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- [00:00]
A
So on Monday, I had a talk. I was flying to Florida for a talk, but I took the kids to school. I worked at the office and then I picked them up from school. We went to Whole Foods, did our weekly grocery shopping as the boys and I do every week. And then I drove. We met at a parking lot near the airport. I handed my wife the kids and all the groceries. And then I flew to Florida, flew home. And then when I got back the next night, I made myself a sandwich from the groceries that I had just bought. And actually the week before, I took them to Whole Foods for a weekly thing and I had a phone call I had to do. They played upstairs on the playground. The Whole Foods headquarters here in Austin has a second story playground. They played on that while I did my phone call. And then together we went and did all our grocery shopping. I love Whole Foods. I don't have to worry about what I'm feeding my kids. They love the, you know, the hot bar. That's what they love. They love getting macaroni. My son loves orange chicken. They love the sushi there. We love Whole Foods in our family. And you should make Whole Foods your destination for all things wellness, including high quality organic options to help you make better choices. Their 365 brand has delicious and wallet friendly varieties of ready to eat salad kits. Plus ready to heat rice and bean blends to pair with lean proteins. You can also save big on supplements and vitamins. This month, check out their high quality multivitamins, probiotics and protein powders for all your New Year's resolutions and goals. Shop all things wellness at Whole Foods Market. One of the things I try to do towards the end of the year, it's something my parents taught me is like things slow down. You finally can think about things for a minute. I want to pick something or someone to be consciously generous to. When we're out, we're traveling on Christmas Day. I love to tip big. But one of the things I love to do with my family is we pull up GiveWell and we find a highly effective charity and we donate money to it. Right. Sometimes when you're doing charitable donations, like, does it help? Does it make a difference? You donate to this fund or that fund. But one of the things that's so empowering about GiveWell is they put a number on the effectiveness, right? You know, that it's making a difference. Which is why over 150,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to give more than two and a half billion dollars. And rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save over 300,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more. Which is why when I'm thinking about making a charitable donation, I check GiveWell first. You find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors that sponsor that research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut of your tax deductible donation when you give it to one of the recommended funds. This is your first gift through GiveWell. You can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. And to claim your match, you just go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter the Daily Stoic at checkout. Make sure they know you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic to get your donation matched. GiveWell.org code the Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. As you know, it's the start of the new year. We all have our resolutions. We wanna exercise more. We wanna eat healthier. One of mine is I. I love running, but I wanna do some other working out. I wanna be a little stronger in 2026. Well, that's where today's sponsor comes in. Tonal provides the convenience of a full gym and the guidance of a personal trainer anytime at home. With one sleek system. It's designed to reduce your mental load, which, frankly, is don't work out. It's like running this simple. I'm just gonna do it. I go this place, I turn around and then I come home, right? I don't have to think about how much weight I'm gonna lift, how many sets I'm gonna do. Am I doing it right? Is my form right? With Tonal, there's none of that. There's no focusing on workout planning and there's no second guessing your form either. Tonal gives you real time coaching cues to dial in your form and help you lift safely and effectively. And they set the optimal weight for every move and adjust in 1 pound increments as you get stronger. So you're always challenged. And right now, Tonal is offering our listeners 200 bucks off their Tonal purchase with promo code TDS. Go to Tonal.com and use promo code TDS for 200 bucks off your purchase. That's Tonal.com promo code TDS for $200 off. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And Then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Maybe it's a little crazy. Maybe it's an addiction. I don't know, maybe I should do it differently. But my sort of system is like, I finish a book and then I start the next one. Finish a book, I start the next one. This is actually advice that Steven Pressfield gave me. He said, just start the next one. Start the next one, because you never know how one's going to do. And by the way, it's not about the outcomes. It's about the process. It's about doing the thing. So the Stoic Virtue series, which I've been working on since 2019, that finished back in October, but actually it didn't. I turned in the manuscript for what became Wisdom Takes Work. Like this time in 2024, like, in December 2024, I turned it in for, like, the last time. It went into its final stages of editing and then production then. So I was still working on it. But basically, like, the creative thinking part of that book ended around this time last year. So the idea that I would wait for another 12 months or 10 months or whatever it is exactly to start the next one, that's always struck me as crazy and kind of inefficient. So I always think about, like, my. So I'm working now. I mentioned it here or there. I don't usually talk about projects when I'm working on them. But this pertains to today's guest. I've been working on a biography I'm writing about Admiral James Stockdale, one of the few modern practitioners of Stoic philosophy, who's a hero of mine, a fascinating character. Maybe you know about him as a failed vice presidential candidate. Maybe you know about his time in the Hanoi Hilton, where he was imprisoned and tortured and subjected to solitary confinement for years on end. It's an incredible ordeal. But he said famously that it was experience, he said, that allowed him to test Epictetus's ideas in the laboratory of human experience. So that's what I'm writing about. And I ended up interviewing Today's guest, because I thought she might have something to teach me about this. Rebecca Lamov is a historian of science at Harvard, and I wanted to know if she knew anything about this sort of prisoner of war experience, particularly as it pertains to Stockdale, because he wasn't just in camp or a prison cell. He was subjected to sort of Marxist brainwashing. It was essentially a Communist reeducation camp. So I asked her, you know, if she might have anything to say about that. And she says, as it happens, I used to teach a whole unit of my class on the Vietnam experiences of imprisonment that POWs went through. And she said there's a natural link to the Korean War POW experiences at the root of brainwashing's history. But it's not always brainwashing per se. She says, it's really asking the question of what a human being can endure and how they survive. I used to show a film not about Stockdale, but about John McCain and generally the Hanoi Hilton conditions. That's what they called the prison that those pilots were in. She said, I'd be happy to make this a focus and a hinge of the interview and bring topics of the SERE training. That's what they train pilots in about evading capture and withstanding torture, interrogation, resistance and similar questions. She says, I'm not an expert on Stockdale, but I can review what's available on him and talk about this in a larger context. She says the stoic perspective would be fascinating to weave in and discuss. So I said, you gotta come out. Which she did. We had a lovely conversation. She came out to Bastrop, and we talked about POWs and brainwashing operating in what you would call the veil of ignorance. And we talked about the differences between heroes and cowards and much more. I love this conversation. I think you're really gonna like listening to it. Rebecca is a historian of science at Harvard. As I said, she's been visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute. And her research explores data technology and the history of human and behavioral sciences. And she has a new book out called the Instability of Truth. And you can see more of her work@rebeccalemov.com and by the way, the subtitle of that book, I think is interesting. It's the instability of brainwashing, mind control, and hyper persuasion. So a lot to teach us about this moment in time. Thank you to the professor for coming out. I think you'll really like this episode. Let's get into it. I'm gonna get back to work. I'M working on the book right now. And so that's what I'm gonna do. Talk soon. I'm excited to talk. I didn't know you taught a class about Stockdale.
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B
I mean, not about him, but I taught a class on brainwashing. And I used to show a film of McCain in, you know, his resistance.
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A
Well, Stockdale referred to that as the laboratory of human behavior. That experience that they all went through. And I find that fascinating that you had these people exposed for years and years and years isolated from the world. There's kind of a Rip Van Winkleness to his story too, where he misses like the moon landing. He misses all, like the 60s and 70s, like America remakes itself and they're all in solitary confinement. And he talked about how they basically had to reinvent society in this prison. And. Yeah, it's fascinating.
- [10:20]
B
That is fascinating. I think there was two CIA operatives who are held even longer. Yes, like 20 years. And when they came out. Yeah, it was really that time capsule. I mean, it also happens with cults. When people emerge, they just don't know how to use a bank machine or the latest technology if it was a low tech environment. And it's just a shock to the system. But with the CIA men, there was a film about this too, but yeah, they had to get their back pay. Well, there's a big movement for them to get.
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A
Sure. Yeah, yeah. Like, are you on active duty? Of course you are.
- [10:53]
B
Yeah, exactly. Had written them off as dead, so they weren't paying them.
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A
Right.
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B
Yeah, that's a really profound point about. It is a sort of active duty, of course.
- [11:02]
A
I mean, you're. You're exposed every single minute of every single day, which is probably what makes. Which is obviously the point. But like the amount of sort of resilience and fortitude you would have to. Have to not break under that or to break only in certain ways and not in other ways. I think that's what he meant when he was calling it a laboratory of human behavior. Just like what can a human being take? That's sort of what I think Stockdale and McCain and a bunch of these other prisoners experience is really sort of.
- [11:35]
B
Testing an unasked for sure lesson, but like a deep one. Yes, that's really profound. I mean, in a way, what all my work, what the theme that brings it together is this idea of a laboratory of human behavior and the way scientists have often sought to build them and they sometimes took deeply coercive or abusive forms, whether it's testing animals in certain ways. Or human beings against their will or things like that. That's the dark side. But also there is this deep question at the heart of it, which is, I guess, what makes you human in the end?
- [12:08]
A
Well, it's Stockdale, because he went to Stanford and then taught at Stanford after he. People would ask him about the Stanford Prison Experiment, and he just had no. He had no patience for it whatsoever. He was like. He was like, you can't even begin to know what a person is capable of or what they will do until they've been in there for months at least.
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B
Oh, interesting.
- [12:31]
A
You know, I mean, obviously it's revealing that some people would do things like in the course of a few hours in this university experiment. But I think his point, and this is what I think is fascinating, is like, you really can't replicate this stuff in a laboratory because it's so profoundly unethical and, you know, unreplicable. But you get from certain. Certain stories, like whether it's the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton or the prisoners in Korea or the CIA officers or just other, you know, sort of freak instances, you get a glimpse into what humans are capable of doing to each other, and then also what humans are capable of potentially withstanding.
- [13:09]
B
Yeah, I think that's profound, because in the social sciences, there's this fantasy, like, could we create ethically if, like, ethics were removed? Could we create this perfect laboratory? But really, as Hannah Arendt apparently said about the Milgram experiments, she said, you didn't have to run those experiments. We have history. We can see what people did. And in a way, there's a kind of ambiguity about the word laboratory. Is it actually real? You know, if you're artificially constructing it?
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A
Well, what struck you about McCain's experience? Like, why would you show that to your students?
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B
I mean, the film is. I think it's called Return with Honor, something like that. And I just thought it was profound, what he went through and it raised. I thought they would benefit from seeing it. And it's not typically taught as a form of brainwashing. Right, because brainwashing has to do with. I mean, the way we think about it is the attempt to instill a whole new ideological system where that wasn't happening in Vietnam. They didn't really care if they ended up converting them in some way.
- [14:10]
A
No, they were just trying to break them and get information out of them, which. Right. In what. As you talk about in the book, in Korea, it was this sort of communist program to try to either turn them into communists or then the Paranoia is like, were they trying to secretly turn them into communists and then return them as these sleeper agents? That's what the Manchurian Candidate's about.
- [14:32]
B
Exactly. But breaking is always. It's actually a key component, and it's the one that often is most successful. But McCain was just. I think it just struck me that students might not be exposed to what he had gone through and how much, you know, you could learn from it.
- [14:48]
A
What was fascinating about McCain is, like, his father is the theater commander. And so, like, again, you. Like, you could never have created this in a laboratory. So in McCain and Sockdale. So the two Navy pilots shot down over Vietnam. Stockdale is in the Gulf of Tonkin the night of the incident and watches like, he's there. He's the wing commander, and he says nothing happens. Like, so he was there as he watches the country deliberately or unintentionally fabricate its reasons for going to war. And then he ends up in a communist prison camp, like, with the country that would be desperate to find out this information. And then in McCain, you have the son of the theater commander. Like, you can't even. You couldn't. If that was in a movie, you'd be like, you can't have both of them. You could have one person with a terrible secret or a conflicted, you know, like a tie to the, you know, the upper echelons of command, but you can't have both.
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B
Yeah, they're both very high level, which is also interesting because one thing that happened with reeducation in the Korean War is that they would divide the. I mean, the officers were treated very differently from the GIs who were seen. So they translated into class terms in Chinese society. So the GIs were seen as peasants, and therefore they should be treated more gently because they sort of. Their class consciousness had to grow organically, whereas the officers were seen as inherently needing to be taken down or sort of. I mean, they were kind of brutal to both, but in different ways.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And some of the officers. Yeah. So they had more out and out torture and the kinds of things you would see in Vietnam.
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A
Yeah. And like the Hanoi Hilton. Stockdale points out that, like, almost all of them have advanced degrees. Right. So, like, to be. I mean, to become a fighter pilot, you're not just, like, fresh out of basic training. There's a whole thing. But most, like, what he thought was so remarkable about it and why he thought there wasn't some of the brainwashing and there wasn't the sort of betrayals that happened in Korea is That these were highly educated, highly specialized professionals who had a. A sense of self and also a kind of training that, that. Yeah, I'm sure a random, you know, Marine pulled out of a, you know, captured in a, you know, in a seek and destroy mission somewhere else in Vietnam is probably not going to have.
- [17:09]
B
Well, actually, it was also the first people to break in Korea, at least publicly were the Air Force pilots who were actually quite high level, but they were under extreme duress. But I mean, one thing later, they hadn't yet instituted the code of conduct, so there was some murkiness about what you were supposed to allowed to say or not. But actually many of them were educated and it was pretty tragic. You know, Frank Schwabel's maybe the most famous of them, where he just said, I became, you know, someone I didn't know. He just watched this happen, but he didn't know. I mean, resistance eluded him when he returned. He. He had been extremely high level and well respected in lifelong military. And then he just was he kind of left in dishonor, even though, you know, I don't know, it was. There's more to that story. I mean, each story is interesting, but it's hard to explain exactly why what happened in Korea and why it was different. And in Vietnam.
- [18:09]
A
Yeah. Do you think it was a matter of leadership? Right. Like Stockdale and Denton and McCain? I think part of them. I think their answer would be, yeah, there was a little bit of the instructions coming out of Korea of what you. But they said that they tossed that out the window pretty early because it was so woefully insufficient. Like the idea that you're gonna have your arms bound behind you and hung from the ceiling, that you're only gonna give name, rank and serial number is insane. So they felt like they tossed that. But when what the prisoners said, they did. And actually Dave Carey, who was one of them, sat in that chair, that they kind of created a system and they said, like, look, you're obviously gonna break, but you can't. You have to make them pay for it.
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B
That reminds me. Yeah. You said earlier they break in certain ways in order to. It's almost like a pressure valve release. And I saw that in the accounts of even people who went through seer, who. Because that's a program that actually sort of practically breaks soldiers sometimes. But yeah. Difference in Korea was that many of them had been prisoners for several years before they got there. And they had been gone through, I mean, suffering. It's hard to even put into words. I mean, Three examples would be, you know, they'd gone through the tiger death march, where if you Even men would just stop and then die because they couldn't put another foot in front of. Or if they tried to help a companion who was slumped beside the road, they would also collapse, and both would. Or be shot if they couldn't keep walking. But also things like, once they got to the camps, they were. You know, they would lose half their body weight and just be so diminished. And one of the GIs I wrote about, and he was only 17 when he signed up, he said he watched the social fabric disintegrate very quickly. And one of the places it did was even before he was captured, when his own officer told him to go shoot some Korean prisoners they had just captured. And he said it was so against the. It was so dishonorable, this idea that they were breaking their own code.
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A
Yes.
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B
That he saw this. And then later he saw the social fabric fray further. Like people were taking more than their share of the little food there was. Or. No, not everyone was. There was also racial conflict or tension or lack of solidarity. Although there was the other thing as well. There were incredible stories of. Of solidarity or helping each other. So. But by the time the Chinese arrived and the conditions at the camps got better, and they actually enacted their own sort of experiment in the camps, many of them, the occupants, had been there for two and a half years, and they had just lost hope, and they had lost faith in their own government, and they didn't necessarily have a faith to replace it with.
- [20:51]
A
Well, I wonder then if it does sort of come down to leadership. The social fabric, the culture being so important, like, being able to look to someone for orders or like, what am I supposed to do? That strikes me as a part of the Vietnam experience. And then also, Stockdale talks a remarkable amount about how you deal with shame and guilt. And they sort of set out this process by which no one. Like, basically the idea of, once you accept, hey, everyone's gonna break, including yourself. Then it became imperative in this sort of culture that they built, how do you reintegrate someone who is feeling terrible about what they just spilled? Especially because they're trying to get information about the fellow prisoners, which have consequences for each other. So this thing of, like, oh, okay, I did. I told them who was the leader, or I told them how this code works. Right.
- [21:45]
B
You know, so making it communicate the communication system of their own was really important. Cause it broke the totalizing.
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A
Yes. And how do you. How do you forgive and reintegrate Someone who. If the whole point is how do we divide and conquer, then when you exile or excommunicate someone or allow them to sort of downwardly spiral, what you're creating is precisely the kind of vulnerable people that are gonna get picked off.
- [22:11]
B
Yeah. Because in Korea, they did separate out the officers, but they weren't even there. They were being held in, you know, confinement of different types. So they were leaderless, which is one thing. And sometimes they would nominate. They would nominate someone to be, say, the spoon man, who's supposed to be the most trusted person, who would be given the responsibility of allocating food. But this was not sufficient to kind of develop that sort of code. And they were also being. Other things, were being immersed in this whole system. So the classic to come out of the Korean War was called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert J. Lifton. And in it, he does have a section on resistance, which I was reviewing. And he found several people who did resist, who resisted Maoist reeducation. And a couple of them were priests. And one of them was someone he calls Bishop Bastorp. I don't know his background exactly, but what Lifton described was, he said he did initially break. And because you would when even the religious and civilians and missionaries and things, when they were arrested and put in the reeducation camps, they would be chained and, you know, often their wrists would be bleeding. They'd be. Have to hold standing positions for 36 hours, even, you know, priests and things like that. And humiliated in different ways. And that, in that situation, initially wasn't clear to him what resources he would be able to summon for himself. And so he gave away certain things and he started to move towards a confession. But then at a certain point, I guess Lifton says there are four qualities that allowed resistance to flourish in him. One was having his own faith. In the end, he had a countervailing belief system. Exactly. Countervailing. Exactly. That. At that point, he was able to kind of institute for himself. And that gave meaning to his own actions and a kind of code of his own that broke the code that was being imposed on him.
- [24:08]
A
Right.
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B
I mean, one of them was having a sense of humor in the face of someone who's relentlessly forced, like occasionally having a smile on your face or telling, you know, this is a heroic. Even an image we have sometimes from World War II films is, you know, the hero making a joke in the.
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A
Face of gallows humor.
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B
Yeah. Or someone who's trying to break them, just showing, like, not only are you not Breaking me, but you're not breaking my spirit. Or that this tragedy you're attempting to relentlessly impose on me isn't able to completely capture me. Like I'm in a different narrative. And also ways that they didn't succumb to the same communication system, so sometimes just refusing to learn Chinese or pretending to be unable to see so they couldn't learn the language that their captors were using to exert thought control.
- [25:01]
A
Well, yeah, we tend to think of resistance as being like an armed insurrection or an escape attempt. But often. And in retrospect, it actually is very inspiring. Like there's the famous Jeremiah Denton one from the Hanno Hilton where he's. He's. He goes on to become a senator, but he's being forced to give this television broadcast and he can't not opt out of the thing. So he blinks. Morse code. Blinks. Torture in the midst of his thing. Or like, they would talk about how they'd be like, give us the name of all the generals or all the pil. And then they'd, like, name all the characters from a TV show.
- [25:37]
B
So it was this, like a code that would communicate outside of.
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A
I think it was more like your point about humor, which is like they're finding these subtle fuck yous to the captors because they had no. It wasn't like the Internet now where you just typed in the names and seen what were real. Like. Like they would be bragging in propaganda that they identified X, Y or Z, and then it would become immediately clear. Or the Vietnamese would take this to sort of sympathetic figures from elsewhere in the world who would be coming visit. And they'd be like, look what we got. And they'd be like, I'm sorry, but these are all baseball players or something.
- [26:11]
B
Like, Captain Crunch isn't a real superior officer.
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A
This sort of humor as a form of defiance is probably underrated, whether we're talking about imprisonment or even under. Like an autocratic regime. Like satire becomes a weapon or even.
- [26:26]
B
In an abusive relationship. Yeah, because another point which is kind of related was that Lifton said. He called it. And this was. Seemed apropos for our conversation, he said a humane stoicism is maybe the most powerful. It's very, very difficult to. He said very few people can actually do this, enact it, but if they. It's a kind of being passive in the face of whatever aggression is being imposed on you. That's how he defined it. Or he had a.
- [26:55]
A
That's his definition of humane stoicism.
- [26:57]
B
That's Part of what he was talking about.
- [26:59]
A
Yeah. No, that's a fascinating.
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B
Sort of like exhibiting a kind of passivity that would often be taken as a challenge. In other words, I'm going to accept these conditions on some level, submit to the conditions you're imposing, but it's not going to take my humanity in some way that he said when that happens in front of other people, say if you're in a cell where the cellmates are supposed to actually be the social force that's pushing you more towards confession through struggle. He said in some cases, when this would be displayed humane stoicism, it would actually have this profound and lasting effect where it would demonstrate the inhumanity or the brutality that was otherwise un. Sort of invisible for that moment.
- [27:43]
A
Well, isn't that the logic of passive nonviolence or, you know, Gandhi and Martin Luther King? It's putting a spotlight on the moral hypocrisy and the. In being degraded, the person is degrading themselves, the aggressor is degrading themselves.
- [28:02]
B
Yeah. It reminds me, then it loops back in my mind towards this. The, you know, various Buddhist monks who have been tortured by oppressive governments who said that if they ever lost sight of the humanity of their torturers, that was when they were lost in a sense that seeing their brutality is also seeing their humanity.
- [28:21]
A
Yeah. When there's something also very demoralizing for the aggressor to not get the reaction that they are trying to get. Like the defiance is almost an accelerant to the violence, but the passivity in the face of it, it's sort of not having the intended effect and it sort of exaggerates your position. You know what I mean?
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B
Yeah. The non reactivity.
- [28:47]
A
Yeah.
- [28:48]
B
It highlights the. The situation itself, maybe.
- [28:51]
A
Yeah.
- [28:52]
B
In a way that bravado wouldn't. Wouldn't really do because that would allow.
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A
I'm going to break your bravado. Whereas if there's no bravado, it's a harder and more enigmatic target, perhaps. And then maybe the humor in the other forms is kind of more subtle. You know, evasive resistance also is exasperating in its own way. You can't break someone of their humor the same way you can break them of their defiance.
- [29:21]
B
Yeah. Now that you mention it, it reminds me of some examples from the oral histories of the Korean War where they would make these. They were forced to sing songs that were patriotic or things for Chinese communism, but they would change the words and make them a sort of homage to American life or the cars and things that they missed. And that is just sort of a fuck you really. Which wouldn't necessarily come across to the right.
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A
But it's empowering to the person doing it.
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B
Yeah. And see others witnessing that. It could be empowering too. It starts to recreate a social fabric, but also. Yeah, they sort of get divided into who's considered. Well, resistors and non resistors.
- [30:13]
A
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- [33:34]
B
Yeah, I think there was a temptation or tendency initially to break them into these two groups, whereas it turned out to be so much more. And to test them each separately to say, well, what was the secret sauce in the. What was the personality components we could identify, isolate, and perhaps replicate in those who resisted? And what were the flaws in the others? But they actually found, when they did, did extensive testing on the returned POWs that they all evidenced to some degree, collaboration or capitulation. And they were all mentally. I mean, it wasn't so easy to separate the groups.
- [34:09]
A
Right.
- [34:09]
B
There wasn't a convenient lesson to be drawn along those lines. And one of the maybe ironic outcomes of it is just that there is this kind of concerted effort to just build a program that would somehow insulate people from it in the future or operationalize it or something.
- [34:26]
A
Well, it's like with addiction, it's like some people believe it's a personal choice, and other people believe it's a disease you have absolutely no power over. And obviously, it's some spectrum, right? It's some. Not just different individuals exist in different places on the spectrum. But there's some parts of it that we have control over and then some parts of it that make us. Like, you could imagine the same person to go back to the prisoners a different time in their life might have had a different outcome. Like, maybe you're 20 or you're 40. You're subjected to the same conditions. Who you are and what you bring to it could bring something out very different or just a singular event. One thing happens to you on one day, and it changes the direction or the trajectory of you in that experience.
- [35:11]
B
That's a very humbling fact of the matter, is that. I mean, if you look at the stories of people who get inducted into cults, it's often that they took a left instead of a right and ended up encountering someone and they were vulnerable because maybe they had broken up with their boyfriend or girlfriend that day. And in my own case, I mean, it's interesting that you say Stockdale, that he had that reaction, which I wasn't. I mean, I believe that, and I think maybe you would feel committed to that position. And in my own case, with addiction, it didn't make me think that it's all just. I don't know, it just made me feel that we're all. That no one's not susceptible. It just depends on the moments of your existence. And some of it's just accidental or you could say fate, you know, why did these convergent circumstances arise in my life? For some reason, I do feel that they arise ultimately for our benefit, even if it seems like sheer suffering.
- [36:06]
A
Well, I heard someone say once that, like, the difference between a hero and a coward could be like a good night's sleep in a sandwich or, you know, like who you are in that moment, not just. Just morally and your training, but also just, like, physiologically in that moment, like you're coming down with a cold and you react differently to a set of stimuli or circumstances than you might 48 hours later. And so to me, there's something very humbling, and it's kind of a there but for the grace of God go I. Situations like you don't know what they were going through, what led up to that. And if you think that you know for certain how you would react in that situation because of what you've been through, to me, that's a sign. Actually, I wouldn't bet on you, because to me, that's ego and hubris. That it's probably makes you actually quite susceptible to all these things that you think you could resist.
- [37:00]
B
I mean, that's one of the conclusions I draw, or one of the things I noticed in doing this research for many years is that there's a tendency. And I think that's why cult documentaries are so popular and narratives about scams, because there's actually a part of us that loves to differentiate ourselves and say, I would be safe. At this point. I never would have believed that Keith Renery was handsome or that the rain fell, only there was a Point at which I wouldn't have fallen for this or that poor person. But I'm safe because I'm not susceptible or I'm not vulnerable to that. But it's actually what you see is that we all can be and that they present themselves in. It's an unfolding.
- [37:43]
A
I was thinking about that, too. Like, it's interesting how we have different moral judgments about sort of different ones, or we hold different types of people account. Like, I'm not angry at the people who fell for Bernie Madoff's scam, right? I see them as victims. And then if someone has political beliefs that I believe they've been sort of suckered or manipulated into, I somehow hold them more morally accountable, even though it's arguably the same thing. Someone has sold them a bill of goods, they made promises or representations that are not true, and they slowly, steadily convince them of a version of reality that when it all gets ripped away, it turns out to be embarrassing or wrong or damaging. And so it is interesting how we have strong moral judgments about different ones. And really, probably the proper response is a kind of empathy and again, an understanding that it could happen to anyone and happens to all different types of people in different walks of life.
- [38:49]
B
I mean, I don't have the answer to that, but I share your tendency to find one culpable and the other not. I mean, maybe the more profound point is to see that we're all operating in veils of ignorance. But it doesn't mean that you can't take a political stance. It means look to yourself. And it's hard to know what goes on, on in someone else's heart or why they came to believe one thing or another. And I do think it has more to do with emotions and perhaps the manipulation of feelings than we think than it is the embrace of an idea.
- [39:20]
A
Well, Lincoln. One of the remarkable things about Lincoln was his ability to understand. Like, I think if I was teaching and I talked to my kids about this, when I explain what the south was, I explain it as a sort of cultural military cult that was built around a bunch of flawed, ridiculous premises. And Lincoln talks about how he was like, if you were raised in the south, you would be exactly as they are. And this is what happens when you first you foist an economic system on someone and foist maybe seems like they were passive in it, but if you. You put a predominant economic system on a part of the country where it's now very expensive to consider anything other than this, you raised generations of people not with the Idea that this is okay, but that it's a positive good. Like slavery goes through this transition from the early Republic to the Civil War being the height of this, where slavery isn't this thing that's hidden away and rationalized but turned into a positive good. Like it's actually good for them, it's good for us. And anyone that's trying to take it away is, you know, a usurper. They're trying to kill you. They're anti American. And so Lincoln had this unique ability to understand, to go like, what they're doing is morally abhorrent and has to be ended. And I'll fight any battle and however long the war takes to win this and at the same time sort of suspend some of the moral judgment against the individuals caught up in said cult.
- [40:53]
B
That's a perfect way of describing it. It reminds me a little bit of this book that I got very deeply into when I was writing my dissertation, which was by John Dollard. The in. It's a classic ethnography of the 1930s, where he went to. He wanted to understand racism in the South, Jim Crow South. And he. So he's a Northern sociologist with psychological training, and he heads to the Mississippi Delta and he's living in this town. And he said, and this is actually what I think W.E.B. du Bois ended up reviewing his book. And he said, dollard doesn't completely. Well, so what he saw was a society where everyone was being constantly policed, not simply the black inhabitants of the town, whose behavior was highly scripted. Like you had to say, sir. And you had to be constantly. Really show signs of submission all the time. But also the white population was constant. If you didn't, you'd be persecuted for.
- [41:47]
A
Not holding that system. Yes, you did.
- [41:48]
B
For not playing your part. You had to play your role, too. And in a way, it was even more highly policed because there were outlets by which you could escape. You know, to some degree, as an African American and he himself, as a Northern liberal, like, he found himself on the edge of being ostracized. And then when he wrote the book, Du Bois said, dollard understands the white Southern mentality better than anyone I've ever read, because it's not. You know, he went out to understand something else, but he kind of absorbed it.
- [42:17]
A
Yeah. And it does take an immense amount of fortitude to exist in a world where there is a predominant system and then to be outside that system, system like we are not meant to stand alone and be apart. That's just not what we're. It's easier to leave part of it. Like I was thinking about, I think it would be a fascinating piece. I think some of the, like I saw this with people I know who have been become sort of politically radicalized or I think like you look at a Clarence Thomas as a good example of this. Like what happens when your spouse becomes radicalized or develops extreme political beliefs, right? You are faced with this vexing choice which is, is you either have to radicalize your own beliefs to normalize theirs or you have to break apart your marriage, right? And like who's who. Very few of us are going to be like, I've been married to this person for 20 years, we have kids together, we love each other, but they now believe things that I think are stupid or abhorrent. There's no like inciting incident, right? Like if there's an affair or an addiction or a, you know, you drift apart. That's different than like, like what do you do when someone you thought you were on the same page with is not on the same page with you anymore? I think if you don't, if, if you're not a self aware person and you don't. And you don't have a good sense of your bearings, the natural human thing is to just slowly turn up the temperature of your own beliefs so theirs don't feel crazy to you anymore.
- [43:48]
B
Ah, so you would sort of align yourself, I guess. Patty Hearst, I love this sentence she had which she said when she was talking about her own brainwashing. She said, which she didn't necessarily refer to as brainwashing, but she said I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs in order to survive. And in a sense if, you know, if you do want your marriage to survive, that was probably happening. But there are, you hear about, and I know of cases where people's marriages do split up or they're on the very edge of it because that alignment can't or doesn't happen for one. Or I mean it's really. If I were a sociologist, that would be interesting to study.
- [44:24]
A
It's totally fascinating. I mean it's classic cognitive dissonance, right?
- [44:29]
B
Like how do you resolve it? Or do you end up seeking your natural tribe as you think? But then where would you be, right? You'd lose this relationship.
- [44:38]
A
But yeah, I think a lot of the, like what we think of as radicalization is not a solitary thing. It's part of a group or a scene. And it's like I can either continue to be part of this or I can lose my friends and this is what goes on with cults. This is what goes on with mar. Whatever is, you have to go like, okay, I'm 20% disagreeing with what they're talking about, but we largely agree, you know, they're just getting more extreme. Or I could a hundred percent be on the outside. It's just an easier calculation to be like, I'll just turn up the volume of what I believe or I'll turn down my disagreement. And I think, I think human beings as these kind of tribal species are just always kind of intuitively trying to figure out where we exist. And that's what gets exploited. The irony is, yeah, we have these sort of nightmares about Manchurian candidates or brainwashing or whatever, but the reality is that the more day to day brainwashing of just society and pure dynamics and social groups that's acting on all of us all the time, that's what the.
- [45:43]
B
Book is stealthily about, is that we use this extreme and seeming way absurd or just seemingly caricatured idea of brainwashing. But actually we see that it's just this, it's the water.
- [45:54]
A
We see you're worried about the thing that will never happen to you. You will never be shot down over communist North Korea and brainwashed, but you are currently being molded and manipulated by your social group algorithms in countless ways.
- [46:10]
B
That we're all in. And that the tendency to find it only happening over there to that set of people or to these fools or dup or evil folks, that. That is in itself part of the process.
- [46:26]
A
I just thought it was so funny during the pandemic. I don't know if you know any sort of prepper people, people that were always worried about the world falling apart, they're training for the breakdown of society, et cetera. And they've been training for a moment, like the pandemic for so long, right? This is like. But then because their group was like, actually no, taking Covid seriously is like politically problematic for us. They had to go like, okay, actually, no, it's not real. Like the cognitive dissonance of being a person who was looking for exactly something like this to happen and preparing for it. And then because like the influencers in the media you get is like, actually, no, it's not a big deal. That sort of, you have a choice now.
- [47:09]
B
This is not what I'm prepping for. Or it's not that kind of a big deal. It's. This is a, you know, the way it's defined. You have to accept that definition to keep your place in the group. I mean, I saw that profoundly happening, but not that exact version, but a version of it where I live. And yeah, it's amazing. And so it can be so destructive. But yeah, it's this line from Czeslav Milov who kind of inspired the book because I found his book on the sidewalk one day many years ago, the Captive Mind. And he said, a self respecting human being, humans are such. We are so malleable that a self respecting human being might, if he hears that it's the fashion or it's necessary to crawl about on all fours with a tail of feathers sticking out of your behind, they will do it in all due regard. And it's just that this incredible malleability we constantly underestimate and maybe it's also a saving factor.
- [48:11]
A
So we had a unusual little first world problem in our family. We built a little house down on, on the Gulf coast. Almost done. And now we're in the process of furnishing it and we had to get mattresses for all the rooms. And so it was like, what mattresses do we want? And I was asking a friend, you know, what mattress do you have? Do you have a mattress you love? And they were like, I love Helix. And as it happens, that's who we grabbed a house full of mattresses from. And they are, coincidentally enough, today's sponsor. It's obvious why people love their Helix mattresses. They're not just comfortable, they're comfortable for a reason. You fill out this quiz that matches you with the perfect mattress based on your preferences and your sleep needs. We ended up getting the midnight mattress since it's got that medium firmness. It's not too firm, not too soft. And as it happens, it's their best selling model. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. It's been tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. They've got free shipping, seamless delivery. Like honestly, the mattresses came sooner than we were thinking. We were doing this all and then like the mattresses arrived sooner than the beds, which was awesome. Helix delivers the mattress right to your door with free shipping in the US and you can rest easy with the Happy with Helix guarantee that ensures seamless returns and exchanges. It's a risk free customer first experience designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. It includes 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty warranty. Go to helixsleep.com stoic for 27% off. That's helix.com stoic for 27 percent off. Just make sure you Enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helix.com stoic a couple of years ago. One of my wife's words for the year, we try to think about it, a word that we're going to live by the next year. One of those words was systems. The idea was setting up better systems, putting systems in place that just make us better, more efficient, more effective, more responsible. And nowhere are systems more important than when it comes to your finances, right? Managing your money doesn't have to be a struggle. It can be automated, it can be accessible, it can be tracked. And that's where today's sponsor, Monarch comes in. Monarch is an all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. Brings your entire financial life from budgeting accounts, investments, net worth and future planning all together in one day. Dashboard, your laptop or on your phone. And if you want to start the year off on the right foot financially and get 50% off your monarch subscription, you can. With Code Stoic, Monarch helps you reach concrete, achievable goals you'll stick to for all 12 months of the year, not just January. And they've got some new AI tools that are built on Monarch intelligence, which is designed to help you access authentic collective wisdom of certified financial planners and financial advisors. Advisors 24 7. Access to financial advice and insights personalized to you this new year achieve your financial goals for good. Monarch is the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use code stoiconarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year with monarch.com code stoic. The other thing I thought was fascinating in this book is you talk about neuralink, which a lot of people are sort of paranoid about and worried about, like what they're gonna be putting computer chips in our brain and then manipulating us. What I find so fascinating about that is it reminds me of, yeah, people are worried about being brainwashed in some prison camp. And it's like the person who's doing that is himself an example of being brainwashed. Like he brain fucked himself without any computer chips in there. Using a social network network that most people who are concerned about something like that happening are using multiple times a day, right? Like we're worried about these like extreme sort of totalitarian forms of mind control and brainwashing. And then you're just watching one of the smartest people alive destroy his brain by spending too much time on Twitter.
- [52:24]
B
I mean, I think that's partly a society wide blindness to just the Reality of the fact that we're social beings in some sort of matrix within each other already because it's easier to focus on the cartoonish, the technology you've been fearing and the thing that looks like technology from circa 1960, like a crude thing that's going to be invasively which could happen. That's also happening. So that's concerning. But the fact that the manipulation is ongoing and that we're all subject to it is the thing that tends to disappear.
- [53:00]
A
Maybe it's similar to like where people are scared about disinformation or government propaganda. I think it. It might have been Kasparov, someone, some Russian expert was pointing out that like most of it is stuff that people want to be true. Like it's. It's not. It's not the government inventing something from whole cloth and then ramming it down your throats. Like the sky is. Is not blue. It's more like you're already suspicious of this immigrant group because they look different than you. And let me tell you why. They're respons for the increased price of housing. Just like in cons. I think people are worried about some grifter coming up to them on the street and tricking them into giving them their life savings. No, like con men and grifters, they play off your greed.
- [53:46]
B
They play off. Yeah, something. There has to be a fertile soil of some kind. And that's usually, I think, the unacknowledged emotions or feelings that are unresolved in each of us that everyone has. Unless you've really done an incredible amount of personal development, I guess there's gonna be a resonance that has to exist. It's not just simply the implanting. I mean that's the cartoonish version of brainwashing is these ideas are so irresistible or they're chemically implanted or there's like a formula or some new science that nobody ever knew about before. But actually it's. I mean if you even just look at the history of how table manners we share collectively a delusion we collectively decided that we wouldn't. It's no long polite to blow your nose into the tablecloth while other people are there. And that's a rule that's actually written out in the 16th century or something. But a hundred years later, you didn't have to write the rule down. You did have to teach children that. But these things get inculcated and they're almost now it just seems unnatural. Of course I know that.
- [54:51]
A
Well, it's like a form of technology right it's like, maybe they understood there was something unsanitary or dangerous about that, and not just disgusting, but that it was bad, bad. And so you stop doing it, and it becomes. It's this sort of virtuous cycle. Yeah, I think about that now, too. Like, with some of the pushback against, like, PC stuff, like, people are using the word retarded again. Or, you know, there's just this sort of crassness that's being reinjected. And, like, what alarms me about that is, like, we didn't just arbitrarily decide some words were not okay. Like, this is part of a process by which we. We are slowly, steadily tamping down the kind of baser, more violent and brutal parts of our human nature, which is always there because societies that let those run wild tend to do horrible things. Right. Like, there's that quote about how, like, a society that burns books eventually will burn people. It's not that, like, books are, like. Because you become ignorant, you then think it's okay to burn people. It's that when you unleash. When it becomes culturally acceptable to just get rid of stuff you don't like, then it just becomes this sliding scale as what counts as stuff. Right. Books are stuff, and then undesirable people are stuff at different ends of the spectrum. And so the reason we don't do things is that it's been this technology, this process of keeping those desires in check. And then what happens is a demagogue or a political movement puts those things back into play, and it's hard to tamp down on them again.
- [56:33]
B
Yeah, I think that's actually a brilliant point. So it seems like what we're saying is that manners are not inconsequential, and there's a sort of arc to. I mean, we don't urinate in the corner. That used to be what people did. And then it started to be, certain classes don't do that. And then it was like. And you. You don't blow your nose into the hand we are about to shake hands with or things. Then it becomes widespread, and then you don't really even have to teach it anymore. But there is a kind of social evolution.
- [57:01]
A
I don't think you're not openly using racial slurs. And then all of a sudden, we're all equal.
- [57:06]
B
And then, like, politeness is a profound force, you know, that we learned that maybe you don't ask a person the first thing when you meet them, and they look a certain way, like, where are you from? It's another but the. The eagerness to reassert certain. You know, because it feels free to use some vocabulary that became. I mean, I could see why people feel that way, but it underestimates. Yeah. The kind of what we're seeing, which is that the backlash actually feeds kind of license, like a new license.
- [57:40]
A
Well, isn't that kind of a component of cults? Right. Like, they break down a lot of the norms that society has built. So it's like, hey, we're all gonna share our boyfriends and girlfriends or, hey, all the kids are gonna be raised over here. Actually, we don't talk to our parents anymore because parents are oppressed. They break these different bonds. They find things that are sort of just bedrock principles of civil society. They knock out the legs of that stool. And then, then, and then it becomes. Not. Not only does that become destabilizing, but then, because you're being looked at askance by people outside the cult, it creates this insular dynamic where it's like they're persecuting us. They don't understand us. They're weird. We're not the weird ones. And then you're off to the.
- [58:27]
B
Create a miniature. Yeah. And there's an energy that comes from that breakdown of the prohibitions and bonds and this. The normal or the way things are done. I mean, I think what caused Milos to write his book is that he's living in Warsaw during World War II, but he has this description of watching human society fall apart, where he said the first people are just trying to live their lives and everyone's trying to go to their jobs and keep their retirement savings going and just keep the family together. And then the men in jackboots arrive. People are divided up by races into different quarters of the city. And you're, you know, maybe you're saved at that point. You think you're saved. But at a certain point, he said when people know the day that they're gonna be shipped off or shot, they copulate in the street next to the barbed wire. He said there's like no more human.
- [59:22]
A
Yes. The rest of the technology collapses too.
- [59:25]
B
Yeah, Everything collapses. And what he said after seeing that, I didn't want that knowledge. Sure. Yeah. But he was never the same after.
- [59:33]
A
Yeah. I think. Did you talk a little bit about the sort of right wing sort of online media system in the book too? People are probably going to be watching this on YouTube. And I think what I think is interesting is the way that people whose work was kind of initially interesting, whether we're talking like a Jordan Peterson or something. How they have kind of themselves been a microcosm of this process, right? They started like, let me tell you how to make your bed. And then let me tell you this, and let me tell you this kind of transgressive idea or I'm going to push back on this, you know, political correctness thing. But then it kind of descends into this like madness or craziness. Like when I watch videos of him, I'm like, this is not a person who is doing well. Like there's something off, right? All of a sudden as it becomes more strident and more extreme. The people who came in because they liked it and it seemed normal then, now you're just kind of in, you're in that sphere, right?
- [60:29]
B
Because people trust him, I think. And also I do think he was placed in a position that I can only imagine being pushed of. Just so much pressure put on him and so much antagonism that I almost feel like it's a rare person who wouldn't be changed by that.
- [60:44]
A
It's not good to be that famous.
- [60:46]
B
It's so good. It's hard for anyone to survive those pressures. And of course you're gonna want friends when one, maybe your natural allies no longer will speak to you. You're gonna seek associates. And yeah, I don't really know. I tried not to talk about it too much just because I want it to be something everyone can use to reflect on themselves.
- [61:07]
A
Well, it's like the intellectual dark web became very dark very quickly, right?
- [61:12]
B
And I thought some of the people are super interesting too. They still do interesting work and you can find nuggets in it. That's what one practice I have is like, listen to all kinds of people and just find what you be able to. Not have to take everything, but take some parts of it and keep what seems sane, but keep your sanometer functioning if possible.
- [61:35]
A
I think people are bad at spotting what is like maybe, maybe it's how their parents were. I mean, look, if mental illness is very prevalent, then that means a good chunk of people have parents who are mental, mentally ill or spent time. And so there can be. Maybe it feels normal or even safe in some ways. But like sometimes I'll watch, watch clips of these people and go, this is a. This person is nuts. And I think that's what's interesting. When you, when you watch like the cult documentaries you're talking about, you're like, they thought that this was like a, an elite, well adjusted, successful person. It's unrecognizable. To anyone else. Right. And I do think people have bad radar generally as to like, like a good example. This I think is very clear in the financial space where it's like the people who are actually good with money, actually good at investing, you know, they're not like showing off their Ferrari and telling you how with this simple investment you can triple your money, you know, or whatever. But if you aren't financially literate, it's hard for you to recognize the distinction between a savvy investor and a scam artist. You just don't. You just don't have the experience to set to. That all looks the same to you. And being able to see those gradients is a skill. And I think that's definitely true. When I watch certain people, I'm like, that person is nuts. But if you don't have a good grasp on these things yourself, you're like, oh, they seem really smart.
- [63:01]
B
That's true. And it also, it's not transferable. Like financial intuitive savvy and acumen doesn't necessarily, doesn't translate to any. You could be blind to a different type of, of dimension or invitation. Maybe you develop that part of yourself, but not others. You see this in academics all the time. Just like highly, just brilliant capacity to. Even on that level of emotion and intuition just being well attuned to their field, but it doesn't necessarily apply. So it's difficult because there's often going to be an arena where you are vulnerable, you know, and then, and then others who, who aren't may think that you're just a fool. Well, I was just. I had this funny memory yesterday talking to someone where I. I was remembering that my father was. My parents were invited to go to this cult meeting. I mean, they didn't think it was a cult. It was a large group awareness training where they put you in, they kind of lock you in a room. And their friends had been through it and had changed their lives. So you're, you're in this room and you can't leave and you can't go to the bathroom and kind of people start to break down. But they also, you know, have transformative experiences. And when my dad had to go to the bathroom, he's just like, I'm leaving, I'm going. Nothing. He's just too grouchy to be brainwashed. I thought that was very.
- [64:23]
A
The funny thing is sometimes you realize like Cassandras or people who are really right about something, it is one of those things where the majority was wrong and this small minority about it Was right. A lot of times what they all have in common is just a kind of disagreeableness. They're actually wrong about a lot of things. But it was like a broken clock was right here. Cause they just. Your dad's like, also reject. Not that I don't know, but I'm sure there were lots of other things that he was invited to that he just left. Cause he was too grouchy. You know what I mean?
- [64:55]
B
Grouchiness could occur in various circumstances and not always productively, but, you know, I mean, maybe Stockdale was like that too. It was like a profound superpower.
- [65:06]
A
Yeah. You don't tell me what to do.
- [65:08]
B
Yeah.
- [65:08]
A
That's a personality trait. That's also kind of a uniquely necessary skill in that thing. Yeah, definitely.
- [65:16]
B
It's hard to really make sense of, but it does seem like it's part of inquiry that everyone, I guess, has to. I mean, mostly a lens you can turn on yourself. Like, what are the parts that I can strengthen me. Because I know these are areas where I can be. Where my issues arise, where my.
- [65:34]
A
I remember once I was at a meeting at this company I worked for, and we were all talking about some idea and. And everyone was sort of in agreement, except for this one guy who was sort of an older consultant, which there weren't a lot of at this company. And he like pointed out what he thought was the problem with it. And, you know, I was arguing against it, and the other people were vehemently. And he just went, all right. He's like, I'm okay. Standing alone on this one. He was like, I think I'm. I don't need you to think I'm right. And I don't need to convince you that I'm right. And I just remember think. I think about it all the time because people don't do that. That's a unique thing.
- [66:09]
B
That is unique.
- [66:10]
A
Just to be like, hey, I'm okay not being part of the crowd on this one.
- [66:14]
B
Yeah, he gave you that example.
- [66:16]
A
Yeah.
- [66:17]
B
That does seem stoic too.
- [66:18]
A
Totally.
- [66:19]
B
So how old were you when you saw that?
- [66:21]
A
23, 24.
- [66:23]
B
Yeah. And also, you didn't know that was part of human. Human vocabulary. And I think that's one of the amazing things about being young too. Or just also, just some of us in our backgrounds, we don't get that. We don't get like a shining example of X.
- [66:37]
A
Well, there's this stoic named Agrippinas who lived in the time of Nero. And so you can imagine you're in Nero's Rome. Like, you don't want to stand out. That's a good way to get executed or, you know, exiled. And someone was sort of asking him, you know, like, why are. You know, he wouldn't attend Nero's dinner parties. He was always, you know, taking the contrary stance. And the person's like, what are you doing? And he said, life is a tapestry. Or he says, it's like a garment. And he's like, most people are the white threads, and I am the red thread that makes the garment beautiful by contrast. And I was like, I heard that probably in my 20s also. And you go, oh, yeah, you actually need those people. Those people provide an important role. And also, there's something kind of heroic and beautiful about being that. And at some other level, we all are unique, so why are we trying to match with everyone else?
- [67:33]
B
Very true.
- [67:34]
A
But I was thinking about recognizing crazy people. I don't know if you seen the clips of the actor Terrence Howard talking about his mathematical theories.
- [67:41]
B
No.
- [67:41]
A
So he thinks he's, like, a mathematical genius and that he, like, actually, one plus one does not equal two, or, like, he has these, like, theories and what's. It's actually an interesting litmus test. You should check it out. Because he was on Rose, and Rogan's kind of pretty credulous about it. But you look at the.
- [67:58]
B
He walks him through the steps of why one plus one isn't two.
- [68:02]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think that's accurate, but it's something like that. Like, what one divided by one does not equal one. Something like that. And he claims to have, like, invented all these technologies. You're watching it, and it's an interesting litmus test, because when I see it, I'm like, this dude is. Is kind of screw loose, or it's very manic. Like, if you've ever been around sort of manic people or read much about manic people, you're like, oh, okay. This is all the signs of that. Right. And oftentimes manic people are very brilliant at some things. The problem is they can't turn it off. And they have this sort of grandiosity that propels them. And then you look at the comments, and people are like, I don't know. It makes a lot of sense. And you go, oh, okay. Like, we're coming at this with different frames of reference. And to me, what is true, throwing up every red flag that I know how to recognize. You're just, like, along for the ride, right? And I think a lot that that is Kind of one of the problems of our time, which is as information technology makes it easy to get a platform or get information out in the world in the way that you used to have to bump into the cult leader, like in your small town.
- [69:08]
B
And they used to think that it would be impossible, that it would be impossible to recruit people online or that would decontextualized. And they used to carry around the power. Power of. I read a little bit about deprogrammers because it was an occupation, but they would carry around a briefcase of precious information that would show the. Hopefully show the cult member that this was wrong and the information that had been shielded from them because they're under Amelia control. And that could be powerful. But often just, you know, maybe the deprogramming look like you're just brainwashing them back and then maybe tying them to a chair. Or sometimes it took these kind of. They would involve kidnapping, and they'd just snap back when they were re exposed to those stimuli, which is just this kind of. I mean, sometimes it was successful if the family reasserted itself and the deprogramming would take. But we are so susceptible to these things that we don't realize are a preexisting level. For whatever reason, you have an incredible. You've honed a sensitivity to it. And so you see that first. Like, you see the affect and the destabilized person first before you see this kind of elaborate theory. But many people are just drawn to the elaborate theory, and we're getting so used to being decontextualized in other ways that we don't even have the cues we used to have.
- [70:26]
A
Right. Well, and also, like, if an idea is on its face absurd to 99 out of 100 people looking at it, and we go, okay, everyone sees this as dumb because most people see that it's dumb. What we're missing is what information technology allows to happen is for that idea. And sometimes we're showing it because we're laughing at it, or we're saying it's abhorrent or stupid, but we don't realize that for every hundred people we're showing it to, it's resonating with one person. And so over enough exposure, you've now accumulated a group of people who don't think that it's crazy or abhorrent or, you know, dangerous.
- [71:08]
B
Oh. Cause they can find their. They can find each other.
- [71:10]
A
They found each other. And just like typically, if the crazy street preachers message is on its face absurd to 99 out of 100 people. They're not going to be able to reach that many people over the course of their life. It's not a viral message. But if a message is made viral because of how controversial it is, Alex Jones, we think we're laughing at him. You're actually just telling more people about Alex Jones.
- [71:37]
B
I totally agree that in most cases that is true. But there is this possibility, just thinking about the classics in history of science, which is Thomas Kuhn wrote the book the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. There are occasional periods when we genuinely are in a revolutionary period of ideas. And so most science. This is what was radical about what he said and shocking to people. He said most scientists are just those white threads. They're just reinforcing the existing paradigm. Their work is just putting another little tiny brick in the wall. And they're very conventional, very. And they're honing these tiny differences. And you see that around you. But there's just. At a certain point, the incommensurables start to add up and the structure, maybe the one plus one or whatever it is falls apart in certain ways, in certain respects, and those start to add up and the existing structure begins to crumble.
- [72:36]
A
Yeah, you need those disagreeable, kooky people because sometimes they're the first one that kind of starts to, oh, maybe actually this doesn't add up and maybe they're right for the wrong reasons or yeah, maybe.
- [72:47]
B
And then it's a revolutionary period. And so say it's tragedy if someone had the capacity to contribute in that period, but they just weren't born in that time. They were just a crank. But, you know, so there is always the possibility that this crank theory is something that could and should flourish.
- [73:08]
A
Well, have you heard this, that one of the arguments for what's happening now politically is. Is called the crank realignment. Have you heard this theory?
- [73:15]
B
No.
- [73:15]
A
So basically like the left used to have cranks and the right used to have cranks. Right. For different reasons. And now it's sort of like. And a lot of the cranks have come like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Was a Democrat until really recently, but now all those sort of people that used to be in the sort of left, the extreme or the. We don't talk about them or we're happy to have their votes, but we don't actually let them to in. We don't give them the levers of power inside the left. A lot of those people have move. And this actually damages both parties in an extreme way because you don't have dissenting voices or counterbalancing voices inside your own party.
- [73:52]
B
I see.
- [73:52]
A
And so I agree, you need to have people who say crazy things, who are very different, who march to the beach at the beat of their own drummer. Obviously, it's a broad spectrum between sort of the malicious ones and the harmless ones, but you need that. You need those people.
- [74:06]
B
You need room for a paradigm to shift, because that's what ultimately you do want, I think, think collectively, for us to get wiser and get better science, but, you know, a more capacious science that understands.
- [74:18]
A
Yeah. If everyone's thinking the same thing. Nobody's thinking.
- [74:21]
B
Exactly. So, yeah. Otherwise, it contributes to what you're describing. That realignment contributes to this paralyzing situation of polarization.
- [74:31]
A
Totally. You want to go check out some books?
- [74:33]
B
Yes.
- [74:33]
A
Let's do it. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on itunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.