would understand Fox News. They can talk about the same subject in a manner depending on which outlet you go to. And it's. Again, I'm not. I'm just talking about the environment that we are in. I'm not judging either of those networks. But if you have the same subject that is talked about and portrayed in a manner that becomes. It's almost indistinguishable about what they are talking about, then we have a problem because I don't think we're in a place where either of them are telling the truth. So it falls into what you were saying. The, the willingness to put out information with the intent to manipulate. What I will say is this. I bet you there are people on both of those sides that probably recognize that they are changing the narrative to manipulate, but they will tell you with their last breath they're doing it for the right reasons, for good, to save whomever.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's an interesting dichotomy and an interesting pressure that's on them. And it, it's another good thing all of us can do in our own lives, whether it's with the media, which we can do, or in say, the workplace or personal relationship, is to say, what is the source? So who's got the power? First of all, is the person with power wanting to get the truth? Is. Is accuracy of the truth their goal or is viewership their goal? Soon as you've got that, you're like, okay, you gotta take it with a grain of salt. Because if viewership is driving it and making money, then you have to pay attention to, you know, gotta take it. Is this true?

[A]

Or both of those examples I used, and I would say every, every traditional media outlet, although, yes, they are putting out information. If you think for a second that it's not a click driven or a content driven or advertisement driven medium, we're not living in the same world. You can choose to believe that those aren't the case if you want to, but objectively that is the world that we're living in. And you'll be better served if you can at least start from that position.

[B]

And I think so as well. And I think that the gaslighting has really gotten accelerated in our time and it's moving very rapidly because of social media and the collapse. If we can say that of traditional media, not the traditional media ever was telling that truth or giving you reality. There was always a spin, always.

[A]

I think we did a better job of it earlier on and I have no reference on this, but people of my parents era would say the Walter Cronkites. If Walter Cronkite said it, it was true. Maybe that was a little bit too much faith and trust put into that individual. But I also feel like there was at least less of a heavy hand of manipulation involved.

[B]

I.

[A]

And that's never pure because they were selling soap on ad breaks as well too. Let's be very clear. And yeah, my doctor likes Marlboro reds. To me, those are still the most fantastic commercials. The doc in the white coat.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I grew up with it. Oh my God, your doctor would literally smoke a cigarette while he wrote your prescription. Yeah, yeah, well, and the Marlboro man, of course, that's all anyone wanted to be, was that guy. I mean, if cigarettes was the way to get there, who's not going to do it? Yeah.

[A]

And that was present even on the cleanest Walter Cronkite. Let's be clear, they're selling ad dollars.

[B]

Exactly. But I think what's happened now is it, it's, it's so much and it's so fast. So one of the things each one of us can do from the neuroscience is we can pay attention to source. So it's called. They call it either meta information or metacognition. You hear that interchangeably sometimes. But the neuroscientists are like, look, the research shows that if you take the time not to go for the clickbait, if you take the time not to have the emotional reaction or to get the confirmation you want. I want blue confirmation cuz I'm blue. I want red confirmation cuz I'm red. Cuz that makes it easier for me to navigate my ridiculously busy day where I've got way too much stress and pressure on me. And that just makes a lot of sense from the brain point of view. But if you really want the truth. So this could be politically or professionally or personally, you want the truth, you gotta go that extra mile. And it takes resources. So you don't want to do it. You want to just go with the, the faster, faster version of events because it takes less brain body resources. But you can't. And it's, it's. There are times when we need to slow down and when you really like you needed to figure out what's the deal with this person at work. And so you slowed down, it sounds like to me. Oh, and there's that. It's a classic Navy seal. What is it? Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

[A]

So therefore slow is fast.

[B]

Exactly. Which is a perfect, it's perfect though, right? So if you, if you go fast from the get go and you believe what's being said to you and you, it. Whether you know, regardless, if you believe what's being said to you and you have that emotional reaction and then you act on it, it's not good. That is not good. One of the things that the neuroscience shows too, that's really interesting is all it takes for us to believe things when we're using our fast, the fast brain. When we use our fast brain, we will believe anything, absolutely anything. And so they use the. The greatest example of this of course always is World War II and how Hitler and Mussolini and what was his name? Toko Hajoti in Japan. I can't remember his name Exactly. But the bottom line is they convinced whole populaces of untruths or falsehoods. Like everybody believed it, but. And all it takes for the brain to believe something is repetition. That's all it takes.

[A]

The belief systems that they were able to instill it weren't. It wasn't overnight, though.

[B]

It wasn't overnight, but it just took repetition. Nothing fancier than that. No evidence. So it's like you saying, okay, here are the facts. Here's the evidence that was not supplied. There was no evidence. There was lots of repetition. And the bigger the repetition of the falsehood, the more people believed it. And so what happens in the brain is the brain create. So imagine in the workplace, you hear, you start working, and someone will say to you, yeah, you know, watch out for so and so. You know, just. I wouldn't like. You're a young kid. I wouldn't like you to. Wouldn't want you to get into any of that stuff. Watch out for so and so and so. You're like, okay. And then you start to see so and so do some things, the way they talk to people, the way they yell. Maybe they punch someone in the face. Maybe they.

[A]

Jesus. What job are we talking about?

[B]

Holy cow. The tough job. I was trying to think of, like a really tough job.

[A]

What? What? Hold on. What tough job are you thinking in your mind? What office setting is this? What in the hell is going on in Canada?

[B]

Yeah. Now Canada is. It is out of control. Okay, so you're in a. You're in your job.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're told it's so and so.

[A]

Hopefully not getting punched in the face.

[B]

Well, okay. Well, okay, let's. Let's put it into my world where we had our teachers across the hall from the principal and the vice principal and the school counselor that was all about hugs and massages. Nobody said anything about that. Oh, yeah, nobody said anything about that. And it. It's still used today that same kind of garbage. It's really unbelievable. But so. Yeah. So you. You learn so and so. So what your brain does is it builds a representation of this so and so. It builds a. A simulacra of that's so and so and so. When you encounter him or her doing whatever it is that they do, giving massages or punching someone in the face in a particularly rough and tumble workplace, you just. Your brain goes. I've seen that before. I normalize it. In. In the science, they call it habituate. I habituate to that and we can habituate to Hitler. Or Mussolini. We can habituate to anything, no matter how heinous, how untrue, how destructive. I mean look at the places where you go and fight those people are habituated. This is normal, this is what life is like. And that the ideology is. It could be backed by zero. It's not even backed by religious texts. It's made up by the, the power

[A]

brokers that do it or they manipulate the religious texts to their own end state.

[B]

Yeah. Which is apparently not hard to do. We've seen ever since the, the, you know, arrival of the religious texts and whatever.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Only since the inception of religious texts has that been happening for people's personal gain.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In the modern era where information is just shotgunned out at a velocity that could, it's impossible to consume. How do you find the source? Yeah, that's a, it's the million dollar question. Where, because people ask me all the time, well where do I go for the truth? I don't have great answers. No, I mean the best answer that I can give one is one that requires time if they have it. And it is. I can't necessarily point you at the fountain of youth coming out of my coffee cup. The best thing I can say is you need to aggregate out your research and you're probably going to have to find an average of sources and the answer is going to be somewhere in there. You can't just have a torch that is your guiding light that you're only going to in one place. But that sucks. Most people don't have time to do that or a willingness or quite frankly an interest.

[B]

Yeah, you know, it's. Chris Hedges, I think put it the best way. The title of his book was the Empire of Illusion and the Decline of Literacy. And that's what I hear you describing. I think when people. And of course this is going to sound like it's so old fashioned and it is my world and it's how I process information. I pro. Process information through books. So I read, I read articles, I read books and I try to learn from that and I, I read multiple books on a single subject to try and get as you say, these different angles.

[A]

Because no one, if you give it to me from 3 degrees from the outside of that lens, what's. Yeah, it gives you at least the opportunity with one ray of light, you see. Well, only what's illuminated in that light. If you, if you can bump off 3 degrees, where's the overlap? Where's the shadow? If you can bump off even more, it starts to illuminate Even more. You are from a world of academia, though, where that's your jam.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Most people, to include myself, often are from a world of seeing something in a passing scroll with your thumb.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is largely, often, not always negative based.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, you know, not that you should be doing this, but I think a lot of people are checking the news when they're driving their car. It's a real tough place to go. Find the source.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

No, it's true. I think. I think we're gonna all have a different relationship with media as time unfolds. Like, I read a substack about gaslighting, so I try to choose stories from all the different news sources, but I. I find myself defaulting a bit to the Guardian only because it's. It's not owned by someone who makes money from it. It's. It's based on people donating or giving money to keep it up and running. So I sometimes think that might be the best. But people. Depends on.

[A]

The vast majority of donations comes from.

[B]

I know. And people will say, no, it's not. But my month.

[A]

Well, first off, find me one that's pure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, good luck with that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So again, that kind of goes back to the argument for aggregation of sources to find an average, which is going to require critical thinking on your part and understanding that, yes, people will manipulate information to an end state. Sometimes you agree with that end state and motivation, so you want to accept it, but sometimes you can't.

[B]

Yeah. Both my guys listen to podcasts all the time. Like, they're so. They. They listen to podcasts. They watch podcasts. They listen to a lot of music as well. And, you know, I think about music.

[A]

Slayer. Oh, Metallica. What are we talking?

[B]

We're talking. I don't remember.

[A]

Death metal.

[B]

No.

[A]

Are they in there shredding?

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

Unbelievable. Missed opportunity. No. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica Enter Sandman. What? Come on.

[B]

Okay. No, they for sure don't listen to Metallica.

[A]

I think it's probably like Yanni and Sade. What are we talking here?

[B]

I don't know. I can. I mean, because I'm put on the spot. It's caused extreme anxiety. You know how you can't remember anything when someone asks you a question? Like, if you asked me what I read yesterday, I'd be like, I have no idea. I can't remember. But, yeah, they both listen to lots of music. I think art music, nature conversations, podcasts, media in its own place.

[A]

You know, podcasts as. And this is. This obviously is somebody who creates this type of content. People bring with them their own internal bias and experience. They're. It's not. It's not as pure as. We're just people. Yeah, I have biases that I am aware of. I probably have biases that I'm not aware of. I try to do the. The utmost and best of my ability to explain to people when I'm talking about a personal experience. I had the limit of my knowledge, which is substantial, substantially limited. Things I have heard, things that I have seen. But I'm not perfect in that by any stretch. It's fascinating to me, too. A lot of people think because of my military background that I lean hard to the right. My politics are pretty purple. Today's episode is brought to you by Firecracker Farm. I couldn't be happier to be partnered with this brand. I do love the salt. I've talked about this quite a bit, but honestly, what I really like about this brand is Alex and specifically what Alex is doing with his family. This is a small family business, if you're looking for, I was gonna say an organization or a company. I mean, it is, in fact, both of those things, but what this really is is a family that is out there doing this together, and I absolutely love that. Their website is Firecracker Farm. I'm looking at it right now. If you visually consume your podcast, you are looking at their website with me. The spicy symphony, the three Kings Hot salt. You can start right there. It's a combination of ghost pepper, reaper pepper, and scorpion pepper. Again, there's extracts, there is the salt, and these come in these amazing dispensers right here. This is perfect. This is the heat scale. Pineapple Express, my favorite. Right there dead center in the middle. I'm what my wife would call a heat baby, and I guess I can accept that. I don't like it incredibly hot like this. Normalized violence, but the lemon drop, perhaps not quite hot enough for me. The cool thing is, like I said, they show up in these amazing dispensers. Push button, but they come with a bunch of refills as well right here at the bottom of the website. Again, this is what I love about Firecracker Farm. This is Alex and his family. Head over to the website. You can go and check out their story, the science behind it, the recipes, or just click on the shop tab and everything that they have is going to be right there for you to check out. It's on fruit. I've had it on oyster, I've had it on protein. Whatever you want to have, however you eat your food, I guarantee you that this is going to bring out the best flavor that you've ever had. Firecracker Farm. Go check them out. I'm in between on both. It really depends on the issue.

[B]

You know, I think that is a goal that all of us right now, in this particular moment, should strive for. It's. There's a French philosopher named Jacques Derrida, and he talks about how our brains are kind of really geared for binary opposites, but that's not where you find the truth. You're never going to find it there. You're always going to find it in. A colleague of mine calls it the messy middle and the purple messy middle, where everybody has a point of view, everyone has an emotion fuel in what they're saying. Everyone's afraid on one level, and that distorts all of us. People are in a stress state. They might be in fight mode or flight mode. I mean, there's so much going on. And if we just try to do that empathic listening to both sides and. And take, you know, what works and what doesn't, and. And it's going to be better than a hard line. This is always right and this is always wrong. And, you know, a really great experiment for this. And it goes back to that idea, the neuroscience idea of believing is seen. You are going to see what your brain is wired to see, which is going to instantly make you think that this group is an enemy or that group's an enemy. And once you start on that platform, you're never going to get to some kind of useful, productive, empathic, caring place. You're just not. And a really good experiment, probably people know this one is the gorilla one. Do you know the gorilla experiment in psychology?

[A]

No.

[B]

Oh, okay. It's cool. They. They had these people that they were, you know, signed them, got them all organized, and they said, look, we want you to watch this screen. And people are passing back and forth. There's the black team and the white team, and they're passing back and forth. Balls. You have to. Rolling them on the field.

[A]

And it's. Isn't it a gorilla on, like a unicycle or something like that? It's a guy in a gorilla suit.

[B]

It's a guy in a gorilla suit.

[A]

Like, he's dancing around. Have you seen this one, Michael?

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

He runs through doing his job.

[B]

Thank you, Michael, for finally doing something.

[A]

See, she understands the homework. Michael. You're not even talking into your microphone. Nobody's going to hear you defending yourself, wants to. I do know what you're talking about. Yeah.

[B]

So what I love about it.

[A]

So transfixed on following the assignment that they don't see, they will be asked. Yeah, Selective attention test.

[B]

Yeah,

[A]

yeah. Go skip to the middle if you. Yeah, somewhere in the middle where the person makes the appearance, if you will. Michael, What people? The vast majority of people. So they are asked about. It's how many times the ball is passed. Correct. They're counting it. For the people who are audio only. Go back a little bit, Michael. So just hit pause. There are. Of course, you're hiding. There you go.

[B]

Hit pause.

[A]

There are three people in white T shirts, three people in black T shirts. They're in a. It looks like there are an elevator bank where there are three elevators. Just to give some people some relative scale. They are inside of the boundaries of the space of three elevators that are side by side by side. They're passing basketballs back and forth. And at the end of this, the first time they show it, you are. You are explicitly told, go to the very first slide. Now, Michael, the very beginning. I just want to see the instructions to make sure I'm not. Okay, go forward. Count how many times the players wearing white pass the basketball. So you are transfixed.

[B]

You're transfixed.

[A]

You're watching it. You're watching. You're watching it. And then at the end, what they say is, go to the end, Michael, just again. So I can demonstrably. Okay, so go back, Go back. How many passes? They oftentimes are able to tell you that this is where they get people. It says, did you see the gorilla? And people will argue until they're blue in the face that they don't know what you're talking about.

[B]

There was no gorilla.

[A]

And then you have it. Play it again and you say, don't worry about the number of passes. Just watch the video. And a gorilla comes out and it blows people's minds.

[B]

Well, and what's so for me. And this is not what the psychologists say, but it's what I say when I see that. I think about Stanley Milgram's experiment at Yale where he. It was the. It became his book, the Perils of Obedience. And it's the instructions that get me. If the instructions were, do your own thing, we're going to show you a video. You know, imagine you're.

[A]

Watch the video. In the end, we're going to ask you what you think.

[B]

Yeah. We'll ask you what was your experience

[A]

of that you would catch the gorilla

[B]

every time you wouldn't miss the gorilla. But because the command. And this is going back to. We've been talking about command and control. How certain people, the command and control, to them leaders is the most important thing. That's all they care about. And they work to consolidate power. And oftentimes they've got issues around why that is. But if you don't give a command, you get a very different outcome. You get people having to think about their own agency, their own observation, their own self trust, their own self belief. You get, and you get diverse perspectives. Some people will notice all the people in the black T shirts and they'll be like, I saw these two guys in black T shirts. They weren't very good at passing. Someone else will be like, did you see that all the girls were wearing white? That made me think about how come the girls are in white. You know, everyone will have this diverse point of view and. But when we get commanded to do things, we do as we're told and it's all of us. Like, they had. They were randomly bringing people off the street saying, you know, they use prestige. So they're like, oh, this is a Yale experiment. Would you like to participate? We'll give you 20 bucks. Everybody was like, well, yes, sir. And these were just regular people. I call them the Average Joe's off the street. The average Joe's get into the. They put, they have a booth and they're sitting outside the booth. There's a glass wall and there's a person hooked up to electrodes. And the instructions are from this, this guy in a white lab coat. Now he's just a random guy, but because he has a white lab coat on instantly we think position. This is a Yale researcher. Power, prestige, social credibility. Who am I to doubt this guy or to question him? I'm just going to do as I'm told. I've been taught since kindergarten and had the lesson reinforced until I was 18 to do as I'm told. And that one person in authority will tell me instructions how to think, what to feel, what to do. That's the teacher. So this guy takes a teacher lab point of view and he basically every. Most people know this experiment, but he, he says if the person gets it wrong, you have to give them a little electrical shock. And they've got a dial in front of them that shows if you go to this part on the dial, you could hurt the person. If you go all the way on the dialogue, you could kill the person. And I. The statistics on it are unbelievable. It's something like 68%. They take it to the place where the person is suffering agony. And there's some that take it right to. They're willing to kill this random person with electrodes, with electrical. And it was actually Stanley Milgram, who plays the patient.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And there, of course, there's not any real electricity going. But he was a great actor and as well as being a researcher, he, he portrayed agony, writhing and screaming and falling to the ground. And the person just kept saying, you have to do this. You have to do this is for research. You have to do this. And all of the people, yes, sir, no, sir.

[A]

All because it comes from a position of authority.

[B]

Yeah, command. And so, you know, it's not good for kids, that's for sure. We wonder why there's so much child abuse. Well, maybe it's because we set kids up, hand them over to abusive individuals who are very. They're not a majority by any stretch of the imagination. But all you, all it takes is one or two, or in my case, three, in my son's case, two. You know, and they, they normalize it because they don't call each other out on the destructive behavior. And you're like, if one teacher was hurting me but the other teacher's not saying something, then obviously it's okay. It's, I've got the problem. And any little thing that someone does to habituate, our brains fall for it every time.

[A]

It's a tough one too. You're saying, you know, at kindergarten, these long conversations that we could have with kids, I don't know if they have the processing ability to understand it at kindergarten.

[B]

No, they don't. You'd have to start small. Start small and build up.

[A]

That's the thing, is this isn't a one time PowerPoint slide that you put up and say, hey, watch out for predators. We're good here. No, this is reinforced over time and changing as their understanding and their vocabulary and vernacular increases. Because if you don't, you are setting them up. They may not understand what you're trying to warn them against, but I tell you what, they're susceptible to grooming and exposure to those behaviors at that age, even though they probably wouldn't be able

[B]

to articulate it well, as you said in Drown Proof, which really startled me because I'd never thought of it that way. You said, when you give your kid a phone, you're giving the world access to your kid.

[A]

It's almost never phrased in that way. It's, I want to, I need to give my Kid access to the world, which is true. I don't know about your kids. My kids came to me and it was all through the lens of my entire social circle is on this. How am I supposed to. And of course as a parent, you don't want to alienate your child

[B]

and

[A]

do what you want to when your kids say this. I'm just saying that this is probably a very common thing in the digital world that we live in. My parent, you know, my kids came and they said, well, I want to go hang out with so and so. And it got to a point where, well, I, I want to be able to communicate with so and so. And this is how my friends are all doing this. I'm the only friend or person in my social circle that doesn't have this. This is just how we communicate. It's okay because you do want to have, you don't want your child to be an outlier. So you think that you are giving them access to the world, but what you're really doing, even though you are giving them access to the world, you are giving the entire world access to them as well. And if that doesn't scare the crap out of you. Yeah, it is. I have just had too many conversations now with people who specialize in anti human trafficking and the digital nature and the way that predators will find a way, they will find a way to get to their victims full stop. That is just what it comes down to.

[B]

I know, it's, it's really disturbing. And you know, again, going back to, we talked a while back about the lack of regulation. It's like, why, why does the Internet have no rules? I'm sorry. They're allowed to do the most unbelievable things that nobody else ever is allowed to do. It's like because they're the tech bros, they're allowed to do whatever they want with very little lawmaker control on them. I mean, as soon as you found out that Serious depression spiked 83% with Facebook, Facebook should have been shut down massively.

[A]

Didn't they just get hit with a multi hundred million dollar judgment which I'm sure will be appealed and who knows, that'll probably be adjudicated until the people who need the money or were suffering from that and the money was going to be awarded to far, far later in their life or until they can find a way to just grind it into dust.

[B]

Yeah, but I mean, that's 40 years later after the fact that they got that information. It's like, you know, and it goes back to people punching someone at work, what I wanted to say when we

[A]

were still waiting to hear the job in your mind.

[B]

Okay, let me explain why I said that, because really we, we think that it. So if these teachers that I had in high school had punched me in the face, it would have been a lot better than what they did to me. Because what they did was they absolutely hijacked my brain.

[A]

Yeah, they.

[B]

They wrecked my brain on a whole bunch of different levels. And the constant refrain to me as a kid was how stupid I was that I was. It was a constant mockery about my stupidity. And, you know, it's still hard for me to shake. That doesn't matter what I do. Like, so if I go into an interview situation, I'm riddled with anxiety. I have it about that I'm stupid. I mean, I would never say those words to myself because I also know that doesn't make sense. My track record shows. And this is actually another great gasoline gaslighting thing that happens. As soon as you are the person who reports abuse culture, your track record disappears. You know, it's like, it's like it didn't exist. You are suddenly the problem. So you saying to your colleague this, it's a smaller version, but same thing. You basically identified abuse culture. You identified that they were abusing you and you called them on it, and all of a sudden you just didn't exist. Your track record, who you are, what you offer, what you bring to the table, none of it mattered. It was all gone. That happens to people in the workplace all the time. If you are the whistleblower figure who goes to Boeing and says, you know what? The safety measures aren't safe. The engineers are having to work too fast, too long, too hard without the right resources. I'm concerned about that plane bang. You're out on, on the street and

[A]

then you kill yourself by shooting yourself in the back of the head and

[B]

the plane goes down.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's not like any heads really rolled for that. Right. It's like, I don't know, there's something. I think our laws need to catch up better and be more informed by the brain science. So punching. My point being punching someone in the face, that's a six week, four week, six week recovery. Doing what was done psychologically is a really hard recovery. And we're not told we have a brain injury. We're not told that on a brain scan, it can be seen that our brain actually has physical damage to it. From the way we were maltreated, no one touched our body. But our Laws still treat any. Our laws are still geared to be the more active and physical, the more serious. And that's not the world we live in anymore. So our laws don't work for. For the Gaslit era.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I feel like if Elon Musk and the team of people he has working for him can catch rockets that have gone into space, I feel like that we can at least do far better with what is happening on the Internet. Now. Having said that, I am not an expert into the safety protocols that do exist, but again, I have had, I'll use one that I had recently, a company called Roblox, that from an outside, non legal expert, non tech expert perspective, listening to the company in their own words, in press releases and in videos, is pretty damn aware that there is a problem. Are they acting as if they're doing something? Hard to say. But at what point does the money that you're making on that platform stop you from turning it off? Until you can put the proper protocols in place to protect people, then turn it back on. If we can catch rockets that have been into space and reuse them, I think we can solve the Internet stuff.

[B]

I think we could solve a ton of things, but that's not where. I mean, it's really interesting. It's. I see it as a left brain, right brain crisis, basically. So the left brain is. And this is all the work of psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist. Brilliant guy. And he has an enormous book that documents the brain science on this as well as he draws on poetry and philosophy and art. But it's the brain science I'm talking about right now. He says that our brains, and most people don't know this. I certainly didn't until I did a deep dive into his work.

[A]

Work.

[B]

Our brains are divided. So we have the left side of the brain, we have the right side of the brain, and they're different. And the great goal in life, and if we could teach our kids this, it would be great. The great goal in life for all of us is to have the two hemispheres talking to each other and caring about each other. But what's happened is, McGilchrist argues we've shifted left and the left side of the brain is the opportunist. I thought about this a lot when I was reading your book because you talk a lot about zeroing in on something and then pulling back. So when, when you're skydiving, you're in the right side of the brain.

[A]

It's the most glorious paying attention anymore, to be honest.

[B]

That's Right. Because you're in the right side of the brain. It's where you feel connected to something universal, something bigger than life itself. Your ego is gone. Your everything is gone. You are just in this glorious experience, and that is the right side of the brain.

[A]

You've never been skydiving, have you?

[B]

Never. And I never.

[A]

I wish it was as poetic as you just described.

[B]

I would never. I couldn't be paid to do that.

[A]

It sounds like a hairdryer. And things start off small and they get bigger. That's about what it is.

[B]

Well. Well, I mean, I would. You almost get convinced reading this. I also read James Hatch's book, which also makes you think you really should skydive one time. But I'm like, no, I'm too. I'm, like, pathetically scared. But the left side of the brain is where Elon Musk is. Sorry, Elon, I'm just going to say something. And it. I'm just. I'm not diagnosing. I'm just merely saying, from what I see of how you're conducting yourself, this might have happened to you. The left side of the brain, and it's where billionaires reside. It's. It's the opportunist. I call it the opportunist. The right side of the brain is the altruist. You're not going to survive if you're in one side or the other. You can't be the altruist all the time because you're going to miss opportunity. Then you can't survive. You can't put food on the table. You can't keep yourself safe. I mean, come on, we have to be in the opportunist side of the brain. It's not good or bad. It's just that you don't want one side in. In balance with the other or controlling the other, which is what has happened in our era, I think. So. The left side of the brain is very narrow, focused, and it's all about gas, grasping, getting, and feeding. And it's never enough if you get

[A]

locked in the dark. It's not the Dark Tribe. What's the. The dark what?

[B]

Dark. Tetrad.

[A]

Is that where a lot of those people are living?

[B]

That's where they are.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

They don't have altruism because they don't have empathy.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because they don't feel empathy. And, I mean, Elon Musk is the first one to say empathy is a weakness.

[A]

Well, do you think he actually believes that?

[B]

I do. I think his brain got wired that way. Not Any fault of his own, though.

[A]

I mean, he is very much as a parent.

[B]

He does what? Psychopaths are well known for having many, many, many children that they have no relationship with or very little relationship with, because you can't be pulling rockets out of the sky and spending time with your kids, especially when you've got 11 or 12.

[A]

Why do kids. Why do kids. Why do psychopaths want to have so many kids?

[B]

That's interesting because it's this repetition of themselves. It's more mirrors. It's. All these women can mirror you, all these children can mirror you. And you have a lot of.

[A]

It's like creating your own audience.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, they. They, you know, think of the bully that the. The kid bully, all the way up to the adult bully. It's all about the audience.

[A]

Right?

[B]

They need people.

[A]

Elon Musk stated in a February 2025 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That in quotes, the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. Must clarified that he believes in empathy generally, but argues that weaponized or excessive empathy, which he termed civilization suicidal empathy, is being exploited as a bug to threaten societal ability. So he tried to walk it back. High interest debt can be a real vibe killer. Credit cards, personal loans, and more can make you feel uncomfortable even in the sanctuary of your own home. Well, what if you knew that SoFi can help you leverage your home's equity to feel more at ease? If it's called a SOFI home equity loan, and it could consolidate your debt at a typically lower interest rate than existing debt with lower monthly payments and all while keeping your existing mortgage rate. View your [e-mail] payoffdebt today, mortgages originated by SoFi bank and a member FDSC and MLS number 696891. Terms acquisitions apply. Equal housing lender.

[B]

Do you know where he's getting that from?

[A]

No.

[B]

He's getting it from. I'm extremely sorry to report a Canadian professor. There is a Canadian professor named Gad Saad who says that empathy is a suicidal civilization.

[A]

Tweeting, reacting, whatever the term is. Yeah, he recently, Gad Said just came out with a book and Elon Musk retweeted it. Said must read. Yeah, he didn't do that for me.

[B]

No, he didn't do that for me either.

[A]

Thanks. But yeah, Elon.

[B]

Thanks, Elon.

[A]

I feel like I would have sold some more copies.

[B]

Me too. It worked for Gadsad, I'll tell you that.

[A]

Michael, how many followers does Elon have on X, but 7.8 billion let's take a guess. 700 billion.

[B]

Well, he is a genius.

[A]

Not having 700 million followers doesn't make you a genius.

[B]

No, but he is a genius. It's not his followers follow him because he's a genius.

[A]

What's your guess?

[B]

Oh, my guess? Oh gosh. I'm bad at these kinds of games. I would.

[A]

How else did you get better? I said 700 million.

[B]

700 million. Okay, I'll say 800 million.

[A]

Okay, fine.

[C]

Just a 240 million.

[A]

Well, we both say we both suck.

[B]

That's why he didn't Tweet our bucks.

[A]

240 million.

[B]

That's a lot.

[A]

I'm glad he did. Oh, Taylor Swift is probably not very active on X. Oh no, she wouldn't be if you want to have a massive number.

[B]

Instagram.

[A]

Yeah. What is Taylor Swift at on Instagram?

[C]

On. On X? It's 80.

[A]

80,000.

[B]

What does she have on Instagram?

[A]

Yeah, I'm going to guess close to a billion.

[B]

She pretty popular?

[C]

274 million.

[B]

So she and Elon are the same billion. She's not a genius though, but Elon Musk, why?

[A]

She's a lyrical genius.

[B]

She is a lyrical genius and a damn hard worker. She's so successful cuz she works so hard.

[A]

She wears good boots.

[B]

She wears good boots. Elon Musk, what's interesting to me so I was so distraught, mad really, about this empathy, civilization suicide thing. I was like, damn, what is Gad Saad talking about?

[A]

So where is he getting that from? Where's Gad said, where's he going with that?

[B]

I don't know where he's going with it, but where he gets it from is he uses. He's. He is a professor in Quebec of marketing and he gets this idea from. Is it entomology when you study insects? Entomology, etymology is the study of words, history of words. Entomology. He takes it from entomology. He talks about the bugs. There's one bug that will ferry in the water, another bug and the other bug knocks them off and wipes them out. That's probably not exactly accurate, but that's the gist of it. The gist of it is a messaging around, you know, we're so nice, we're so caring, we're bleeding heart liberals that we're just going to destroy the world. This, this care, this compassion, this, you know, whatever it is. I don't know how they position it exactly, but they say it's going to ruin civilization. Maybe Elon Musk thinks we can't advance technologically if we are all worried and coddling children and caring about mothers and all this wasted time and money.

[A]

And that's a, that's an extreme view on what empathy actually is. Where politically, Mr. Saad, is he left or right of center?

[B]

I don't really know. I just, I know that that's his.

[A]

I wonder if it's a weaponized talking point politically.

[B]

Well, it certainly is serving political beliefs, I would say. However, I, I was like, who is this Gad Sad? Why is he saying this? Why is this Canadian professor arguing that empathy is so terrible? This is not a good time in the world, I don't think, to be arguing without a lot of knowledge about empathy being, you know, a negative. And I looked him up and he's. He's a refugee from Lebanon. So as a child, he came to Canada and he would have come face to face with a ton of empathy. Empathy would have saved his life. And so I think it's really sad that he is trying to tell other people that it's a negative when in his life he went from refugee to Canadian professor. And that's because of Canada. That's because Canada opened its doors, it cared about these refugees. It tried to do something that was going to help this young, gifted child and his family settle. I mean, it's a very Canadian thing, you know, like, you know, when 9, 11 happened, all of the planes went to Newfoundland and Canada went, whoa, Empathy city. Let's open our hearts and our homes and get care for these people. There was never any question of anything other than that, like, empathy is a superpower for humanity. It's. It's built into our brains for a reason. And when our empathy is eroded, and this is what I wish Gad Sad and Elon Musk talked about, when your empathy is eroded, you can do extreme cruelty to people and to animals. That's why we don't want empathy eroded. Affective empathy can lead to the kinds of things that you've witnessed, most of us never have, but you seen firsthand that's eroded empathy. I don't know, was it, Was it civilization you were seeing that. Would you call that something that we should model ourselves on?

[A]

No, no, the model doesn't scale. It's. I think empathy is probably one of the most important character traits a human can have. Having said that, any trait can be weaponized and taken too far. You hear a lot. You hear another super common vernacular of the day, toxic masculinity. Well, yeah, masculinity taken too far can be toxic. So can femininity. So can empathy keep throwing them out there? Guess what? There's probably a normal ish in air quote range, but if you take anything to the extreme to include the water we're drinking in our cups, you can kill yourself.

[B]

Yeah, so it's the messy middle again. It's the purple, like, like, not the binary opposites. We've got to understand that there is a complexity to it. But that's not what I hear. Gad Sad saying publicly to millions of people listening. He's not giving you really great examples of that. He's. And also, why is he using, you know, the analogy of these insects to say, you know, we're all going to drown if we have too much empathy or empathy, when he could just be using a brain science? He says, it's a noble emotion. And I'm like, no, it's not. It's not an emotion at all. Empathy is not an emotion. It's a brain structure. It's a circuit in the brain. Talk accurately about it if you want to talk about it is my thing. Especially if you're a professor and you're standing there with your robes on, your academic, you know, position. It's like, come on, do your research. Don't talk like that.

[A]

I wonder. I wonder if Elon really believes that the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. What? I would love to ask him. What? Okay, using that as the premise. What does your perfect civilization look like?

[B]

Well, you know what? I think he might believe, and this is a massive guess, and very presumptuous of me to say this, but Elon Musk came from, from what I've read, a really, really disturbing amount of cruelty. His. The kids around him could not understand. He was a genius and they were cruel. His father probably outshone those kids in cruelty. And so Elon grew up with that belief system that happens to people. You know, this cruelty was the making of me. Look at me. I am remarkable. And maybe, and because he. He is believing what he sees, he believes that this kind of crucible of cruelty was what led to his greatness. And he believes that abuse is a necessary evil for greatness. People do come to believe that, and they especially do when they come from those kinds of extreme abuses. And, you know, I thought about this a lot reading James Hatch's book, because from what I can gather, and he's very. He's not. Doesn't supply detail.

[A]

I know him well.

[B]

Oh, okay. But I don't know if you would confirm this or say this, but it seems he came From a very. A childhood that was extremely painful.

[A]

I think he would agree.

[B]

Okay. So my theory was he's come from a. And I think this is important for veterans in general. I'd love to just put this out there to see what you think. Reading his book, I got this sense of, okay, so his childhood was really painful. He went into the military and was a superstar, and he loved it. It's where he found family. It's where he found love. And he was looking for that. And he found that in the military.

[A]

I'll add one thing to that. He found a place where he could step in between what he perceived to be abuse or the abuser and the abuse. E. I guess it would be the victim. And had some real interesting conversations with large cohorts of my friends post military that we didn't talk about while we were in. There are many. And I've said this on the show many times, and I'm going to keep saying it because I think it's important. There's so much focus on the trauma that you might be exposed to while you were in service. There's less focus on what you brought into it with you.

[B]

That's exactly what. Okay, so.

[A]

But think about that. If you were bullied.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And you, through whatever mental geometry, arrived at a place where you thought that that particular line of work where you got to go out and literally end those that were bullying other people, you're gonna want that job. You're gonna do anything you can to get that job. It doesn't surprise me. I'm not gonna say the vast majority, but a surprising. Anecdotally. Anecdotal. I have no data to support this. This is just me conversational with people that I know have the story of not the best upbringing, but that also. I mean, I won the genetic lottery with my parents. They were fantastic. That doesn't apply to me, but it applies to a lot of the people that I worked with. And I had no idea.

[B]

So here's what I think. They come from extreme trauma in their childhood. They go into the military and they find a remarkable experience of camaraderie and love and care and. And family and as you say.

[A]

And extreme trauma.

[B]

And extreme trauma. Okay. Like, I don't want to. I'm not.

[A]

We're gonna put a little bit more of that in your backpack.

[B]

And he also said. What does he call it? The offenders of decency. Is that who he likes?

[A]

Probably.

[B]

Yeah. He likes to take out the offenders of decency, which I relate to. And. But not. I'M not like you guys, but with that professional ability.

[A]

Not that attitude.

[B]

No, exactly. Yeah, but he. So he comes, he gets injured, so the injury stops.

[A]

Multiple times, by the way.

[B]

Multiple. Well, he didn't talk about the. He talked a little bit about the concussions, but he has the catastrophic. Like you did, a catastrophic injury. He can no longer be part of that family, have that love, take out the bad guys, all of the thing. And not to minimize the trauma, but he's not prepared for. And many veterans, of course, aren't prepared for the extreme trauma of coming out of that world back. And so I wonder, is it just that civilians are complacent and kind of pathetic? I can well imagine what that would. Superficial and daft and cruel for no reason and just, like, unbearable on many, many levels. I get that. But is it also that what really is happening is your brain is like, wait a second. You kind of promised me, like, you created this. You made this place for me, and now you're telling me it's gone and we gotta go back to that world where the trauma exists, where cruelty dominates. I mean, someone like Elon Musk doesn't ever want to go back there. So he's created this world around himself, and rightly so, because he's. He worked hard for it. Plus, he's just a remarkably gifted individual, but he believes that it created him. And that's where I think the. That's where I think the flaw is. So his empathy is broken up, whereas James Hatch's empathy is intact. And his journey when he comes back is to take the empathy and the love and the camaraderie and build it into his civilian life. And I feel like if veterans were taught that they. That model actually can move into the civilian world, even though they didn't experience it as a child. No one's ever helped them understand. You escape that world, it's like you escape prison, you get locked up, and you do remarkable things to escape prison, and then you have to go back into it, but you don't know that that's actually the injury that you're navigating.

[A]

I don't have a good answer for if. Whether or not, obviously, everybody's on their own journey. I'm sure there are. You could put them into cohorts of people that would have a very similar experience to that, a divergent experience to that. It's a little bit. I think it's a little bit deeper than the subconscious as well, because there's ties to lost purpose, lost meaning, tugging at your ego. Relevancy, the acceptance that, you know, you're probably not physically able to, you know, there's, I mean, there's compounding issues and factors with that. And quite frankly, and I can only speak about the time that I was in and they were making strides. I believe in the correct direction of integrating family, but counseling at a much deeper level. If you bring a lot in and you stuff even more into your backpack, in addition to the things that you talked about, maybe the subconscious worry of, I don't want to go back to that, you still have this thousand pound weight that you're carrying around that you have to deal with or it will rear its head up and deal with you. I saw a huge shift towards mental health and the focus on that and just the understanding of the burden, the mental and physiological and psychological burden of that job and addressing that earlier as opposed to later. The military is not a fast moving machine by any stretch of the imagination. But I did see trends. It was going in the right direction. So I would say I can't answer for anybody but myself. I think for some people that that would be, that that would be true. And I think for other people, they could come from an amazing background with almost no trauma, but be exposed to things that could break them inside as well. Some beyond a degree with which they have the tools to fix, even with professional help. So, so I don't think there's actually absolutes when it comes to that, but it's certainly interesting to think about.

[B]

Well, one of the things that struck me was he was so hard on himself when he compared to other people. So his, you know, only my leg. But when he was dealing with other veterans or with Gabby Giffords who had suffered this other kind of injury that was, you know, that lost their legs or, and the kind of pain that they dealt with or had their faces extremely damaged. And he was sort of like, why, why am I suffering so much when I haven't had as big an injury as these individuals? And I kept wanting to ask the question. My guess would be Gabby Giffords grew up in a home where she was not told that she was a liability. You know, so he's carrying the liability thing and he's like, if I'm not being an asset at war, then I must be a liability. And it's back to this binary opposition piece. And that word really got me because. So with my son's situation, Montgomery, there was, there were girls that were also being, they reported being abused by the female coach who's a teacher and was also the athletic director. And she would tell this one girl who was probably arguably the best player on the team, she kept telling her that she was a liability. And so when I heard that, I was like, God, you know, these adults who tell kids their liabilities, that that's another kind of a psychological burden that you carry that you. You don't know is really an injury in your brain.

[A]

So that is a very common phrase in the teams. You're either an asset or a liability. And the training and the occupation truly does teach you to care about the people to the left and right of you to an equal level, if not sometimes more than yourself. That is very hard to put down when you leave that community. And also, just because you come from that world, that these are exceptionally normal people that are asked to do abnormal things. I think one of the most dangerous traps people can get into is this competitive suffering realm, which is what he is kind of describing. And, you know, why am I feeling this way? This person's injured way more than myself. How about you're each on your own individual journey, and the physical injury in and of itself, sure, I guess you could rate it on a medical chart that he has more entries here, or it involved more limbs, but that is only that one instant and moment in time. What about the remainder of his life or her life leading up to that point? Competitive suffering leads to nothing good at all. Yeah, I've participated in this game. It doesn't get you anywhere you need to be. It's. It's a loss for all parties involved.

[B]

Yeah. And. And it's the comparison piece all the way back to social media that we talked about at the beginning. That comparison piece is not good for kids, either that idea or adults, obviously. But, yeah, the hierarchy. I had never heard that expression, the hierarchy of suffering. But I. I did a presentation in Europe at one point, and a woman came up to me and said, my whole family was built on that. They were Holocaust survivors. And so nothing bad that happened to me was ever, you know, the camps.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not like it seemed ridiculous. Anything that. So I never learned to have any kind of relationship with my own emotional self or my own trauma or anything, because it was never good enough. Was never the top. Top level, you know, and you can. I can see that completely from both sides. I can see the parent being like, you know, you're worried about, you know, your boyfriend rejecting you. I'll tell you what to worry about, you know, Like, I can see that, and then I can.

[A]

Also real, though, is the problem.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And if you're if you're Jesus, if your standard for suffering is surviving the Holocaust, I mean, yeah, don't play competitive suffering. I, I know of no other way to say it than just don't play competitive. So especially if your standard is surviving the Holocaust, you look lose. That's it. Nothing is going to compare to that. And that doesn't mean that you aren't suffering. But if that's your metric and that's what you're using as your yardstick, you're setting yourself up for failure, for life.

[B]

Oh, exactly. Yeah.

[A]

So how do we survive in a gas lit world where, what did you call it? The gaslit, not society, era era, gaslit era, gaslit world. Where are you not seeing it? Let's go the easier direction. Because if I were to ask you where you are seeing it. We don't have enough time.

[B]

No, exactly. That's actually a really good way to think about it. I mean it, it's a hard question for me because for the last 12, 13 years I've been studying abuse culture. I've been trying to understand it. And you know, I think it goes. I think one of the key things to do is watch out for leadership that is, is falling prey to the susceptibility of our brains. That's. Sorry, that's an awkward sentence, but let me just explain it for a second. It's actually something that you speak about in your book really well, I think, because when you have an abuse culture, you end up with institutional complicity all too often. And that was the thing I couldn't figure out. Like, I understand the abuser. That makes sense to me. I understand the victim. That makes sense to me. I understand bystanders. Yep, that's very reasonable. What I cannot understand is why the leader wants to protect and harbor the abusive liar at the heart of the organization and boot to the side the whistleblower, the truth teller, the integrity person, the one who's worried about the organization. That person gets punished all the time. I was like, I couldn't. That didn't make sense to me. And when you study the brain, the read the neuroscience, it makes perfect sense. So all of us are susceptible to this, but especially the leader. We have what's called the remembering self and the experiencing self. This is Daniel Kahneman's. He's a neuroeconomist. It's his research. So the experiencing self is in the middle of the abuse culture. It's like the bad shit's going on, you know, Boeing's not safe or they're cutting the corners here, so and so, Maltreats, so and so. Like you're seeing it, you're experiencing it. You know, it's just wrong. And you gotta do something that's experiencing self. And the most aversive thing that you've been through, your brain is really good at avoiding that ever again. It doesn't want that. So it likes to focus on the, the positives. Any woman who's had, any woman who's gone through labor knows the story of this. You go through labor and it almost destroys you. And then you're like, I'm so, I'm gonna have another child. I'm gonna do that again.

[A]

It's like really amazing that that decision is ever made.

[B]

That's, it's all because of the brain. So what happens to leaders is they get laser focused on their remembering self and you kind of can't blame them. But you, you call it out in the book and I'll, I'll go to the page because I think it's really important. The remembering self is laser focused on you and it really doesn't care about the organization. You will say you care about the organization and you have to do what you have to do. You have to get rid of the whistleblower. You have to tell the shareholders this or that. You have to pay the CEO 200 million. And you have to do all these things to protect the organization, but it's really to protect yourself. And it's the remembering self, which is very vocal, is talking to you. And it says to you, look, all that really matters here is your story of integrity. All that matters is you are the hero of your, you're the decent hero of your own personal narrative. And all I want you to focus on is the future. Now, if you let this whistleblower keep talking like this and telling the truth, you're going to blow this whole spectacle up. Everyone's going to know that you made a mistake, you failed, Abuse happened on your watch, safety measures happen, environmental degradation happened. Do you really want that? And the remembering self is just like, really? Because it's your choice. Well, far too many leaders go, no, I don't want that. I will do everything in my power. I will lie if I have to. I will cast the whistleblower under the bus and everybody else in order to protect my own personal narrative where I'm the decent arrow. And you say the opposite. You say the only true leader is the person that has the capacity to look their own failure in the eye.

[A]

You have to.

[B]

You have to. But lots of leaders don't do that. And they are the institutional complicity people. So you just answered your own question.

[A]

Well, there's a difference between being a leader and being in a leadership role.

[B]

So the. So where do we find that there isn't gaslighting where we find true leaders. And it's painful. It's no fun to take accountability.

[A]

Like, oh no, it sucks.

[B]

It sucks. It's so painful. And I. My heart goes out to people that do it because it's so painful. But it really is the true leader. And there's lots of examples, lots of you would have had true leaders. You talk about horrendous leaders and how it's the team that carries them and makes them look good and they pat themselves on their back and they say,

[A]

you'd ever know from the outside one of the biggest myths of military leadership.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

You could line up a command of 500 people and you bring in outsiders and they would just say, this is an amazing group of people. Look at their accomplishments and internally, the divisiveness and the differences and where everybody knows who the strong leaders are and the weak ones. But there's always mission success. So they assume that they're all the same. But it's the exact opposite.

[B]

It happens in athletics too. They will be like, you know, there's no way so and so could be abusive because the team did so brilliantly. And it's like, that's because the athletes, as you phrase it, the. The team did it despite the abuse. Same thing with athletic teams. The team did it despite the abuse that was happening to them.

[A]

Yeah. In spite of, not because of.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What are you going to write about next?

[B]

So my next book, I'm.

[A]

Because we're almost out of the gas lit era. It's getting way better.

[B]

So you think.

[A]

No.

[B]

Oh, you try. You gave me a little bit of hope.

[A]

I'm not seeing it at all in politics or mainstream media. No, it's just fully going away.

[B]

Did you hear Mark Carney, Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at Davos?

[C]

No.

[B]

I think you would like that. He, he talks about truth telling, he talks about leadership, he talks about being pragmatic and principled and that they aren't two opposites. They, they go together. And yeah, it's tough, but it's the way, the only way forward. It's really a stunning speech. And you can see, you can tell he wrote it himself. It's not a spin doctor speech. It's really Mark Carney telling you. And he, I mean, he's as flawed as anyone else. He's not perfect. I'm not trying to put him up on a hero pedestal, but he's pretty damn close to being a hero. I think that you'd really like his speech.

[A]

I think politicians should have to write their own speeches.

[B]

I do, too.

[A]

I think it would be amazing.

[B]

I do, too. It would be a lot more interesting than what the. You know.

[A]

Well, I think you would see a better indication of who they are as opposed to a team of people who are probably out there researching talking points for audience reaction, rounding edges. Yeah. Having said that, it'd probably be very difficult if you were the president, to write your own speeches, because I know it would take time. I'm just saying I'd love to see it.

[B]

Yep. It's like leadership became reality tv. And, you know, that began with Reagan. Reagan was such a good TV star. He was so good on TV as a speaker, as a politician. Everybody, like, voted for what this great actor was doing, you know, and we are caught in that world between not being too, too sure about what's real and what's not. But I have two books. You tell me what you would rather read, what you think is the better book.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay. So one book is what would be fun, and I call it the Brain at Home. And it would be about how we could design the spaces that we live in to be more attuned to and caring for our diverse brains. There's no one size fits all. It's what you're saying about our journey and path have all of us, every single one of us, which I think is kind of miraculous. We have a unique brain. Our brain is so unique that when a neurosurgeon is going to operate on your brain, they have to spend 11, 12, 13 hours mapping your brain because it's not like any other brain they've ever seen. So we're born with a unique brain, and then it gets wired in all kinds of different ways, so it gets a double whammy of uniqueness. So there is no one size fits all. So I wouldn't write the book saying, oh, you have to design your house like this, But I would write the book going, okay, you need to do all these different exercises to get to know your brain really well. It's a good way to teach people brain science. And everyone's obsessed with house and space and architecture and interior design.

[A]

Lots of people care about also biohacking in the modern era. You're talking about of. You know, this isn't an aura ring that you could slide on your finger and get feedback. But you're, you're definitely going to be preaching to an audience that is interested in understanding the metrics of their body.

[B]

Yes. And metrics of their body in relationship to their brain. I don't know why nobody's paying attention to the brain here. Here. I'm going to give your whole audience a fabulous business idea that I have failed to get off the ground for myself. But, you know, you're very connected to the fitness world. I think what we really need to be doing is getting people to pay attention to the fact that. And I think lots of people do, but just make it more mainstream. Every, you know, half, half of the houses in the us, half the houses in Canada, the people have a wearable. So you have your wearable device. Everybody will talk to you about their 10,000 steps and they, you know, their sleep patterns were this and their blood pressure. Maybe if someone's got an advanced one. Is that what I want them to do? I met with a bunch of cardiologists in Canada and pitched them on this idea and they haven't called me back. But still, I think it's a great idea. We could get way better at understanding our environments. So not our own deliberate practice, but our environment because the, our health is relational, our relationships with each other are going to impact our health as much as our steps, our nutrition, our. All of those things that we put all so much time and energy and focus on. So what you do with your wearable is you really look at your heart in terms of when you met with your colleague who you're starting to get the feeling is manipulating you. What's your heart doing? Because your heart will tell you how your brain's been impacted. You can't, you can't get a quick, easy read on your brain. Obviously you need EEG or whatever, but your. What's happening with your heart will tell you what's going on in your brain.

[A]

I mean, from a heart rate perspective.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

By the last meeting it was very calm and slow, but what was it like beforehand?

[B]

Did you look?

[A]

I don't use a wearable because I'm an expert in how my body is working at all times.

[B]

Did you feel your heart rate rise?

[A]

So it was a while ago, so I can't see speak with a hundred percent certainty. Probably at times. For me, one of the triggers of getting emotionally involved is my face will start to feel a little bit flush. And that certainly happened when we were arguing about the legitimacy of what I'll call facts.

[B]

Oh, interesting. That's interesting. I. I used to get that a lot more when I was younger. I'd get like the red splotches on my neck. I could feel it.

[A]

And I feel heat. And for me that just means I know that I'm getting.

[B]

Your blood pressure is going up and your heart rate's going up too.

[A]

Probably, for sure, probably correlated to that. But for me, it's. It's that my emotions may be starting to interfere with or interact with my decision making process. And I've made enough mistakes in those moments, saying things I wish I hadn't said or doing things I wish I hadn't done. So I pay attention to that and I'll. I'll put it back in neutral or I'll downshift from whatever is going on. Yeah.

[C]

Which.

[A]

The person who is trying to egg on that argument or interaction, they don't enjoy.

[B]

No. Oh, God, no. And it goes back to the media. One of the things that we see a lot of in the media right now is they're trying to ramp people up. There's a lot of fear. You know, you should be afraid about everything. I mean, you can't open the newspaper without feeling a jolt of fear. Cortisol, adrenaline, none of that's good for you. It's not good for your heart.

[A]

That's accidental either.

[B]

No, of course not.

[A]

No negativity, bias.

[B]

No, it's true. So the wearable, though, will tell you. And just when I was in the middle of like trying to make this pitch, a woman sent me a screenshot. I was on a board that I resigned from because I was concerned about it. And she sent me a screenshot of her wearable. And it was saying like, alert, alert kind of thing. Your heart rate is shooting through the roof and you're not active. And she said that's what happened. When so and so in the meeting was yelling at me, I was like, damn. So I think we can all do better with that brain at home. That's one book. The other book I call the Liberated Brain. And the Liberated Brain is a bigger concept of ways we can free ourselves from the, you know, the, the chains that hold us back. We all have chains that hold us back. But it's also really centrally on the prison system for kids. I'd like to see kids not go into prison when they're young. I'd like them to be rehabilitated. I know, and I'm not trying to be a bleeding heart. Of course there's certain, certain people, certain youth who are so dangerous and their brains are so disordered, they. They're a hazard to others.

[A]

But many here. And you say everybody. No, obviously the circumstance. Yeah. I don't think anybody would advocate for kids going into prison. I think anybody, any reasonable person, would get behind just about anything possible to prevent that from happening. To include interrupting the behavior that would lead to somebody having that happen in their life.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. So I'm. That scientific what I think about, too. That's my more responsible book. I really should do that.

[A]

I'd go with the Liberated Brain. That's the one I would read first.

[B]

Would you? Okay, well, I can leave that one for later, but.

[A]

Well, the reason I wouldn't read the other one is because I don't have any say in the things that are in our house.

[B]

Well, that's toxic femininity at work right there.

[A]

No, that's called picking your arguments.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And throwing things away. Away when they're not paying attention.

[B]

Oh, that's very diabolical.

[A]

I admitted it to her. Then she trumped me. Michael, were you in the room for this?

[C]

I think I was, yeah.

[A]

She said, oh, I know that you've been throwing those things away. I don't say anything, or I go get them out of the garbage. I had nothing to say.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, I had nothing to say.

[B]

No. She was lowering her heart rate right then and being very careful.

[A]

It's as if the wind had just was taken out of my sails because I get dopamine from throwing away her stuff.

[B]

Yeah, I'm a big believer in throwing things away, too. My husband is much more likely to.

[A]

Glorious.

[B]

It is.

[A]

Simplify.

[B]

So that's what the brain at home is about, is certain brains do not like clutter. My brain, if there's clutter, it.

[A]

I don't think any brains like clutter.

[B]

Oh, they do.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yep, they do. They feel comforted by it.

[A]

Yeah, but you trip over stuff, you can't find anything.

[B]

I know, but they love their things.

[A]

Yeah, well, put your things in a goddamn plastic bin.

[B]

No, a cupboard, so no one has to see them. I would like to have a house full of cupboards so I didn't have to see anything. If it was put away, I'm fine with it. I just don't want to see it.

[A]

I would. Okay, okay. We're talking the same language here. I would. Yeah. And then better than that would be. Behind some of the cupboards was a garbage can.

[C]

That's.

[B]

That's pretty. Yeah.

[A]

My wife is traveling right now for the next few days. Guys, I'm hoping she doesn't check into the garbage can when she gets back because we get garbage out on Wednesday. She's back Monday night.

[B]

Well, it is. One of the classic gaslighting tricks is to change the arrangement of things.

[A]

I change the arrangement? Well, yeah, we just have.

[B]

But making something disappear is a little bit gaslighty.

[A]

She hasn't noticed it yet. Oh, and if she.

[B]

So you think she actually has noticed it?

[A]

I know that's true.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She hasn't said anything to me. And if she asked me, hey, did you throw this away? I would say yes.

[B]

Oh, you would?

[A]

Of course. Why lie about it?

[B]

Radical accountability. Is that what you guys call it? No, radical ownership.

[A]

Extreme ownership.

[B]

Extreme ownership.

[A]

That's Jocko. He said a 10. We need him at like a 6. He needs to take it easy.

[B]

Yeah, he puts everybody to shame.

[A]

Everything can be taken too far though, to include ownership, because if so, and this is an interesting one for leaders as well, because I use this example in the military. Extreme ownership. You are, you're in a leadership position. Everything that happens underneath you with your people is your responsibility and you're accountable for it. Really. Okay, let's say you're doing everything humanly possible. Do it through the lens of an alcohol related incident, which I don't know if you know this, young military men specifically, huge fans of getting these things. You have your safety muster on a Friday. You get the whole command in together. You get experts on addiction, on chemical and substance abuse, and they talk. And you have counselors there and just extolling the virtues of making responsible decisions. And a 21 year old goes out and gets hammered and drives. Ooh, is that really your fault?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At what level does the accountability need to go down to the individual? Because you can still do everything right. People still have agency. Now if you're not doing everything that you could have, that's a separate conversation. But you can also destroy yourself by thinking that everything to include every ounce of other people's behavior is your responsibility and accountability. It doesn't work like that.

[B]

And I also think you're not doing them a good service. Like if you look at your experience as a young person drinking and following along with the older heroic figures. What I loved in that story was the commander saying to you, if I told you to do that, would you follow me? And you said that was.

[A]

That was in my. That was the first question that was posed to me at the oral interview, which of course they position in a horseshoe shape with all these senior members of the command. You're applying to go to you. Sit down. I swear it wasn't an elementary chair that had a flip down little desk section and they're just peppering you. But that was the first question I got. And the first question was, wasn't actually that. It was tell us about what happened in Tucson, which I was honest about. And I had talked with the psychologist or the shrink, whichever, because you did the psych assessment first and talked with them. This was the next day. I told him what had happened, what I had learned from it. And then the command master chief said he was the one who posed that question. He said, yeah, okay, so now you come to the command, we're out. I'm getting out of control. I'm the same person that you described and all of those things. What do you do? And you know, I'd answer like, I don't care who you are. The right thing is the right thing and that's what I'm going to do. Never have been questioned on that since.

[B]

You see, that's the greatest lesson. And if he, if he had somehow or if the other guys had tried to take accountability for. Oh, we let him down the garden path. We did all. He was just a young guy, you know, it's on.

[A]

They were very happy that they weren't being asked those questions.

[B]

They threw you and the bus.

[A]

They were spot. No, they didn't throw me under the bus. I just managed to turn all the spotlights on me and everybody else said, we're going to go over here.

[B]

The thing is, though, you say that was the greatest lesson you could have ever learned, even though it hurt, it was painful. And I mean, lessons are painful when you, when you do that. But what a great guy.

[A]

I still have the scar from the razor wire going over the fence on my hand.

[B]

I like the police note being like, we love that when you did that. When they were like, see what that guy just did?

[A]

Since the book came out, one of the bouncers emailed me, oh, wow. He said, hey, I've been listening to your show for years. Did this happen at this bar? Which I'll leave the name of the bar out of it during this year. And I wrote back, I said, yeah, that was me. He goes, you mean to tell me I've been listening to the same dipshit that we were involved in this incident with for years?

[C]

Oh, God.

[A]

And I said, yep, nice to meet you. Glad to hear things have been going well. And we had a little email exchange we went back for. So, yeah, it's. I couldn't believe that email. Of course I'm going to open it. I arrested you in Arizona immediately. Click. And I went back and forth. There was a couple emails we exchanged back and forth. But yeah, I had to put that in there. I mean, it just.

[B]

It's a great lesson. I mean, it's a really painful.

[A]

But I'm glad I learned it when I was young because I know people who are at the tail end of their life who have never had that shift in how they think of themselves and they are the victim of the world around them.

[B]

Well, it's that horrible. I mean, the entire conversation we've had has been about, do you follow the leader? Following the leader is a very dangerous thing to do. And if you don't ever have that, like, one of the things I talk about is line in the sand. And you kind of. If you don't have bad things happen to you or hard things or painful things, you don't ever really know about that line in the sand. But while I, as a kid, I. I couldn't save myself. I could not be the adult. I couldn't be a teacher, and I couldn't be a mother in particular who would let that happen to kids. That was my line in the sand. And it was a very, very painful one. I mean, talk about taking a hit for the team. But I just. That's kind of where selfhood is. That's where self belief is. That's where reconstructing selfhood that's been taken away by abusive individuals when you were young starts to build back up and. Yeah, yeah, Line in the sand.

[A]

What. All that. You said you had questions about the book. What other questions did you have?

[B]

Oh, I wanted to just. I. They weren't questions. They were more things I wanted to just.

[A]

Oh, dear.

[B]

Talk about. No, no, there were things I wanted to talk about because it was good.

[A]

She has notes, Michael. She has notes I write about.

[C]

I don't know where this is prepared.

[B]

Okay, well, this one goes back to what we were talking about. The idea that, you know, for the poor leader, they're obsessed with the remembering self. They listen to the remembering self. They cancel out the experience itself so they can remain the hero of their own story. And you reverse that and you say that basically what you have to do is you have to be the author of your life and you have to. It's. Whether it's drawing the line in the sand, whether it's not following the leader, no matter how prestigious and powerful and heroic they are, at a certain point, there has to Be a place of selfhood where you make the decision based on is this the right thing to do? Or like, am I going to be a puppet and this is the puppet master? Or do I have selfhood? Am I the author of my own life and do I write it this way?

[A]

Because it's about agency. Yeah. And I think I specifically say this in there. You have no control over what happens to you in your life, but you have total and complete control over how you react to it. And that is something that you should never surrender to anybody. And that is essentially what I did in Tucson.

[B]

Yeah. And I mean you, as you write here, you said it truly changed who I am. And so I'm, I'm always struggling with how do we define leadership, especially during a gaslit era, how do we define it? And I wrote down based on your. What I learned from you. Leadership is being able to refuse your leader's command. Self leadership has to come first or you can never be a true leader. Yeah, you have to.

[A]

You can't follow. Blimey.

[B]

And you know what's interesting with people in the dark tetrad people who are, you know, the Machiavellians and the narcissists and the psychopaths, they never have any accountability. They are never to be held accountable for anything. It's always someone else's fault.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They always project and reverse perpetual victim. And that's, that's one of the really good ways to identify them actually is that they cannot take responsibility for anything. They never fail, they never make mistakes. You said here that we talked about this already. SOF leadership model can mask poor leaders.

[A]

Oh God, yes.

[B]

So that's the mask of sanity.

[A]

Right?

[B]

The poor leader. Like what I love to use are medical and neuroscientific terms. So I get people to step away from the good, bad or the ethics and just go, is that person disordered? If they are, then they really shouldn't be in charge of people who are risking their lives.

[A]

Just say they're disordered. It's just people go into things with different motivations and some people are more into it for themselves. They lack certain leadership characteristics and other people have to, to pick up the slack for them. So. And those things, I guess could be considered some sense of being disordered.

[B]

Though from a brain science point of view, they would use words like dysfunctional, disordered. They have a disorder, they have eroded empathy. Then they would talk about like actual brain architecture. You know, they've got a small, a shriveled hippocampus.

[A]

We've just called them ship eggs.

[B]

You could call them shipbags. But the neuroscience does give you pretty good vocabulary for it. And then this was the final thing I loved, was the idea that someone else can hijack your brain. Hijack your mind, I think, is how you put it. And I think hijack is a really good way to describe what happens to you when you're being gaslit. Someone else has gone into your neural circuitry and they've got it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they. They are making you do things and say things and feel things that are incredibly detrimental to you and to others around you. And. And that kind of mind control is exactly what gaslighting is. They try to take you over, and then your whole thing is. And you can resist.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, selfhood is about resisting, and a lot of people aren't taught to do that. We don't teach them how to resist.

[A]

Did you enjoy the book?

[B]

I loved it.

[A]

Sweet.

[B]

I really loved it, and I learned a lot. It's like, you know, there's. I mean, as you can see, it's absolutely full of notes, and I only write notes in things that are valuable to me, so. And it's just full of notes. I mean, I could have talked about a lot of it, but I.

[A]

We're here to talk about your book. You just happen to have it on the table.

[B]

I know. No, I brought. Oh, and I wanted you to sign it, too.

[A]

Of course.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Where can people find your book? We've been at it for almost three hours, too.

[B]

Oh, my gracious. The Gaslit Brain. You can buy it on Amazon, which I know is the Evil Empire for many people. Is it, though?

[A]

Because it also empowers a lot of authors as well.

[B]

It does, and that's why I'm going to say you can buy.

[A]

It's a necessary evil.

[B]

It's a necessity. Necessary Evil. You can buy my book anywhere. But if you buy it on Amazon and you write a review, and if you write a review for Andy's book, it shifts the algorithm. It's the most important thing for us authors is it just needs to be a sentence. I found this book really boring. Fair enough. I had one guy who wrote.

[A]

Well, if you found that the book is called Extreme Ownership.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

It's like three star and below it's Extreme Ownership by Leif Babin and Jock Willing. If it's. If you got something good to say, it's Drown Proof by Andy.

[B]

Yep, exactly. Exactly. This one guy wrote that. He said the Gaslit Brain. So first he goes through all the things he Learned from it. And I was like, damn, this is perfect. He took everything out of it that really was important. Wow, that's great. And then his final paragraph is kind of along the lines of, you know, this woman is a terrible writer. He's like, I don't mean to be mean, but I get. Her sentences are bad, and she does all this repetition and she makes it emotional. And. Yeah, you know, I'm just. I'm sorry to say that about the book. And I was like, oh. Because it's written that way on purpose. It's a neuroscience experiment because the brain learns by repetition at timed intervals. You said it yourself today. If you don't get the repetition and if you don't get the emotion and it isn't told to you in a narrative form, that's why this works. You don't retain the lessons. I could read these eight lessons on how to drown proof and walk away and not really retain them, but because you told it to me in a story and it was very emotional, I don't forget any of that. And then you also reinforce, Reinforce. So the repetition in this is meant for you never to forget these lessons. Because if you are face to face with a gaslighter, it's dangerous.

[A]

Have you ever gone on to Goodreads?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That is a cesspool of angry book reviewers.

[B]

Is it? Oh, God. I know. I'm. I'm not a great technology person, so I go in there and I get lost.

[A]

Michael.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Go to Goodreads.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Goodreads.com. pull up drown proof.

[B]

Oh, no. Did they say something awful about it?

[A]

Oh, I love it. There's a one. There's one. One star review. And I'm going to read a portion of this because I love it. I don't know what type of person takes the time to write something like this. It is amazing.

[B]

I know.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[B]

I know. Are you gonna read it to us?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah, Michael.

[B]

Gonna read it?

[A]

No.

[B]

Oh, you're gonna read it. Okay.

[A]

Stumpf is a man who wants to have it both ways. He disparages and rolls his eyes at Navy SEAL books and yet has written one himself. He sneers at those who utilize their trident as nothing more than another line on their resume. Resume or make it their entire identity. But surely he has to know he got as far as he did in pod his podcasting career in parentheses, and got as many sponsors as he did because of that trident. There is a blog post, mini chapter included in this book about the difference between SEAL guys, guys who see their Service as a tool for their future. Something that will open doors that they are likely have no business stepping through instead of as a tool for others and team guys. First off, there's no Seals guys in team guys. It's the difference between seals and team guys guys. So team guys are guys who do not care about job titles, gear, weapons, uniforms, or any of the other countless shiny objects that can distract them. Those are exactly the words I used. Have you seen his podcast studio? It is garish, gross interior with unsheathed knives, a bunch of guns, the black rifle coffee logo plastered on wooden paddles, and photos of himself and his callings doing le Epic stuff. What is le Epic stuff? Together. By his own definition, he is not a team guy. I have no idea who the audience is supposed to be for this book. I don't think Stumpf knew either. He is all over the place. There is no flow or structure to this book. Some people have the ability to take a bunch of disparate pieces and string them together to form a cohesive story. Josh Johnson is a comedy master at this. But this is a skill Stump does not possess. When he isn't talking about his time in the seals or going through his buds as a student and then as an instructor, he spouts out general advice about controlling one's emotions and getting through the worst of it. Breaking whatever it in parentheses is down in chunks of time to your next meal, to the next 10 minutes, to the next step of the process.

[B]

Well, he learned something.

[A]

Scroll down, Michael. Look how far this continues.

[B]

Oh my Lord. Oh my God. Oh my God.

[A]

Okay, I've read better. This is the last. Let me see. All in all, this book is mid. Oh, this might have been my middle son that wrote this. Some of the advice is fine, but Stump focuses on the individualistic, individualistic changes as a person's need to make without ever considering the systematic issues that are in play. He insists over and over we are ultimately responsible for ourselves. For ourselves. Why you wrote that twice I don't know. Which I agree with by and large. And that we have greater control than we think we do, which I want to push back on. He fails to consider life in whatever form it may take, will fuck people over. Oh, last sentence. I hope you kept the receipt when you purchased this. Maybe the return window is still open. I love it.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

I love it. Do you know, can you fathom a healthy, well functioning, well adapted, enriched life person taking the time to write that?

[B]

No, no, no, I cannot, Michael.

[A]

You're welcome. Also, if I catch you Writing a review like that again, it's going to be your ass.

[C]

Just wait.

[B]

I. One lady wrote, she gave me a one star on Bullied Brain. And she, she said this book arrived in the mail and she took a photograph of it. I was like, wow, she's dedicated. She took a photograph of it. She goes, this book arrived in the mail and it was banged up and kind of the COVID was wrapped.

[A]

How could you do that, Jennifer? Because you obviously, personally, I think she

[B]

thinks I'm in the Amazon factory and didn't do a good job.

[A]

It was like, wow, that's good reads for you right there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Stand by.

[B]

Yeah, no, I, I mean, people, the reviewers always love to do stuff like that. Like when I did the Bullied Brain, I read through the comments because I wanted to engage with people and some of the comments were hilarious.

[A]

By the by, probably were bullies finding the comment section, which is ironic.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Well, they were actually really good. Like one guy said something along the lines of, you know, I don't know why she wants to rehabilitate people. I'd like to see, you know, that guy doing all that bullying and abusing at the, at the end of a 9 millimeter. I was like, yeah, fair enough. I, I agree, but we should do the brain rehabilitation, you know. So I tried to engage and write with people and be like, I know what you're saying and I agree, but blah, blah. But one guy wrote, oh, you know, as if he was trying to protect you or she was trying to protect you. And it was like, oh, Andy, you know, you should do better research. You can't have her on. She's a snake oils. Snake oil salesman. Well, I haven't been called that before. That's a new one. I've been called too militaristic. A one woman wrecking ball and a pit bull that won't let its jaws go or teeth go of abuse. It's like, yeah, yep, yep, fair enough. I can wear it. But snake oil salesman, I'm like. I was like, yeah. No.

[A]

So I found that today and this morning. I don't know what the person that wrote that if they thought that was going to change or alter who I am as a person, because it doesn't. At the end of the day, I feel bad for whatever is going on in that person's life because I can tell you right now, I am not the source of the pain that they are feeling. If they, at the end of that, if they in any way, shape or form were able to put down an ounce of that through. Through the lens of just trashing me. I'm okay with that. Because you actually read the book. I bet you they did an AI summary of the book and pulled. Which I'm fine with that as well too. I am not everyone's cup of tea. I say some dumb shit. I have beliefs that people may not agree with. Yes, I redesigned the studio, and it doesn't suit everybody, but I hate to tell you, this is based off of the John Wick sommelier room, not a Navy SEAL armory. So sorry. It's. I. I hope that whatever is going on gets better. And if you don't like the book, return it. I don't care. I did the best I could using the writing structure that I know how to use. And I don't expect it to be perfect for everybody. No.

[B]

And it never is going to be. The storyteller, the person that writes the book, the. The person that does the play or puts on a musical thing or composes or draws something or, you know, it's. The second you put something creative out there, especially if you put yourself into it, you are free game for all the people that are going to review you based on whatever they have.

[A]

Oh, and I'm here for it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What I'd love to see. Let's play a game show where I get a couple days to review your life, do a little research. I know. Would you enjoy the same level of scrutiny back at you?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But here's the reality. I wouldn't actually do that. Because like I asked you, I have never seen or met someone who's healthy, who's happy, who's successful, who is thriving, who is well adjusted that does stuff like that.

[B]

Well, the other key question always to ask for these things is what's the name? Did they put their name?

[A]

Yes, they have 25 other reviews.

[B]

Oh, interesting.

[A]

Whether it's their real name or not. No idea.

[B]

Yeah, because I think that's one of the problems with the Internet that's been. One of the worst things that's ever happened, is that people can create identity and they have anonymity. It's a disaster. I think that if you want to publicly speak, you need to attach your name. And, you know, in abuse culture, they. They use that mask all the time. No comment. Oh, I can't comment. I need to protect the. The confidentiality of the. It's like. No, you don't. You could speak to this. You could. You could explain why you made the decision you did. You're a public regulator. You're the Head of an organization. You're a director. Like, speak up. If you can't speak up, then say,

[A]

I can't speak up, because there's no reason for cowardly. Anonymity is for one reason and one reason only. To hide.

[B]

Exactly. It's like, yeah, so what? What other.

[A]

And here's the thing.

[B]

What else?

[A]

Did they reveal my name on it? Oh, I didn't. I didn't go into it. I honestly. I just read through. I was. I was on a. Yeah. I looked at some of it, and again, you have this tug of wanting to get emotionally attached to it, but I just put it down at that point.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Could care less.

[B]

Oh, yeah. No, you. You open yourself up to attack. For sure. One of the things I learned when I wrote the Bullied Brain, so I ended up getting an agent, which was a miracle. He's this fabulous guy in New York. I wrote to him about COVID I'm like, john, are you okay? You know, and he goes, I'm an old Irish New Yorker. Covid doesn't have a chance.

[A]

I'm like, I don't think they're scientifically back, but okay.

[B]

No, you never got sick. He's a really great guy, but I wrote my first version of Bullied Brain, and I sent it to him, and he's like, nobody wants to read this. He goes, they want to know you. They want to know your story. If you. I had written this very academic book, which probably would have put everyone to sleep, but it was very hard for me. I don't know if you found you. As a podcaster, you probably don't find it as hard, but with academic training and plus being told I was stupid for three years in high school, I. I'm very introverted, shy, awkward, didn't want to put myself in.

[A]

But I'm not necessarily extroverted. I'm just used to what. What I do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, I think when you practice. So when I started teaching, I kind of put my ego to the side and started teaching and caring about the kids and just. Just not worrying so much about myself. I was really, in my own way. But, you know, I rewrote the book, putting myself in and trying to say why it mattered to me. That's what readers want. So they can attack you for your story, but it just is your story.

[A]

So I try to be honest about my good days and my bad.

[B]

Yeah, that's all you can do.

[A]

People want to focus more on my deficiencies as a human, of which I don't have enough ink to List. Go for it. Nobody's a harder critic on me than I am.

[B]

No, I was gonna say you're like, the most. You have so much humility and so much like.

[A]

Because I'm a dipshit?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, no, no, but you do have a lot of humility, Michael.

[C]

Not agree with that statement.

[A]

See, we spent a lot of time together. How amazing was that review, though?

[C]

That was pretty crazy. I'm just surprised at how much she wrote.

[A]

Let's do this. Let's frame it for the studio. Let's put it on there.

[C]

That's actually such a good idea.

[A]

Let's put it on the brick.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good idea. Let's do it.

[A]

I'm gonna empower you to do that. Just let me know the cost.

[C]

Sounds good.

[A]

I'm not saying it has to be floor to ceiling, but like, let's. Let's. Let's celebrate.

[C]

It'll be pretty big.

[A]

Let's celebrate the influence and impact we have on somebody's life.

[B]

The thing is with that person. What I. What's the same thing as the review of mine?

[A]

They want it to hurt me. As much as they are hurting.

[B]

They want to hurt you. Yeah.

[A]

Sorry. I already know I'm a. Yeah, it doesn't.

[B]

It doesn't hurt. I mean, even snake oil salesmen and all that. I was like, it's not actually. I'm not trying to trick anyone. I'm not trying to pretend to be something I'm not. So this kind of falls on deaf ears. Like, say what you want to say.

[A]

You could sit here and say, we need to stop world hunger. There are people out there who are going to say, oh, really? You want to make decisions for everyone? We should cure cancer. Oh, so you don't care about the over exploding population? You know what I mean? You can't. It's impossible. So don't try.

[B]

Yeah, it's true. It's true.

[A]

Where can people find you?

[B]

It's on Amazon. If you write a review like the one that Andy got, I'd really appreciate it. Because they don't care about the content. All they care about is that the algorithm cares about the number of reviews. Okay, so how many.

[A]

Number of reviews?

[B]

It's. It's really hard to get people to review books, I find. And it doesn't have to be.

[A]

I've never reviewed one, so I can.

[B]

I. I'm bad at it too. But you just need one sentence. Just tell your. Tell the people that, like, so I read it. So say to me, go and Write a review. One sentence in stars. Just say that.

[A]

Have you reviewed it yet?

[B]

I haven't.

[A]

Unbelievable.

[B]

Sorry.

[A]

Unbelievable. The advice you are giving to people. It's not what you say, it's what you do.

[B]

I know, it's so bad. I just. Oh, busted. I've been exposed. I've been exposed. But I will, I will write a review and. But yeah, get people to write reviews when you talk to them because it does matter for the system. Content doesn't matter. Just did they write a sentence? Did they take the time?

[A]

Which is so wild because that. It doesn't wait good or bad. It just, it just shows you what they care about. They care about things that are trending. Not necessarily.

[B]

It's way worse than that. People can buy reviews, right? Because it's anonymous. It's not like they're checking.

[A]

Michael, look into this immediately. We're gonna start a review farm.

[B]

This is the. I mean this is. Sometimes people write fabulous things and rightly so. They get thousands of reviews and that's great. But there's a lot of people in the book. I get a message every day trying to sell me on getting reviews, trying

[A]

to sell me in. I get a bunch now these. It's book review clubs. I have spent $0 on any marketing for the book and I won't.

[B]

Yeah, it's not worth a penny, any of that stuff. It's just the. It's the system and how they do things and there's tons of that kind of stuff on Goodreads just yet. Just ignore it. Just don't answer them.

[A]

Frame it.

[B]

Yeah, frame it. Make it part of the article.

[A]

Do you have a website for yourself or do you just point people towards the literature?

[B]

No, my website is bulliedbrain.com and I. People can reach out to me. I'm trying to build this whole idea. I call it clear sighted leadership. So. Or see clearly is kind of how I'm trying to think of the antidote. And it's not, it's. I'm not locked into it like other people's opinions. I would really appreciate if they want to say look, you're missing this or that or I think you're overstating this or that. That would be helpful. So yeah, it's bulliedbrain.com I do lots of like workshops and speaking. I work in organized or I've done a bunch of government work on when there is an abuse culture that's starting to form or they're worried about it or it's taken hold. It's. It's not impossible to take the brain science and really turn it around so we're not. When we have neuroplasticity, we can do. We can change our brains.

[A]

Well, let me know when the third book comes out. Or not the third. I know you've already done five. The next book in the series of this comes out and we will. We'll circle the wagons again.

[B]

That would be great. Thank you so much.

[A]

Of course. Thank you.

[C]

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