THE INSTABILITY OF TRUTH: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion with Rebecca Lemov | 333

Summary

Podcast Summary: Title: THE INSTABILITY OF TRUTH: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion with Rebecca Lemov | Episode 333
Host: Nicole Kalil
Guest: Rebecca Lemov, Historian of Science at Harvard University, Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute, Author of The Instability of Truth
Release Date: August 6, 2025

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Introduction: The Fraying Anchor of Truth

Nicole Kalil opens the episode by highlighting the growing instability of truth in today's digital age. She poignantly references the struggle to distinguish facts from opinions amidst a barrage of algorithms, clickbait, deepfakes, and influencer culture. Drawing inspiration from the animated film Inside Out, Nicole underscores the blurred lines between facts and opinions, emphasizing the societal challenges in maintaining a stable understanding of truth.

Notable Quote:

"Truth isn't quite the sturdy anchor anymore that it really should be." — Nicole Kalil [00:01]

Defining Brainwashing: Beyond Coercion

Rebecca Lemov delves into the intricate definition of brainwashing, preferring the term "coercive persuasion." She explains that brainwashing isn't solely about force or torture but also involves persuasive elements that subtly influence and shape an individual's beliefs and behaviors over time. This nuanced understanding highlights the gradual and often unnoticed nature of manipulative practices.

Notable Quotes:

"Brainwashing isn't simply about force or sheer coercion or a kind of torture. It can involve those elements, abuse, but at the same time there's the persuasion part of it." — Rebecca Lemov [03:59]

"Brainwashing is a horrible story. Slow drip by drip process." — Rebecca Lamav (referring to POW experiences) [07:20]

The Psychological Mechanics: Ungrounding and Hyper-Persuasion

Rebecca introduces the concept of "ungrounding," a series of shocks that disorient individuals, making them more susceptible to manipulation. She connects this to Robert J. Lifton's eight conditions for brainwashing, highlighting how modern digital environments amplify these conditions through hyper-persuasion. This hyper-persuasion is characterized by rapid feedback loops and intensified informational control, often facilitated by advanced algorithms and AI.

Notable Quotes:

"Ungrounding is a set of successive shocks to the point of disorientation that kind of makes a person more vulnerable." — Rebecca Lemov [10:27]

"Under conditions of hyper persuasion which we find ourselves in, these feedback loops and informational control are intensified and speeded up." — Rebecca Lemov [12:16]

The Facebook Emotional Contagion Experiment: A Modern-Day Manipulation

Nicole brings attention to the infamous Facebook emotional contagion experiment of 2012-2014, where 693,000 users had their news feeds manipulated to be more positive or negative without their consent. The study revealed that such manipulations could significantly influence users' emotions and behaviors, sparking public outcry and raising ethical concerns about the extent of corporate influence on individual psychology.

Notable Quotes:

"The conclusion of the experiment was that this was possible, that emotional contagion could be achieved across a network without face-to-face contact and in the absence of direct interaction." — Rebecca Lemov [17:57]

"Now we see that this can take place across a digital network. You need not be physically present. You need not have a direct interaction." — Rebecca Lemov [20:17]

Algorithms and Personal Reality: The Feedback Loop of Beliefs

The conversation shifts to how algorithms reinforce existing beliefs through personalized content. Nicole raises concerns about how search engines and social media platforms tailor information to individual users, creating echo chambers that amplify personal biases and potentially contribute to self-brainwashing. Rebecca agrees, describing this phenomenon as hyper-persuasion, where targeted ads and content are meticulously crafted to influence users' decisions without their explicit awareness.

Notable Quotes:

"The algorithm is reinforcing what we already believe is the feedback loop and dismissing any information that could possibly go." — Nicole Kalil [21:43]

"We are asking the question, what is one's responsibility within these loops?" — Rebecca Lemov [22:45]

Trauma and Vulnerability: Linking Emotional Pain to Manipulation

Rebecca explores the connection between trauma and susceptibility to brainwashing. She explains that traumatic experiences can lead to dissociation, a key component that makes individuals more vulnerable to manipulative tactics. This vulnerability is exploited in both extreme situations like cults and more commonplace interactions online, where emotional distress can be capitalized on to influence behavior and beliefs.

Notable Quotes:

"Dissociation is really a key because that's at the core of the traumatic response." — Rebecca Lemov [15:14]

"Trauma can be capitalized on and the platforms know, you know, we're very aware of that." — Rebecca Lemov [14:41]

Navigating the Quest for Truth: Balancing Facts and Personal Experiences

A central theme of the discussion revolves around finding objective truth while honoring personal truths shaped by individual experiences. Rebecca emphasizes the importance of reality testing and being open to self-examination to navigate the destabilized landscape of truth. She encourages listeners to embrace uncertainty and recognize the collective susceptibility to manipulation, fostering empathy and reducing polarization.

Notable Quotes:

"Truth with a capital T... is a different kind of thing that we each have to answer for ourselves." — Rebecca Lemov [27:03]

"When you find yourself describing someone else as brainwashed or obviously deranged, that it mostly functions as an exiling device or an insult or a way of saying, not me, never me." — Rebecca Lemov [29:53]

Conclusion: Empowerment Through Awareness

Nicole wraps up the episode by reinforcing the idea that recognizing the instability of truth and the subtle influences on our thoughts is crucial. She encourages listeners to remain vigilant, question information sources, and trust their intuition. By staying informed and empowered, individuals can navigate the complexities of modern persuasion and maintain a grounded understanding of truth.

Notable Quote:

"Our work, our work, is to pay attention, to ask better questions, to pause before reposting or commenting, to check our sources and ourselves, and maybe, just maybe, to admit that we're all a little more persuadable than we'd like to believe." — Nicole Kalil [33:40]

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Key Takeaways:

1. Brainwashing as Coercive Persuasion: Brainwashing involves both coercion and subtle persuasive techniques that gradually influence an individual's beliefs and behaviors.
2. Ungrounding and Hyper-Persuasion: Modern digital environments amplify traditional brainwashing techniques through rapid information feedback loops and targeted content.
3. Ethical Concerns in Digital Manipulation: Experiments like Facebook's emotional contagion highlight the ethical implications of manipulating user emotions and behaviors without consent.
4. Trauma's Role in Vulnerability: Traumatic experiences can increase susceptibility to manipulation by inducing dissociative states.
5. Navigating Truth Amidst Uncertainty: Balancing objective facts with personal experiences requires vigilance, empathy, and a commitment to continuous self-examination.

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For more insights and to explore Rebecca Lemov's work, visit nicolekalil.com.

Transcript

[Nicole Kahlil]

On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast and even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. I am Nicole Kahlil, and you're listening to the this is womanswork podcast and friend let's face it, there are certain things in life that are always unstable wi fi when you need it most. Certain politicians, my relationship with Cheese, and, as it turns out, the truth. Yep, truth isn't quite the sturdy anchor anymore that it really should be. In a world filled with algorithms, clickbait, deepfakes, and influencers trying to sell you shit while crying into a ring light, it's getting harder and harder to separate facts, fact from fiction, or, to quote one of the greatest cinematic thinkers of our time, Bing Bong from inside out, when Joy says, these facts and opinions look so similar after knocking over boxes labeled Facts and Opinions. And Bing Bong responds, don't worry about it. It happens all the time. Bing Bong, in his infinite wisdom, just nailed the problem. We are all just casually shuffling facts and opinions around like it's totally normal. And if that doesn't scare you a little, it probably should. Listen, I'm a big believer in intuition, in trusting yourself. Hell, that's how I define woman's work. But how do you know if what feels true to you is actually true? How do you recognize when your thoughts, your beliefs, your truth has been influenced or worse, manipulated by someone else? Brainwashing? Mind control? Hyper persuasion? These aren't just the plot lines of conspiracy thrillers or cult documentaries. They're real. And in many ways, they're probably more effective now than ever. And here's the kicker. I'm guessing if we're being brainwashed, we probably don't even know what's happening. Now, I'm no expert on psychological manipulation, though I have survived both the social media comment section and middle school, but I did bring someone on the show who is an expert. Rebecca Lamav is a historian of science at Harvard University, a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute, and the author of the Instability of Truth. Her research dives into the data technology and the history of human and behavioral sciences. Basically, as I understand it, how we've been shaped and sometimes seriously messed with by the people who want to control how we think and act. Today we're unpacking the origin of the word brainwashing, some eerie experiments that pave the way for emotional manipulation, and the very modern ways our thoughts are being influenced without us maybe even realizing it. Rebecca, I'm already fascinated by the topic, so thank you for being here and let me kick us off by asking how do you define brainwashing and how would we know if it's happening?

[Rebecca Lamav]

Thanks so much Nicole. It's great to be here and have this conversation with you. So I would start up just by saying that I've been somewhat obsessed with this topic for longer than I like to even mention. Long enough ago that when I started to want to teach a class about it at my university, they thought that sounded ridiculous and although they let me do it anyway, but they said why would you be interested in that topic? It's so odd and can't really have much to do. But now it seems strangely relevant or many people find it really relevant, as do I. So I the way so it's great to define terms. I mean brainwashing is a great topic because it's had many different definitions. But the one I find most useful and simple is a kind of double cognate phrase which is coercive persuasion. And that's because it emphasizes that brainwashing isn't simply about force or sheer coercion or a kind of torture. I mean it can involve those elements, abuse, but at the same time there's the persuasion part of it. So there's an attraction also such as you see with cults or just even in extreme situations. There's often a nuance or a set of choices that involve persuasive element and even a kind of compliance or I guess an agreement. So that makes it really tricky and difficult also to recover from.

[Nicole Kahlil]

So what I'm thinking as you're talking is it's almost a slow thing that's happening. It's not like you get brainwashed in one moment of one day. It almost like this coercive persuasion and the idea that it's decisions or little Agreements that are happening that sort of lead you down the path of being brainwashed. Am I misinterpreting that?

[Rebecca Lamav]

No, I really like that idea of little agreements. And it's one discovery I made because what I set out to do was a thought experiment or an actual research experiment which, which entailed, you know, if I could look at the more extreme cases in the 20th century that we often refer to just the thumbnail sketch of what the terrible thing called brainwashing, which involves POWs during the Korean War who are subjected to thought reform in these prison camps. It seems like that must have happened quickly, that must have happened just through sheer distress, which was definitely true. But when you really read these soldiers, who are often very young, they were just some of them 17 to 21 years old, having gone through starvation, having gone through forced marches, having gone through humiliations of finding the US not to be the power they thought it was going to be in 1952 or 51. They then did go through a different. A period that when you read their stories, it does involve small, small things that really influence them, small decisions over time. In fact, one of the soldiers I, the POWs, I focus on this person named Morris Wills, he described how brainwashing is a horrible story. Slow drip by drip process. That's almost a quote. So I think it's very insightful of you to pick that up.

[Nicole Kahlil]

Okay, so then if it's slow and it might be, you know, maybe a small agreement that feels slightly uncomfortable but not so uncomfortable or obvious that we look at it and go, oh, I'm being brainwashed. Right? How do we know? How might we protect ourselves from being brainwashed? And I have to say too, I imagine this is happening a little bit more regularly in our day to day lives today. You know, whereas you, if you think about it in a prison camp, that seems like a very extreme situation where we could look at it and go, okay, I could see how that's happening there. But I guess my question is more in today's day and age, how might we know if this is happening to us?

[Rebecca Lamav]

Right? That's a great question. I mean, one of the surprising things about just to briefly revisit the prison camps is that those POWs, they were just seen as almost criminals or culpable for what had happened to them. They weren't granted compassion or just a sense of the incredible harrowing experiences they had had, or even the step by step nature of it. And they were just seen as having betrayed their country essentially. And their trauma, which was significant and severe was never acknowledged by a single expert, really. So the comparison with today is there might seem to be very little in common with the sorts of situations that most of us encounter, especially in online life or in our minor interactions, like ordering a coffee at Starbucks or something like that. But the lessons I'm trying to draw is a kind of attentiveness to the drip by drip process, that these tiny decisions have consequences and that we think that they're just the product of a moment. But that's exactly the experiences people in cults also describe. I mean, most. No one joins a cult deliberately. Most people, I mean, if you go into their stories, it was something like, I happened to be standing at the bus stop that day. I unfortunately had just broken up with my boyfriend or girlfriend. I, you know, I stubbed my toe and someone offered me, you know, some kind of kind comment or something, some area of vulnerability. So not to make you paranoid, but just to make a case that I think the best approach to. I think it's a potential of every moment is that it is that we be more aware of the consequential quality of seemingly small decisions, especially online, like clicking, liking, commenting, interacting.

[Nicole Kahlil]

So in the examples that you gave, what seems to be, and I'm sure there are a lot more commonality, is the experience of hurt or pain in somebody in some way temporarily relieves that? Is that part of what's necessary? I mean, I guess my question is what are the conditions that need to be in place or what is being taken advantage of or manipulated in order for brainwashing to even occur?

[Rebecca Lamav]

Yeah, that's also at the core, you know, really core question. So the. But there was a great scholar and psychiatric psychiatrist named Robert J. Lifton who set forth in 1962 what he thought were eight conditions, or they were really like circumstances that accompany brainwashing. And that the. One of the primary ones includes milieu control. So to the extent the person experiences an informational environment where the incoming stimuli and the outgoing are highly controlled and even sculpted. So that's Lifton. But what I argue, and I agree with his conditions. But I also argue in the book that what I found in my research was that there's something preceding these eight conditions which is what I call ungrounding, which I describe as a set of successive shocks to the point of disorientation that kind of makes a person more vulnerable in a situation where then the various other factors can be, you know, love bombing and informational control and even threat threats at the same time. Threats of going to hell of your family being hurt of or just being thrown out of a community or various other other things are brought to bear from there.

[Nicole Kahlil]

The word ungrounding I find fascinating because I think we've all experienced that a feeling of not being firmly planted and maybe physically, but I mean it more like in a mental and emotional way. I am operating under the assumption that varying degrees of brainwashing is happening way more commonly than we might think. Is that a fair assumption or am I being dramatic?

[Rebecca Lamav]

I mean, I argue that there is a connection and some might disagree, but I by bring to bear research on current, I mean my last three chapters of the book are about digital environments, social media interactions and including even AI driven, you know, chatbots and those kinds of relationships which are just. And I kind of tell the history of what I call hyper persuasion. And I think under conditions of hyper persuasion which we find ourselves in, which is just where these feedback loops and informational control are intensified and speeded up and we become ungrounded really quickly. I mean, anyone can testify to this, including myself. And this is why I bring myself into the book. I mean, none of us is really immune to that experience of destabilization. It does have a physical aspect to it, but also as you said, mental, emotional and even spiritual levels. I mean, in a way I'm stripping or I'm including its extreme resonances, but I'm trying to show the dailiness and the ordinariness of it.

[Nicole Kahlil]

Okay, where does. You've alluded to this already, but where does trauma and brainwashing play a part and where does it not? Like if we have experienced trauma, should we be a little bit more vigilant or does that not really play a part? I guess my question is where is trauma and brainwashing linked or not linked at all?

[Rebecca Lamav]

I find it to be linked. You could say that we live in a moment when trauma is seen everywhere and perhaps over attributed. So I wanted to ask, you know, does it make us, does it continue to make us vulnerable today? Or are we, is this, is this link still present? And I, I do argue that it very much is. When you think of trauma as a kind of each person's emotional repository of unresolved probably distressing events to that extent, where we are vulnerable. I don't think it should make you more worried, but it just can make you more aware of the way that even something like Facebook, as shown through the famous 2012-14 experiment, showed that these emotions of extreme negativity and distress, really distress and trauma can be capitalized on and that and the platforms know, you know, we're very aware of that.

[Nicole Kahlil]

I want to get into that experiment in a second. But it makes sense to my brain that trauma and brainwashing could be somewhat linked because of that word ungrounding that you had talked about. When we experience trauma, I can't obviously speak for everyone, but you feel ungrounded, you feel disoriented, you feel shocked, you feel. And it is, it feels like it could be trauma on top of trauma. For that to be exploited or taken advantage of.

[Rebecca Lamav]

Yeah, can I just make a quick comment on that Is one of the aspects of brainwashing that experts came to focus on or coercive persuasion is dissociation, the dissociative effects. And in the 1950s and 60s, once this started to turn up in military, the US government and CIA wanted to see if they could create such states as potential weapon to be used or deployed. And they did find that pursuing dissociative effects that they could successfully induce dissociation in people, sometimes through brutal methods or administering LSD or sleep deprivation or things like that. There was that connection that arose. But I think dissociation is really a key because that's at the core of the traumatic response, as I understand it. And then again, that refers back to ungrounding because you sort of separate from the body the bodily response and perhaps store these emotions. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment.

[Nicole Kahlil]

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[Rebecca Lamav]

So the, so the Facebook experiment was one that. It was the last one that Facebook's research team published on, you know, self published in a prominent journal in 2014. And it ran before this topic became something they no longer publicly wanted to really, you know, put in a banner headline. But it basically had to do with massive scale emotional contagion. There were 693,000 users who were selected without being told or informed that in 2012 for about three to four months. And during that time, each of their feeds, their news feeds was altered. And one group had their news feeds altered in a negative direction. The second group had their newsfeeds positively adjusted so the items that appeared in their feed would be algorithmically more positive. And then there was a control group which had its newsfeed just delivered in the usual way. And the discovery was that there was a measurable effect. Both the positive and the negative groups were then demonstrated to post more positively, correspondingly positive or negative. And the negative effect was even more statistically significant. Those who had their feeds more altered were then more negative. And this caused, when it was published in PNAS in 2004 14, it caused an outcry, a kind of public examination, and headlines such as Facebook is using you as a guinea pig. And even I found more heart rending in a sense were user comments on the Facebook page, the research team's page, saying things like, can I ever know if I was in this experiment? I went to the hospital with suicidal thoughts during this time. And I think that I might have been. Can I ever know if my thoughts, if my emotions were adjusted? Because really the conclusion of the experiment was that this was possible, that emotional contagion could be achieved across a network without face to face contact and in the absence of direct interaction.

[Nicole Kahlil]

So besides being totally fucked up, was the point to just see if emotions could be manipulated via social media. Guess what were they attempting to find out?

[Rebecca Lamav]

Well, there were pre existing. There was pre existing work on emotional contagion and it showed that it could take place across a network. But they used data from, for example, the Framingham Heart Study, which showed that heart conditions and even weight loss and weight gain and even sometimes depression could travel across a network of people who knew each other, even quite a complex network. I think this was done in Framingham, Mass. And they had data over many decades. But the challenge for the team, and they seemed to take it up almost like a challenge, and they were a little bit saucy. I think if. If a scientific article can be saucy, they were a bit saucy because they basically announced. Now we see that this can take place across a digital network. You need not be physically present. You need not have a direct interaction. The experience that babies have with their mothers or that the. One of the examples they used in the first sentence or second sentence of the article was a mother traumatically traumatizing her daughter. In a famous memoir by Vivian Gornick in which the daughter was, you know, describes this extremely distressing relationship to herself. And this was the example Facebook used of the kinds of what emotional contagion was. And when they were announcing it, they were basically saying, we can now operationalize this. We can do this at will. We can almost turn up a dial and dial it down and up, and the users will be affected.

[Nicole Kahlil]

I don't know if it's considered an experiment, but I think of the algorithm, and you said earlier, like a feedback loop. I find that the idea that whatever it is that I believe or that is important to me or whatever, it gets reinforced at a really high level via social media, Google, things like that. Like, I always think of. I don't know if it was a study, but if I were to Google the exact same word search and somebody who's my opposite, teenage white male in the south, whatever, and they. They Google the exact same things that they would get a completely different set of information that I might get. And so I guess my question is, is the algorithm is the reinforcing what we already believe is the feedback loop and dismissing any information that could possibly go. Is that contributing to our own brainwashing?

[Rebecca Lamav]

Yeah, I think that's what I'm. I'm arguing that that can happen and that we're. In a sense, we're asking the question, what is one's responsibility within these loops? Because it's quite concerning when you think about it, that it's possible to direct a political ad at you as a Facebook user, that no one else will ever see the exact same ad. It'll be slightly tailored to your say that there's data which has Been circulated on your 5. What is the famous psychological test that you kind of give your general configuration? They could direct an ad specifically at your psychological makeup. And they already do make thousands of digital versions of an ad and direct them that way. Target. So that's kind of what I mean by hyper persuasion or hyper targeting. And there's no record of it. Facebook keeps a library, but they don't keep a library of the thousands or millions of versions that get disseminated across the network. So in a sense we are. And you can see this on your Netflix screen or whatever. Wherever you watch shows, you're not seeing the same menu that a kid in another town or of a different gender, whatever it is. But we forget that. I mean, I too, there's a certain illusion that we're sharing the experience. And I think increasingly we're not. And that is something to think about just to be aware of and maybe to take steps to counteract in different ways.

[Nicole Kahlil]

Okay, I have so many different directions I could take this. But there are a couple questions I want to make sure to ask. The first being the differences between terms like brainwashing, mind control, hyper persuasion, coercive persuasion. Are they different terms for a similar thing? Or are we talking about stages? Or how are we meant to understand these different terms?

[Rebecca Lamav]

Now, that's a really good question too. I am in the field of history, of science, and I use this kind of tool that historians use of looking carefully at how words are used because it's often difficult to have an absolute definition. People have used brainwashing in many different ways and no one can agree. And it's often dismissed, you know, as being very incendiary. I think that mind control, they just have different valences, is my short answer. So brainwashing has this kind of its own history. It gains headlines. It seemed as very spectacular, but in court, it's never held up. It's never except in. In the use to prosecuting the Manson girls. And it's never successful as a defense, as in the case of Patty Hearst, where she was. Her legal team was unable to convince anyone that this could stand up in court. But a term like mind control, I think tends to have a suggestion of a technological change into the brain even. And I look into that too in the book. Some of the chapters on people who had unwanted psychosurgeries done that were meant to have a behavioral effect defined as having and perhaps being useful across a social. Social system. And then the final word, hyper persuasion, I kind of coined that to describe the more digital environments but really they have a lot in common. And that's what I'm arguing.

[Nicole Kahlil]

Okay. So I think my biggest question is how do we find our truth and the truth, because how often we see something differently than another person and we assume the other person is being brainwashed without allowing for the possibility that we could be too. And I find myself, you know, like in today's day and age, politically, I like, I'm like, how could anybody possibly see it this way? And then I am very aware that they think the same thing of me. And so in the information age, or anti information age, depending on how. But like, how do we make our way to the truth? And by truth I mean like factual. And then how do we also honor our own truth based on experience? How do we get at the truth is what I'm trying to get to.

[Rebecca Lamav]

Yeah, it's a profound question. I think that each of us is being asked to wrestle, reckon with today because it's just, I feel like each year, each week I live longer. It becomes more highlighted that where you can easily receive a whole different set of facts and there isn't an absolute. And what I mean by the instability of truth, when I just came up with that phrase when I was talking to my mom and I was saying, I was trying to describe what I was arguing in the book. Not that we're at the end of truth, not that we're post truth, not that truth is dead, but it's been destabilized simply because our, our ways of knowing it are undermined. And you can even see this, you could see this during a period like Covid, differences just in what scientific articles mean, what, how do you interpret the journal, the published results. It's really. Experts can and do and should disagree, but we're very uncomfortable with that. There's this kind of process that continually destabilizes or undermines this sense. You started off the interview with that there was once a time when we could agree. I think part of it has to do with changes, technological changes in how media and information are disseminated. Disseminated. So my, my short answer is, I mean, we like to talk about our truth. And I'm not an, I'm not a relativist about truth, but when I, when I talk about it in the book, I mean something more like how we, how we reality test. And I think ultimately truth with a capital T, the kind of thing that Max Weber or even yoga teachers sometimes talk about, is a different kind of thing that we each have to answer for ourselves. And I Even have a very nice quote from Solzhen Nitsyn that might be, I found helpful, which is he says the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.

[Nicole Kahlil]

Great quote. And you know, it feels sometimes a little overwhelming I think right now to be responsible for our own truth and then also to, you know, want to get at the truth as if there is one truth. I mean, but when it comes to certain things where there is a fact and then acknowledging that we have interpretation of the fact, I guess my question is in the face of like straight lies, how do we get to the fact that and then wrestle with our own interpretation of it as it goes through our heart?

[Rebecca Lamav]

Yeah, I mean one, that's a great question. I think it, it speaks to this struggle, a real anxiety producing struggle that maybe we're, we are all engaged in. And what I want to be arguing in the book, what I am arguing is that, and in general is that when you find yourself describing someone else as brainwashed or obviously deranged, that it mostly functions as an exiling device or an insult or a way of saying, not me, never me. And, and you can see this in an extreme form in cults. Why are we fascinated with cult documentaries? Because there's a little part of ourselves that says I would never have fallen for that or here's where I would have realized he's not the most handsome man in the world. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't have given him access to my checking account or things like that. I wouldn't have allowed myself to. So there's a way that I. Brainwashing or this idea, even Stockholm syndrome is kind of an exile which creates this, this other, other category. And I, and part of it is because we're uncomfortable with that. And I argue that this is clearly to me something. We're all subject to this phenomenon and we don't yet know fully its nature. So to be comfortable with that uncertainty and to see brainwash as a kind of window, Brainwashing as a kind of window and for self examination, which is why I put myself in the book too and describe it, it's more of a process. I'm from this field of history of science where we do talk about the nature of facts. And in fact a lot of my first couple of books were about that. I mean, how we establish truth, how truth is essentially made by people with reputations, with authority under certain historical conditions. And it is a changing thing.

[Nicole Kahlil]

Yeah, I'm fascinated. I Have so many other questions. And I think, you know, this notion that thinking someone else is brainwashed or that they're the idiot or that, you know, you have the answers and they don't. I often, when I catch myself doing that because there is an element of wanting to feel that it could never happen to you or that. That sort of separation. What I find myself trying to do in those moments is having a little bit more empathy of, like, if I experienced the same set of experiences or information or whatever. And then just that reminder of it probably is to some extent happening to all of us, which is scary. And also, if we are moderately aware that it could be happening, we can pay attention and do something about it, versus if we resist and say, it's not happening to me, then there is no opportunity to do anything about it. Yes, no, maybe.

[Rebecca Lamav]

So I agree. And I. I really agree. And I. I think it's so important because it just contributes to polarization to think that this only happens to that other segment of the population, that it's demonstrably true, that we're all in this. We are all immersed in this. These set of evolving conditions. And I wish it were as simple as we could just cut off that arm or that. But where would that lead us? Yeah.

[Nicole Kahlil]

Well, I know I cannot be the only person who's fascinated, so I'm going to remind our listener that you can get your hands on the book the Inside Instability of Truth. It's also available as an audiobook. And Rebecca, thank you for being here today and also for taking on this work. I would imagine it must feel heavy sometimes, so thank you for doing it and for sharing it with us.

[Rebecca Lamav]

Thanks so much, Nicole. It was great to talk with you.

[Nicole Kahlil]

My pleasure. All right, well, friend, if your brain is feeling a little wobbly right now, welcome to the club. Because if truth is unstable and our thoughts can be influenced without us even realizing it, then the work, our work, is to pay attention, to ask better questions, to pause before reposting or commenting, to check our sources and ourselves, and maybe, just maybe, to admit that we're all a little more persuadable than we'd like to believe. This isn't about living in fear or questioning everything to the point of paralysis. It's about staying open and curious. It's about building enough trust in yourself to know when something feels off, even if everyone around you is buying in. Trust your intuition and sharpen your discernment. Know that being informed is just as powerful as being empowered. And that being both. Well, that's the game changer. It's also woman's work.