A (1:43)

Yeah. Well. And did you have a sense when you got started that you were going to be involved less in the far too serious issues of America's fascist takeover than perhaps you inevitably ended up being by working on the Internet?

B (2:03)

Oh, man, it. We did feel more friendly in 2017, I will say.

A (2:08)

Which is odd, right? Because, like, this was. All this stuff was in motion, but it was just like it had. I guess it hadn't gotten that far and we were still. We thought we were so grizzled, but in retrospect, we were like. It was like our first time at the rodeo or something.

B (2:22)

Yeah.

A (2:22)

I don't know.

C (2:23)

Yeah. Fun fact. Like, Endless Thread sort of grew out of a story that someone at WBUR did about a beautiful Reddit thread where someone was soliciting letters for their dying uncle with down syndrome. It was like this beautiful, heartwarming story. And that was the thing, the Internet

B (2:43)

coming together to be kind to everyone, being kind to Each other.

A (2:46)

Yeah. Yeah.

C (2:48)

And it's all gone downhill from there.

A (2:49)

Yeah. And it's like. And so you're wrong about. Started in 2018. And I think it was based on this idea of, like, boy, howdy. Gee, willikers. There sure are a lot of stories where I feel like I'm doing, like, a Jiminy Cricket impression.

B (3:03)

Keep going. You're doing great.

A (3:04)

There sure are a lot of stories that we think we know, but we don't. And if we tell you the truth, then you'll remember and you'll learn them. And, I mean, the thing is that, like, a lot of people do listen because they want the truth, and they're extremely curious. And I feel like that's maybe the most heartening thing, certainly for me, about making the show over the past decade. But I think that Michael and I began making the show out of the sense of not to speak for him, because he probably was wiser about this than I was. But I definitely came to it with a sense of really, to me, incredible innocence of, you know, now that we have the Internet and information can travel faster, people can learn the truth faster and more also. And it's like, yeah, yeah. But there's other stuff that they prefer to learn that a lot of people are, you know, that's getting around as well.

B (4:00)

Yeah, Well, I feel like. Yeah. I feel like years ago, I would sort of come to these topics in this sort of general value of the Internet. Is it sort of like a neutral? You know, it's sort of like, yeah, there's a lot of good. There's a lot of bad.

C (4:14)

It's fine tube.

B (4:15)

Yeah. We just got a. Yeah, it's a series of tubes. And now I have to say that I have, like, my operating stance is, you know, more under siege than, like, yeah, let's figure it out together. Like, I. You know, and I think. I think we're all a little more jaded than we were in 2017 and 2018. Yeah.

A (4:37)

Which is good. We don't want to learn nothing.

C (4:39)

Yeah. I agree with the let's figure it out together, but I have definitely increasingly become more of the let's figure it out together offline kind of person, where I think I even said to Ben sometime last year, like, I don't know if I can keep scrolling, man. Like, yeah, I'm getting off of more platforms, and that means that I'm finding less material. But, like, o. With all things, it ebbs and flows. I get off and then I get back on, and then I. Yeah.

A (5:06)

You know, and Then something great lures you back, you know?

B (5:09)

Yeah.

A (5:10)

Like There was a SNL sketch about the girl on TikTok with the buttons. I was amazed by that.

C (5:16)

I don't know this one.

A (5:18)

I'm out of the loop. Okay. I kind of. Okay, here's the thing. I get it. I stand by this person because there was like, someone on TikTok who was like, okay, for the new year, I want to have, like 365 buttons just to, like, keep track of time or whatever, have a sense of time. And everyone was like, but what are you going to do with the buttons? Like, are you going to sew them on something? Are you going to, like, move them from one container to the other? What are they for? And she was like, I don't have to explain it to you. I'm not gonna. I don't have to tell you about it. And it just became like, people were so amused by this and I really.

C (5:52)

Welcome to my life. Go away.

A (5:54)

Yeah, like, I get it. It was such a phenomenon. But as someone who, like, has been making. I was thinking about this earlier, actually. I've been publishing writing online since 2012. That was what I started off doing. And of course before that I was on Livejournal starting in 2004. 4.

B (6:10)

As one does.

A (6:11)

As one does. Especially when one is writing newsies fan fiction. And.

C (6:19)

Oh, this is a fun piece about you that I did not know.

A (6:22)

It's a biographical detail that gets a little bit funnier with every year about me, possibly. And. And then you know that I've been doing the show since 2018 and was on, like, Twitter a lot back when Twitter was really fun.

C (6:35)

Yeah.

A (6:36)

And there is this like. And I imagine for this TikToker, this fatigue that with people asking you to explain every single thing you say every day where I like to think that maybe she just hit a wall and was like, I do not have to tell you what I'm doing with these buttons. You just, like, have a little imagination and figure it out.

B (6:58)

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Didn't. Don't have to. I don't have to tell you everything on the Internet all the time.

A (7:05)

I talked once on my show youw are good. I think about doing this thing I called Movie Hat. I actually stole this idea from my friends Colin and Andy Winnett, who, like, I think they guys called it that too. And you write down movies you want to see on slips of paper and then put them in, like just something and shake it up. Cause it's based on the idea of like, throw it in the hat. Throw your ideas in the hat and pass. You know, whatever. But. So the hat can be a jar. And I get that that's confusing. This is my button moment. But I, like, explained Movie Hat, where, like, you write down movies you generally want to see, and then shake it up and pull out one slip, and you're like, tonight, we'. Diabolique. Because that's what Movie Hat says. And then, like, a bunch of people are like, but where's Movie Hat? I've searched on the app store for Movie Hat, and I can't find it. I can't find Movie Hat. And I was just.

B (7:53)

You have to build your own movie hat app in real life.

A (7:56)

Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not. I explained it perfectly. I need people to make their own movie hat. I can't contribute to the decline of Western civilization like this.

B (8:07)

But, Sarah, I don't understand. Your hat is a jar. I'm confused by the jar.

A (8:11)

What are the buttons for? Amerie, what do you think about the 365 buttons? Whose side are you on? You know, in this important issue, any

C (8:22)

ounce of joy that we can squeeze out of this life in these times, I am all for. So if you want 365 buttons.

A (8:30)

So you're just pro. Everyone.

C (8:31)

I'm pro. I mean, truly, like, if you are not hurting anyone right now, you're doing a lot better than most people.

A (8:38)

So

C (8:40)

collect those buttons, put them in a hat, put them in a jar, get those buttons, hide them around your house.

A (8:45)

Tell people what you're doing with them or not. You know, never tell people what you're doing with your buttons. They don't have to know that about you. It's okay. People know everything else about you. They don't have to know what you're doing with buttons. That's right. Well, so I have called you here today to our meeting of the Midnight Society. Ben and Emery, dearly beloved, to get through this thing called life. And we're doing show that I have been calling to myself. I'm not married to this title, but it is catchy. How did you program a guy in 10 days? And the idea, I guess, is to kind of call on your experience because you've done so much investigative work in this kind of counterfactual landscape that we live in on both the silliest and the most serious levels. And I guess there isn't so much difference between them at the end of the day sometimes that, you know, we were talking about things that you could come on this show and talk about with me because you were so generous as to have me on and talk to me about my satanic panic show, the devil, you know, which of course gets internety there at the end. But to talk about maybe this question of, you know, because I had been thinking with the satanic panic stuff, I think we just been talking about this how in my opinion, having done this research, an abusive family has about the same structure a lot of the time as a cult, which has the same structure a lot of the time as a dictatorship. And this question of what do you do when the cult has to disband because the leader dies or something? And just that despite how few of the hopes I had 10 years ago have been borne out, there will continue to be people who, despite sunk cost fallacy, being as powerful as it is, despite all the things we've observed, are going to look up one day and have to walk away from, you know, from kind of, I guess, the maga cult and this worldview that has required a lot of sacrifice from people and not really had any reward as far as I can tell. And what kind of you found in your work of what it takes to allow people to do that, how that can happen, what it can look like, and I don't know, I guess, kind of what insight your work has given you into the capacity that. That people still can have to change their minds.

C (11:07)

Well, I like the how to deprogram a guy in 10 days. If you think of. If we think of each day, kind of like how. I think about a year in podcast years, where it's like one year of your podcast existing is actually 10 years in the industry or what would be a normal industry. So if, if a day is, say, who knows what measurement of time, but longer than a day, I think we do hopefully have some things to offer in that arena.

A (11:37)

I believe it.

B (11:38)

Well, and it's also so interesting that you, you know, you're making me think more about the history of our show because it is true that in the beginning we were really just kind of like going down kind of fun and silly rabbit holes. And we still do that.

A (11:55)

Right.

B (11:55)

But you know, some of our first episodes I think were about. They were about people helping each other. They were about that. The famous story of the guy getting sucked out of the windshield of the plane.

C (12:05)

Oh yeah.

B (12:06)

And. And people grabbing onto the pilot and holding on to them until they got landed and things like that. But then, but then we started like finding all of these. I feel like we started finding these debates about what was real and what was fake and what was true and what was not. And I, I want to, I want to say one of the early ones we did was another silly one which is like this P of audio. There was this like 24 hour debate about Yanny versus Laurel. Does that.

A (12:33)

Oh my. I was just thinking about that and trying to remember the non Yanny word. Yeah, I remember that. Oh my God. I might have listened to you guys talking about that actually.

B (12:43)

Absolutely. That was like such a fun early one.

A (12:47)

Yeah.

B (12:47)

But I feel like more and more we've started to, you know, get into these spaces where there is a lot of debate and see a lot of debate and without, you know, raising the terrible present specter of AI that feels very all around us right now. I feel like it's just become more and more common in the work that we do. And we've done some pretty very different kinds of stories where there are kind of similar themes and they're they're often. Yeah, they often get into this world of. Yeah, I guess, like how to deprogram people or how, how to have people talk to each other about something they really, really strongly disagree about. And bringing people over to the, you know, exposing my bias here, maybe like what I would describe as the rational, reasonable, science based, fact based side of any issue. And I think we've, we've done some. Yeah, we've done some stories about that and I feel like over time have learned, mostly just learned from the people that we've talked to.

A (13:54)

Yeah.

C (13:55)

I mean, what's interesting about Yanny and Laurel right off the bat is that sort of a spoiler. There is a sort of right answer about what that piece of audio actually is. The same way that there's a right answer about whether the dress is blue and black or white and gold. And the difference is in how we see it or what frequencies our ears hear. But there is a truth at the center of it. And that when we talk about deprogramming someone, right off the bat, you're talking about maybe one group of people who want to deprogram another group of people. But that other group of people might think that the first group of people are actually the ones who need deprogramming and whether there is an actual. Right. The same way that there is a. The dress is blue and black. You know, some things are more up for debate than others and some things are more subjective than others. And so in thinking about even just this conversation, deprogramming, there's like a big flashing caveat at the Top to say we're talking about deprogramming in general, but we might not be thinking about that. We might not have the same group in mind that needs the deprogramming, and that makes it tricky to talk about. But yes, if the first year of Endless Thread, let's say, dipped more towards the like positive and silly, who knows how it actually shook out? But if it was more positive and silly, we kicked off 2019 with a series called Infectious, which was all about anti vaxxers, the history of anti vaxxers in the US how they have come to believe that vaccines are dangerous. And, you know, right off the bat in that series, we have an episode the title of which I think I'm still.

A (15:50)

I don't.

C (15:51)

I think you came up with this one, Ben, but I'm still proud of it on our behalf, which is Scabs, Pus and Puritans.

A (15:57)

Oh, that is good.

C (15:58)

And it tells the story of. Are you familiar with Cotton Mather, Sarah?

A (16:03)

Yeah, I mean, I'm not like, you know, I haven't done a ton of coursework on the Mathers, but yes, I know that there were two of them. They were father and son. There was a Cotton and an increase and they said a whole bunch of scary stuff all the time.

C (16:17)

Yes, very good.

B (16:18)

You nailed it.

C (16:19)

I know the increase detail that his father's name was Increase was. Was new information to me when we were reporting this.

A (16:26)

Thank you, Liz Sey. Yeah.

C (16:28)

Yes. So. So he was this Puritan minister who in the. In the 1700s in Boston, there is a. A terrifying smallpox outbreak. And, you know, most people were walking around with the evidence of smallpox, either having had smallpox.

A (16:47)

This is one with, with costume dramas, by the way. Is not enough pox. Not enough that you see a costume drama where people have pox scars.

B (16:55)

Yeah, you should have those bumpy faces. Come on. Not enough bumpy faces.

A (16:59)

Yeah, too pristine and, you know, too much filler. But that's, you know, on top of the pox issue, which is my main problem. So.

C (17:07)

So Cotton Mather, he has enslaved someone who has a scar and he inquires about this scar and this person that he's enslaved says we had to get the smallpox to avoid the smallpox, basically. And so he's talking about being scratched with a little bit of the, the pus of someone who had smallpox in his home country and that prevented him from getting full blown smallpox. And this was, this was revolutionary to Cotton Mather. And it was a really weird, scary thing to think about at the time that you would give yourself a little bit of this horrific virus in order to try to prevent yourself from getting full blown smallpox.

A (17:51)

Do we know this enslaved person's name or is it just lost to the sands of time?

C (17:57)

Well, yes and no.

B (17:59)

So yeah, it's, it's the, the, the enslaved person's name is, is not actually their real name, as near as we can tell. And it's an interesting. I mean, one of the things that's funny about this story too is like. And I don't know, maybe I'm giving away the punchline here, but Cotton Mather gets. Ends up getting completely credited, by the way, with like saving Boston from this smallpox outbreak.

A (18:25)

Yeah, well, because he's close personal friends with God, it makes total sense.

B (18:29)

Exactly. God's. Yeah, he's picking up the God phone. But the actual person, you know, who like made this happen was this enslaved person in. In Cotton Mather's house.

A (18:43)

Yeah.

B (18:44)

Who was like actually bringing this idea to like, you know, 1700s Boston. But it was a much older idea

A (18:51)

and someone who you trust enough to save Boston but not to be freed.

B (18:56)

Exactly.

A (18:57)

Interestingly for the Puritans. Yeah.

C (18:59)

He called him Onesimus, which we're not sure exactly how to pronounce, but Onesimus, which means useful.

A (19:06)

Oh, dear. Oh, dear indeed.

B (19:08)

Yeah, oh dear indeed.

C (19:09)

But at the time, you know, there's a, there's a group that forms called the Society of Physicians Anti Inoculators. And this is, you could say today is like the earliest anti vaccine group group in the country. And it's led by one of the only official MDs in the area at the time. And so Cotton Mather was the one who was conducting these weird, seemingly dangerous experiments. And most people saw them as such.

B (19:42)

Yeah.

C (19:42)

And it just kind of speaks to the idea that, you know, mainstream thinking can flip flop and become fringe. And it has. And this is. Vaccines are a perfect example of this.

A (19:53)

Great. Well, and also that. And it seems like that maybe vaccine at the time was the, you know, was something that. If you haven't really tested something and you're advocating using it on a large human population, then I don't care what it is. You know, it's. I don't care if it's milk. I want, I want more data. And we have kind of done the milk thing.

B (20:11)

Yes. And this is what's so interesting about the history is that, you know, in the beginning, the vaccinators and the inoculators were the weird ones. Right. They were the ones who were like, okay, we're just, I guess we're just gonna try this.

A (20:24)

We're a bunch of kooks.

B (20:25)

Yeah. We're gonna like try this in our houses and then we're gonna try to like get a bunch of people to do it. And Dr. William Douglas, the, the person who's leading this opposition group, which also was like a surprise to me, that when you go back to the beginning of this history that, you know, people think of anti vaxxers or vaccine hesitant people or resistance to vaccination as being a relatively new development in, you know, in our, in our experience, in our lived experience. But it was going on since the beginning. And I think that's because the science in the beginning was weird and experimental and one might say not pretty non scientific. Right. It was like, right. This person, I think they, they know how to do this thing that's, you know, gonna save us all. Let's, let's try it on a couple of people and see how it works out.

A (21:14)

Well, yeah. And I think we also weren't really taught that history because I certainly was and I realize there's only so much time we have for this type of thing, but taught history with this view of like. And then science figured this out and everyone was like, yeah, that makes sense. And they all did it, you know, And I mean, also, I'm sure there was stuff that I just kind of didn't pay enough attention to, but I feel like having experienced what we are experiencing, I would want to teach history with more of an emphasis on, you know, just the behavior of people being anything but monolithic consistently. You know, and things like, you know, this is kind of different from what we're talking about, but the fact that there were, you know, a lot of very loud isolationists before and during World War II based on, you know, partly on just sort of this idea of old fashioned American anti. Semitism.

B (22:01)

Yep.

A (22:02)

And painting America sort of as the protagonist of most historical events and the American people as basically an agreement, except during the Civil War, feels like a disservice to sort of, I don't know, the history that we could learn to be able to better understand what we're going through right now.

C (22:19)

Yeah.

B (22:20)

And that also helps us deprogram people by understanding and acknowledging that the history is mixed. Right. That it's not actually just this way or just that way. That like there, there, there were experiments that have gone wrong. There are things that have happened that have been huge, huge disaster. You know, you can, you can acknowledge that stuff while still maintaining a position that's like, you know, whatever Science based, in fact, based when you're talking about the efficacy of vaccines. But I think often this stuff gets turned into this because there's been flip flopping in the past. People get scared to even acknowledge how messy the past is.

A (23:02)

Right.

B (23:03)

Because they feel like they're like giving ground up. And I actually think like when you're. If we're talking about how to deprogram somebody in, in 10 days, part, part of the answer is like AC or even more days. But it's realizing, yeah, it is good.

C (23:16)

10 days. *, fine print.

A (23:20)

My, like may vary.

B (23:21)

Yeah. Like just acknowledging that stuff is actually helpful because it builds rapport with the person that you're trying to bring around.

C (23:28)

I think the thing continuing to trace the history, the thing about this that sort of broke my brain, shattered me a little bit, is that if you keep tracing it through the 20th century and you get to the counterculture of the 60s and the 70s when there is quite a bit of authority being questioned and you have things like the feminist movement, which, you know, offshoot of that is the women's health movement. And growing out of that is people asking more and more questions about doctors and doctors having the end all be all word. And maybe doctors aren't telling us about all the risks associated with certain procedures and medications. And maybe we do need to educate ourselves and advocate for ourselves. And we do, you know, we should have control over whether we become, become pregnant or not. We need to be empowered over our bodies. And in time, some of those questions end up getting applied to that generation's children and saying, oh well, we, we should have control over our children and whether they're getting vaccinated or not. There's an empowerment in the skepticism and the right to be skeptical and to exercise that skepticism.

A (24:41)

Yeah, I feel like that. And then it's like it comes around to the fact that a lot of the people kind of leading the whole anti vax idea in its most recent iteration is that they're kind of bad at being skeptical. Because the point of being skeptical is to want to assess information on your own. And in fact, it feels like we have something else with the mask of skepticism on, when really it turns into something that is more comforting and easier to do, which is blind rule following, but following someone else's rules and then letting them tell you that you're being really smart and skeptical for doing it. But I mean, it does feel like we got stuck a lot. And this feels like a very sort of like part of the culture of American liberalism in the past 10 years has been the famous. And I brought this up recently, but the little yard sign or whatever of, like, in this house, we believe science. And just this kind of idea of like, science couldn't hurt a fly. And it's like, well, science has broken some very precious eggs for very little reason to make some very pointless omelets.

C (25:44)

Yeah.

A (25:45)

And it's not doing anyone favors to pretend that didn't happen, you know?

C (25:50)

Yes, totally. Yeah. People did die in the early inoculation experiments, and it led to, you know, modernized vaccination, which has saved millions and millions of lives. And both things are true. And if you can't. If you can't handle them both, you're in trouble.

A (26:06)

Right.

B (26:06)

We talked to this guy as part of that reporting, this guy, Ian McCauley, and he was such an interesting example because he got the polio vaccine, and he got polio, and there was an error in how it was administered to him. So it's less likely than your typical tiny percentage of people who might get it from the vaccine. But, you know, again, like, Ian McCauley was a great person to talk to because on the one hand, he's like, yeah, I got polio from the vaccine. And on the other hand, he was like, everyone should absolutely get the polio vaccine. So part of that, like you're saying, part of acknowledging the broken eggs and the omelets that were pointless leads people to make their own decisions, hopefully in a direction that is positive for everyone.

A (27:00)

Right. Yeah. And also. And that you can't demand people's trust while also not giving them the whole truth, which is tricky because I realized that if there's one thing we like to indicate as Americans, it's that we really would prefer not to handle the truth. But if you try and make us do it anyway, sometimes it works.

B (27:24)

That's right.

C (27:24)

Well, and this speaks a little bit to why people get programmed in the first place is, you know, when. When we were talking to some parents who would label themselves as vaccine hesitant, some of that hesitation or what. What was hesitation turned into opposition to vaccines for some of them is a conversation with a doctor that really ended up not being a conversation because they tried to raise concerns and felt very quickly shut down, like, oh, God, here's another one. Like, here's the packet. Out of my way. We're getting your child vaccinated. They just felt totally dismissed. And that pushed them further in the direction what might have been skepticism. A normal amount of skepticism got turned up to 10, because they just didn't feel Listened to. And so we can. Right, we can push people further in one direction simply in how we talk to them about something that they are uncertain of.

A (28:29)

Yeah, well, and that seems like, again, evidence of this bigger systemic problem that so many people are experiencing where it feels like you're made to feel lucky to be able to see a doctor at all. And then they seem as if they only have about 18 seconds.

B (28:47)

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And if you're purposefully going into a situation where you are trying to change someone's mind and, you know, it's maybe a statement of the obvious, but if you're a jerk to them and you like, write off all their questions and tell them they're stupid, that's not. That's not going to work. That's a bad place to start.

A (29:08)

Right.

B (29:09)

You know, that's. That's part of what the professionals say about deprogramming people, right? Is like, be careful about your language. Talk about your own experience. Ask questions, don't tell people. Don't say, you know you're stupid. You're wrong. You know, you're.

A (29:24)

Don't say you're wrong about. We're starting off on the right foot. I gotta say,

B (29:31)

great title for a show, though. It's good, but you have to. Yeah, you just have to build that trust in it. You know, if you don't have a situation where you're. You're building that trust, then of course people are gonna. They're gonna say, oh, screw this person. I'm gonna go over here and. And try to figure out the truth. And then, you know, wherever they end up going for the truth might. Might be even more problematic.

A (29:53)

It also occurs to me that probably in the past it was easier to make yourself feel better by denouncing someone by calling them stupid or ignorant. And at this point, to me, it seems like the only thing that really matters is willingness to try and learn. Because to me, maybe the most frustrating thing is the number of people who are like, I do my own research. And you're like, okay, can I tell you some numbers? And they're like, no, no.

C (30:21)

Yeah. We were talking about this the other day with regards to the Change my view subreddit and how people are going on there and saying, change my view about X. And, you know, we had an example recently on the show that was something light, but it was about, like, the correct way to open a banana. So a person is going. Is going into that subreddit, clearly with like, a strong held belief about, in this case, opening a banana. But the Very fact that they're posting in that subreddit, at least if they're doing so in good faith, comes with the idea that they are open to their view being changed. They are ready to hear other information, and doesn't mean that their view will be changed. But that is actually kind of a, a hopeful place, I think, on the Internet, in the sense that when the person is actually posting in good faith, they're saying, okay, show me what you got. Give me what you got. Here's what I think. And, and you do see in those posts somet going like, all right, I hear you. Okay, so we need a little bit more of that, I think, because the shutting down and the. I think isolation is a, is really a key ingredient in how people fall down some rabbit hole from which they might need to be deprogrammed. And whether it's isolation of a just a doctor that doesn't even want to hear your concerns or actual isolation of, you know, we, we talked to someone who had fallen down the QAnon rabbit hole. His name was Jatar Jadeja. And Jatarth told us, I think from the very simple question of just, you know, how would you describe yourself? Jatarth, he says, well, I have bipolar disorder. I have epilepsy, I have adhd. He had this like, list of mental health issues that he led with. And that kind of set the stage for him telling the story of falling down the QAnon rabbit hole, which is he's, you know, he's not feeling well. He has isolated himself from his friends in this period of time that he falls down the rabbit hole because he just feels overwhelmed by a lot of things in life. And Trump had just won the 2016 election, and every news source that he had been watching at the time told him that was never going to happen, basically. And so he starts consuming Alex Jones because Alex Jones was one of the people at the time saying, Trump is going to win. Trump is going to win. And he goes, maybe this is the person I should be following. They seem to have the answers.

A (32:56)

He's surrounded by gold.

C (32:58)

He's surrounded by gold. And he's surrounded by gold at a time when his mental health sets him up to fall down a rabbit hole that he really might not have fallen down otherwise.

B (33:09)

Yeah. And Jatarth was interesting too, because Jatarth told us, like, I used to be a libert, libertarian, left wing guy, get rid of student debt, et cetera, et cetera.

A (33:19)

That's the old X Files track. You start off as a lone gunman and Then you end up in QAnon.

B (33:24)

That's right. And he really took this hard, hard turn. And Emery, you can talk about how he got out, but I think it was this kind of thing where he felt really isolated. And we did a couple of episodes about QAnon and talked to people who dealt with QAnon. And one of the things in the same episode where we talk about Jatara or talk to Jatarth, I had had this, like, really weird thing happen to me where I was. It was 2018 Thanksgiving, and I did the Thanksgiving tradition of going out the night before Thanksgiving in my hometown and seeing all the people I used to go to high school with, which I don't know why I did that to myself, but I did that. And I got in a lift on the way home and started talking to the guy who is driving the Lyft. And he. As soon as I told him what I did, he was like, oh, Reddit. He was like, do you know about Q? And he just, like, went off on, you know, Q and how Donald Trump was working with the secret government agent and the whole QAnon story. And he was in so deep, like, he had dates. He. He knew exactly what was going to happen over the next six months, and he was telling me all about it, and it was really. It actually freaked me out, like, being in this car with this guy. I got freaked. And I purposefully got out of the lift before my house because I was like, I don't want this guy to know where I live. He seems unhinged. And then I left my phone in the car.

A (34:56)

Oh, my God.

B (34:57)

And so then, like, I spent the next day trying to get the phone back from this guy. And he came to the dinner. He came to. He came back to where I was eating Thanksgiving dinner. And I was so thankful that I could get him. I could get him back. And I got. I had $40 for him, and I made him a giant plate of food, and I was, like, so thankful. And I went out and tried to offer him the food, and I gave him the. I gave him the 40 bucks. He gave me my phone. He had parked in the street, and I tried to give him the food, and he. He started crying, and he was like, my mother died a year ago today. And I told myself that I wouldn't eat today. And he sort of got out of the car, and I. He was like, almost. I was worried he was going to, like, walk into traffic. And I got him to the side of the road, and he was like, like, super distraught. And I gave him a hug, and he said thank you, and he got back in the car and drove away. But it just struck me that he had described his discovery of Q and it really had happened during this year.

C (35:58)

Yeah.

B (35:59)

After this, like, super traumatic thing had happened to him, he went deep into Q. And I'm not saying that it's guaranteed, obviously, that this was the thing, but I think there's a lot of trauma behind our really strong opinions, too.

A (36:13)

Yeah.

B (36:13)

And. And that's, like, a thing that we have to acknowledge and understand when people have a really strong place that they're coming from. And that's part of it, too, and we have to be cognizant of that. And I think it was the same with Jatarth, where he was really isolated, feeling alone, had some really serious stuff going on in his life. And that can be a real trigger for you ending up in a place where you have these really, really strong, intense feelings and beliefs about something, and you're not always looking at it as objectively as you should be.

A (36:48)

Yeah.

C (36:48)

And he also said that, like, Q brought him so much joy for the first time in a while because he felt like he had this. This new sense of purpose in life, this new sort of.

A (36:59)

Yeah.

C (36:59)

Meaning that he was a warrior for this information only.

A (37:06)

Yeah.

C (37:06)

Well, yeah. And that, like, that only a certain group of people know the actual truth. And. And I have to. I'm fighting the good fight for that information. And it was like he said, it was like he was like an addict for this information. He couldn't stop talking about it because it invigorated, like, infused his life with something that it was missing before. And so if we're going to keep people from falling down these rabbit holes, like, we have to confront the void before conspiracies fill it.

A (37:34)

Yeah. And it does feel like a conspiracy theory and becoming a big believer in it. I mean, there's so many things that can draw you to that, and one of them is just, you know, good mania. But another, I feel like. Yeah. Is that the kind of lack of meaning in life or a lack of a feeling of meaning or a feeling of feeling connected with other people or with a community and that it. I mean, it's been such a long time now, in a way. But, I mean, I feel like, is it fair to say that at least in its original iteration, that kind of. The QAnon fandom, I guess, was. I read it as, like, fan fiction of at least the first term of the Trump presidency, and it was like all these Ways that you could decode what appeared to be happening, which was

B (38:21)

hard to explain sometimes.

A (38:23)

Right. Because it would appear to be like a racist and small time criminal who had accidentally become president and now you could kind of get his ear if you gave him a bunch of pink starburst. But in fact, according to QAnon, it was really this complex web of codes and it was like this web of symbolism. It was like playing myst or reading T.S. eliot or something. Where in reality, Trump was going to find all of the child sexual abusers and get them a mission that he has undertaken with great restraint, it must be said. But this idea that, that every day you got to wake up and see not what all these idiots thought was happening, but what was really happening and have a community about it. Like, it feels like, I feel like when people talk about the male loneliness epidemic, like a, the type I've seen that I agree with most is that there's just a human loneliness epidemic and men are about half of that and we're focusing on them more. And, baby, that it feels like the proposed cure for the male loneliness epidemic proposed by men, interestingly, is that if women have sex with them, then they won't all be so lonely. So we just need to lower our standards, which I don't think is it. I think community is the answer. And it feels like QAnon was like, I don't know what I want to call it, a community substitute. But do you think that that became an actual community for people?

B (40:02)

Oh, definitely. I, I think so. You know, you see this stuff at rallies and, you know, political rallies and stuff too. And they're so, I mean, like, I, I feel like the Charlie Kirk public event after his death felt that way to me, where there was a community coming together. And again, I'm not trying to compare, you know, all the people who followed Charlie Kirk to QAnon necessarily, but I guess I'm just saying, like, I think there is absolutely community in strongly held beliefs.

A (40:33)

Yeah.

B (40:34)

And I don't think there's. There's probably not a lot of newsies, fanfic and QAnon crossover.

A (40:41)

There's got to be a little. And that, that does worry me.

B (40:44)

You'd be the one to tell us.

A (40:47)

I don't want to know. You know, there's some things that I are better left unlearned.

B (40:53)

But I do think, you know, folks are looking for community and, and they, you know, that when they find community and whatever, that, you know, if that community is a skepticism of vaccines, community, if it's A community that is that Donald Trump is, you know, working with a secret government agent to disassemble a state like that can be a community too.

A (41:16)

Right.

C (41:16)

I see it maybe slightly differently where I, I wouldn't doubt that it is a community of sorts, but it's sort of like when you're on social media and you feel like you're interacting with your friends because you're commenting on their, their posts or their pictures or whatnot.

B (41:30)

And.

C (41:31)

And there is community in that. There's more connection there than there would be if you hadn't commented at all. But it's, it's not the same as sitting down with a muffin. And I don't know why I picked a muffin, but sitting down with them.

A (41:44)

Muffin equals community. And some soup and being face to face.

C (41:51)

And I do feel like some of this was greatly exacerbated by the fact that there was a false sense of community, a very shallow false sense of community around ideas that got people really energized without actually being really connected to each other.

A (42:08)

Well, to use the newsies fandom as an example, right. It's like you come together because you all love newsies, and then you look around and you realize that you're all bisexual 15 year olds and you're like, well, all right, you know, and you all love Phantom or something like that, right. They're like, there are all these things that draw people together. And then it's like once, you know, once you're there, you get to figure

B (42:31)

out what the real thing is.

A (42:32)

Not that everything's always hunky dory, but

C (42:35)

like, it's easier to be a community when you're nameless and faceless on the Internet than it is in real life.

A (42:41)

Well, and I guess the question is, like, what is that community for and how is that affected by the way that it's created? Because if your community becomes, because you have a shared enemy, even one you invented, then how will you grow around that? And will you sort of find that? Because I'm sure that some people who were brought together by QAnon did find things that they had in common outside of this, and then that could create real bonds and that there was the capacity for that. But it also feels like that gets into sort of the area of community feeling where you're just in a culture.

B (43:17)

Yeah.

A (43:17)

Where also then it's like you're brought together by beliefs and ideas, but then if you start to question them, then the threat, you know, implicitly at least, is that that is going to be taken away from you because there are things that you have to believe in, enemies that you have to share, else you don't get to have this community anymore.

B (43:35)

That's right. And I also think, like, this is why I think people say when you're trying to deprogram someone, that getting specific is important. Important because you start to, like you're saying, you start to. You, you know, when you are face to face with people and you're interacting with the community, you start to realize, hopefully you start to realize why you're really together, why you're really getting together, and, like, what is the actual thing that's drawing you together and. And maybe it's the thing that, you know, you started with and maybe it's not. And getting specific when you talk to people helps you figure that out, I think. Helps you suss out, like, the why, why of why you're, you know, involved in this thing. And also you start to learn other people's logic for their decisions. And I remember when we were doing some of the vaccine reporting, you know, we met a family outside of a grocery store in Portland, Oregon, actually, I think it was in Clark County. We talked to this family and they were like, they were kind of like half in, half out. Like, they. They were a little bit skeptical. They had, like, several kids.

C (44:38)

They were doing it on a different schedul.

B (44:40)

Yeah, they, like, did a different vaccine schedule. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

C (44:44)

They just had decided that they were gonna, I think, give their kids most of the vaccines. They weren't sure about the chickenpox vaccine, but they just wanted to do it on a different timeline. And they felt immediately dropped into the anti vax bucket for not wanting to vaccinate their kids on the schedule that the. At least the CDC at the time was following.

B (45:09)

Yeah, I remember the mother, she was sort of like, you know, I'd rather that my kids get chickenpox. They're not going to die from chickenpox. I'm just saying. This is what she said. Right, Right. So why am I vaccinating them for chickenpox? And she said, because I think somebody's making money on me vaccinating against chickenpox.

A (45:28)

And the thing is, Right. And I think. I don't know if you can literally die from chickenpox, but I know that there can be very dire consequences or else, you know, it's like shingles later on in life. It's much. You know, there are all these reasons medically why it's much better to be vaccinated and if I had kids, I would, I would absolutely vaccinate them against everything I could think of. But also, I was exposed to chickenpox intentionally when I was a kid, as probably everyone was in the 90s when your moms would just be like, all right, go get chickenpox, we gotta do it now. It's gonna be worse if we wait.

C (45:59)

Yep, yep, same.

A (46:01)

And that was kind of, I don't know, it was like fun. And it's also night that that doesn't have to happen. It's just something that we get to share and lord over our children one day, I guess. But all, you know, but at the same time, right, Like I look at Ozempic and I'm very, you know, conspiracy theory minded about that one. I don't think it's really, I don't even have to see myself as a conspiracy theorist. I think it's just a medication that has never been adequately tested on humans that now is being handed to the consumer and the citizens of a large God fearing nation are being used as its guinea pigs and we have no idea what the long term side effects are. And also people are making so much money, you know, so again, it's like the impulse to question the motivations behind Big Pharma that is part of all this is like, I don't ever want to act like that's dumb because obviously seeing the nefariousness behind the choices that we're able to make for ourselves medically, like, you shouldn't tell people to not see that.

B (47:04)

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that's, that's another interesting piece where like, if, again, if you're trying to deprogram someone in 10, deprogram a guy in 10 days, like, and you're getting specific and starting to talk to them and also being curious and also acknowledging the sort of mixed past that has led to where we are. Whatever topic you're talking about, I do think that that is part of it is like, yeah, I'm skeptical of giant mega, you know, multinational corporations. And I think you should be, I think you should be asking questions about that stuff. I think you should be thinking about things like, you know, good scientific testing and you know, I have similar feelings about Ozempic myself. And I. And you might end up realizing that you have more in common with this person than you think you do.

A (47:55)

Yeah.

B (47:55)

And again, that can sort of like build this trust. Another thing that they say, right, is that you, if the person is close to you, you have to actually spend, believe it or not, you have to spend more time with them, not less.

A (48:07)

Sorry.

B (48:08)

If. If it feels. If it, if it feels safe. If it feels safe to do so. Right.

A (48:13)

Yeah.

B (48:13)

Because again, you sort of build this, this common language and trust and rapport and like, you understand that you both, like, neither of you are necessarily like a huge. Are just gonna like, take whatever big pharma throws at you. Right. And that starts to build this foundation where you can, you can pull them out of wherever they are are in. That is maybe less reasonable and less of a shared perspective.

C (48:38)

Yeah. And that's where the 10 days comes in. Because I feel like there's so much patience required in that approach. And for some people, it's really not possible. We had done this episode right after the 2024 election where someone didn't feel like they could spend time with a family member. It was a trans person who felt like they couldn't spend time with a family member who did not acknowledge they. Their identity as, as their true self. And that is understandable. But if you can spend more time with them and you can just build more trust overall. And maybe you're just hanging out and doing the kind of like common groundish activities of, well, hate is politics, but we both like the Patriots or whatever. Another weird example coming from me specifically.

A (49:27)

But.

C (49:28)

But if there are be finding more

B (49:31)

like, commonality with someone who hates the pat. I think maybe, but go on.

A (49:35)

I think that's the main thing to look for.

C (49:37)

Just football in general.

A (49:38)

Yeah. I mean, and I feel like no one should ever feel like they have to spend time with their family for truly any reason.

B (49:45)

Fair.

A (49:45)

But it does feel like part of the situation we're in. Yeah. Is like people relying on media as kind of a community substitute. And of course that's been sold to us as well. And then the fact that when we try and picture each other, we often see caricatures that have been sort of given to us as opposed to, you know, having real people to associate those ideas with, you know?

C (50:09)

Well, I think that gets at. In terms of whether you spend time with the family member or not. The question is, do you want to deprogram this person? You know, if you do and it feels safe to spend time with them, then you, you go for it. And if you feel like they are, are, well, maybe not a lost cause, but if it's. If it's better.

A (50:30)

What if you find someone else's family member and then someone else gets yours? That's right.

C (50:37)

If it's healthier for you to not deprogram that person in particular, that is also understandable.

A (50:43)

Well, and so in terms of the stories that you've reported on and experienced in the past, I don't know however many eras of American life this has been. I'm curious. Curious, just kind of personally about, like, what do you think of when you think of someone changing their mind in this way or about this kind of deprogramming idea? Are there examples that come to mind?

B (51:05)

Yeah. I mean, we could go back to Jatarth. Right. Amerie and the way and how he kind of came out of it.

A (51:11)

Yeah. What was that like for him?

C (51:14)

Yeah. So it's funny with Jatarth because he was so deep into QAnon, and yet the thing that pulled him out out was pretty small, comparatively. So he comes across this video online that has to do with a very particular theory around QAnon, which is that the phrase tippy top, Trump saying the phrase tippy top was sort of like,

A (51:40)

tippy top, tippy top. He does say that a lot. Or at least he did that. I remember that. Yeah. No, that is one of his favorites.

C (51:48)

And. And Q followers thought that this was a sort of, like, dog whistle to them and that this. This held some larger significance.

A (51:57)

I mean, there was that episode of Seinfeld where George wanted to change a woman's answering machine tape, and then the code word for when she was getting too close was to go tippy toe, tippy toe. So, you know, I'm sure there's precedent. It all makes sense. It all comes. Yeah.

C (52:16)

And so he watches this one, one video that shows that Trump had actually been using tippy top long before he ever ran for public office.

A (52:25)

Oh, no.

C (52:26)

It all fell apart. I mean, it was. It was these. It was these tiny, like, seeds of doubt.

A (52:32)

That's incredible.

C (52:34)

Yeah. And that actually gives me a lot of hope, because you don't know what is going to sow a seed of doubt. And there are people who would say that, like, doubt. Doubt is the way out. Doubt is how you, like, claw your own way out. And there's sort of like some Jedi mind trick stuff going on with deprogramming, where it is helpful if you can make someone think that this was their idea, if you can put material in front of them, whether it's someone who has. If it's a, you know, a cult, if it's someone who has left that cult and found their way out, and you are helping them find that information with. Without necessarily holding the mirror so obviously up to them and accusing their exact beliefs. It's going to be a lot easier for that person to sort of, like, doubt freely within their own mind without you looking over their shoulder and going, you know, are you. Are you with me yet? Are you with me yet?

A (53:35)

Right.

C (53:36)

So it can be something so small, and whatever you can do to. To sow a seed of doubt is helpful.

A (53:42)

Well, and I think, too, that there's, like, the joy of conspiracy making. Conspiracy theorizing is the same in a way as the joy of figuring out the truth or of doubting or of thinking like, oh, my God, what if Tippy Top is just like, I found evidence of him saying it in 2008. We're getting to the bottom of Tippy Top, you know, And I feel like that can be not as satisfying in the sense that you think you found your theory of everything. Right. But. But that it feels good to, like, dig into reality in that way. I really believe.

C (54:14)

Yeah. And I think it feels even better if you can really sort of, either literally or figuratively, wrap your arms around that person when they do come out of it, because the truth feels good, but it also. You do lose some of that sort of, like, greater purpose. Oh, no. I thought we were all. I thought. Thought.

B (54:36)

I believe the phrase is the truth hurts, Amerie. I believe that's the phrase.

A (54:40)

The truth.

C (54:40)

Yeah. The truth hurts. And if. If you are making sure that there is not some new void created that will be filled with something else, but that you are there to fill the void and be there for the person as they are, sort of like. I don't know if mourning a loss is a fair analogy, but you're. You're mourning a loss of. Of something. Of some way of thinking that was kind of intoxicating. And now you need a new. Yeah, you need a new source of something. Support.

B (55:05)

Sarah, do you know the Herman Cain Award?

A (55:08)

Oh, my gosh. Wait. I might. I feel like it's not for something good. What is it?

B (55:14)

That's correct.

A (55:15)

That is correct.

B (55:15)

That's correct.

C (55:17)

You don't want to get it.

B (55:18)

You may remember that presidential candidate and Republican politician Herman Cain. So he was. Herman Cain is somewhat infamous, one could say, for basically questioning Kof Covid pretty intensely and then going to a rally in Tulsa unmasked. And then very quickly after that, after publicly tweeting that the disease was not deadly. Dying from complications of COVID Yeah. And so, of course, there is a subreddit, and, you know, there are Internet communities based around this idea of the Herman Cain Award. And we did an episode about this and talked to Some of the moderators from that sub. Subredd. But essentially the idea is taking people who are basically attacking Covid as, like, a hoax, et cetera, et cetera, online and then sort of following what happens to them. And in some cases, people do get sick from COVID and die from COVID And it is one of those, you know, when you. When you see this stuff pass. Pass you by. Well, this is my experience, when you see this stuff pass you by in the Internet, you're kind of like, well, you know, it's easier to have some schadenfreude there. But when you actually think about it, it's, like, pretty messed up. You know, one could say that anyone dying unnecessarily is a sad thing. And it's sort of somewhat nihilistic to make fun of people, you know, for dying, I think.

A (56:50)

So I think I'm gonna really get behind that idea. I don't. Yeah, no reservations. There it is. And I get that it's hard to look at what's going on and. And not sort of fall into nihilism to an extent, because sometimes the call is too strong. But, yeah, ultimately, I don't want to celebrate anyone's death, except possibly one. So there you go.

C (57:13)

Who shall remain nameless?

B (57:15)

No, but I do. But I do think, like. And this was kind of interesting because you hope. I think sometimes when you're trying to deprogram someone, that ridicule will work. And, you know, in some cases, I think ridicule does work, but I think most of the time, it. It. It doesn't seem to work. And I think when we made this episode, we talked to both the recipient of a Herman Cain nomination. His name is Glenn. He lives in Colorado, and also the moderators. And we talked to a moderator of the subreddit for the Herman Cain Award, Hammy. We. You know, it was really interesting because Glenn is. You can sort of maybe assum. Where he's coming from. He's posting a lot of memes on Facebook about how Covid was stupid and fake, et cetera, et cetera. He got nominated for an award, went viral because of that, being nominated for the Herman Cain Award. And then he got a call from his daughter who was like, please, please, please, please stop this. Go to the hospital. He got sick with COVID of course, and she was really upset that he had been. That he had been nominated for the award and gone viral for. Of COVID skepticism. And he stuck to his guns. He was being treated with Ivermectin, and he did not end up going to the hospital. But it was so interesting to talk to him. He really reminded me of my uncles who live in Colorado, just in terms of the way he sounded. And it made me sort of feel badly that he had gone viral in this way. But, of course, understanding some of the things that he put on Facebook were really misguided. And what we tried to do, because Hammy, the moderator for this Herman Kane awards subreddit, actually told us that they had seen evidence of people who got nominated for the award actually change their tune and change the way that they were thinking about this. And so what we tried to do, we didn't end up doing it, but what we tried to do is get them to talk to each other.

A (59:21)

That would have been interesting.

B (59:22)

Yeah, because, like, eventually, like, you know, ultimately, like, a lot of these people who are. Who are, like, really upset about this stuff that are. That is happening. And. And one of the interesting things was that Glenn and Hammy both had long Covid. And so it was like this interesting thing where both of the, you know, they were coming from totally different ends of the spectrum in terms of what they, you know, believed about the disease and. Or the virus and, you know, how to. How to approach it. But they had this kind of, like, shared experience, and we. We tr. Get them to talk to each other. They didn't end up talking to each other, but Glenn's daughter was, I think, an example of somebody who had. Who was coming from a very different place than Glenn and I think had had a change of heart. So I do think to, you know, To. To be more. Taking Covid much more seriously. So I do think that this stuff can happen. And we have talked to people who have had real changes of heart. We talked to somebody. We did an episode about Hassan Piker. Do you know of that guy?

A (60:23)

No.

B (60:24)

They call him the Joe Rogan. The left.

A (60:26)

Oh, boy.

B (60:27)

He's. Yeah, he's.

A (60:28)

Or as I call him, the guy from news radio of the left.

B (60:32)

Yes, yes. He's somebody who a lot of people talk to after the most recent presidential election because he, you know, he's a very popular streamer, and he was. He was kind of helping a lot of more legacy media decode what had happened in the election from his perspective. Obviously, he's. He's definitely controversial in his own right for some of the views that he holds and. And some of the things that he says. But while he streams on Twitch for eight hours a day, seven days a week, or whatever it is, that's too

A (61:01)

many hours Hasan too many hours.

B (61:04)

But we talked to somebody named Jaden who had grown up in a small town in Arkansas and it was very small religious town, grew up around pretty, we could say homophobic views. And Jaden eventually, through this parasocial relationship that he developed with Hasan as a college kid, started to question some of the things that he had, you know, that he had been taught growing up. And eventually as he, it was sort of, it was happening at the same time he was going to college. And so his university was expanding there because he was going to University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, which is much, a much bigger place than Heber Springs where he grew up. But you know, the Internet was also expanding his understanding of different ideas about American foreign policy, for instance, and, and what was happening in, in Gaza, for instance. And so like, I think over time it's so tricky because at the, on, on the one hand you're like doing your own research on the Internet and you're, you're pulled down these rabbit holes. And on the other hand, when your universe expands, you can also find people that help you change the way you feel in what I would describe as a positive way sometimes.

C (62:19)

Effy Hasan's an interesting example too, because in thinking about this topic, to talk to you about it, Sarah, I guess I've become more and more thinking along the lines of like one on one conversations. And you know, the idea that a lot of times when people pull themselves out of something that they didn't even realize the, the, the depths of the hole that they've fallen into, it was one person who didn't give up on them. It was one family member, it was one friend. It was these kinds of conversations that inch towards, you know, curious, well meaning questions with a foundation of trust and rapport there to sort of catch them when they, when they get caught in a web of like, friction in the conversation. And yet I think Hasan, and I'm not holding up Hasan personally in this example, but that is an example of some of the, I don't know, the approach that we could take if we were thinking about deprogramming large amounts of people. There is a lot to be said for someone who just kind of sets an example that you want, want to follow. And maybe that is a person close to you in your life. Maybe that's like a parent or a friend, or maybe it's a person on the Internet who is not just talking about politics or not just talking about whatever, his fitness regimen, but together there's some model of behavior that you want to emulate and we just need a lot more truth on these platforms and, and being these sorts of examples of, you know, the kind of person you want to see in the world, if we're going to swing things in a more truthful direction than in the one that we're going seem to be going in, I guess I won't be too depressing about it, but it's going to take some combination of better examples on larger platforms, but also just better conversations one on one.

A (64:18)

Yeah. Part of this bigger picture, I think, is that, you know, people say they want community, but. But then I think many of us in the United States have been raised to be consumers more than citizens. And that is kind of the culture that we've been given and what has been taught to us. And if we're trying to combat the sort of cheap, I don't know, or the easily had sense of false comfort that comes from getting upset about something online and feeling like you're surrounded by people who are as upset as you, then you can't come back. Combat that with just sort of low effort online platform type stuff. The only way to combat that maybe is through actual human connection.

C (65:00)

Yeah.

A (65:01)

And that's the thing that you can't, you can't really scale up either. You just have to keep doing it.

C (65:06)

Yeah. And I guess that's going back to sort of the beginning of this conversation and talking about the Internet and its role and vacillating between optimism and pessimism on the Internet is like, like I feel like maybe the, if not optimism that I feel now, it's more of an acceptance of the Internet as a tool that is never, ever, ever going away. And so I'm not feeling like we need to lean into it harder. I'm just looking for ways to harness it to do more good than harm.

A (65:35)

Yeah.

C (65:35)

And that's a, that's a low bar for a lot of people out there. Or that would sound like a low bar to someone who's like, AI is the future. But, but that in some, like the bar that I am clinging to right now as I try to get more and more offline while accepting this genie that can't be put back in the bottle.

A (65:56)

Yeah.

B (65:56)

Well, part of the problem is that, that it's actually, it is actually a high bar. Right. Like in my mind, you know, we, we looked at, when we, we did our series about vaccines and anti vaxxers, we looked a lot at, you know, Facebook groups and, and other online communities where a lot of misinformation exists. And I, I'm not saying that there's, there's plenty of misinformation information on Reddit as well, so they're on all of the platforms. But, you know, Joan Donovan, who's a Harvard researcher and was at the time, she's not at Harvard anymore, but she was at the time, she said to us, you know, it's, it's hard to make the truth go viral, you know, or some version of that, which is, which you know, is true. I think, unfortunately, there's so much more engagement around race, rage, bait, or whatever you want to call it or however you want to describe it. And that's a big part of the problem, too. And so having the Internet do more good than harm is actually a high bar because unfortunately, I do think it sort of leans, or at least thanks to the folks who have built the tools in the way that they have built them and their propensity for fixing things versus just breaking things and building things and caring more about the sort of training consumers, like you're saying, Sarah, era Thanks to all of that, it is actually harder, it is actually a high bar in my mind to make this stuff do more good than harm.

A (67:21)

I mean, this is also kind of why I'll defend the girl with the buttons. Because famously, if you're writing for Netflix, you have to have characters saying what they're doing and what the stakes are of the movie all the time, because the assumption is that people are looking at their phones or washing dishes or something.

B (67:41)

As anyone who watched the Rip recently knows, you have to.

A (67:45)

Right? Which is like, how could they do that to Matt and Ben? You know, it's nothing sacred. And, you know, and this idea that, like, we can't expect people to just, like, sit and think for one second, like, I'll, I'll always push on the idea of, like, just like, let's let people be a little bored. Encourage people to have to sit and wonder. We can't write all of our media for, like, your mom on the day after Thanksgiving who never normally goes to see movies and spends the whole time going, who's that? And you're like, we haven't seen him before. It's Gary Sinise.

C (68:28)

Yeah, don't go after the girl with the buttons when there are actual climate change deniers out there.

A (68:33)

Protect button person.

C (68:38)

We were talking as we were sort of preparing for this conversation, Sarah, and wondering if either one of us had been deprogrammed or feel like we had been programmed and then deprogrammed or deprogrammed. Ourselves at any point in time. And just the act of going through that exercise, I think immediately builds a little bit of extra compassion that is necessary when doing this exercise. Because you do realize, like, we are set up to fail with social media just literally digging its nails into you and pulling you down with the algorithm to make you believe more and more and view more and more of what you might be inclined to watch in a moment of weakness. I would encourage anyone to kind of do that thought experiment with themself coming out of this conversation because. Because we've sort of all been there. Even if it's not a government cabal, it might just be some weird, you know, button belief that we've had.

B (69:46)

I was gonna say Sarah's deprogrammed me from wanting answers on the button person,

A (69:51)

so I feel that's right. We're just.

C (69:54)

I've come around and let button.

A (69:57)

Each citizen can do whatever they want with their buttons. I am curious about. Yeah, your. If you had answers for that when you did that thought experiment or you. Anything that you would want to talk about here? Yeah, because when I think about that for myself, I think about. And this is not on such a grand scale, but I've been teaching myself to sleep enough lately because I have always known intellectually that I was supposed to be sleeping more. Because I'm sure we're raised to know in our hearts especially, and there's so much terminology that I do kind of thank social media for being hyper specific enough to come up with. And one of them is a non sleep supportive family, which I'm sure many of us know where like, you know, you come down at like 9am and they're like, oh, you're finally awake. And you're like, okay. And you know, and I was raised sort of where, you know, the stated goal for me was to achieve highly. And so even though it was, you know, implicit, even if people were like, you should sleep, you should make healthy choices, like, you know, at school and with teachers and just kind of, you know, from adult authority figures, it felt like they were being like, you should get plenty of sleep, wink, wink. No, you shouldn't. Because if you did, then you couldn't do all this stupid stuff we were telling you to do. And so I've been training myself to sleep not by teaching myself to love myself enough to do it, because that's like a really big goal that I'm working toward, but because I found an app where the numbers turn a nicer color if you have less than five hours of sleep. Debt.

B (71:32)

Nice.

A (71:32)

And. And it's like, I don't have to have healthy attitudes about myself or my needs. I can just start by liking the app, and then I'm using my most frivolous. You know, I've become a big believer lately in the idea that, like, you can train yourself like you're your own cute little dog and that you can train yourself to do something important for a stupid little reason. And I don't know if that's deprogramming, but it's behaviorizing. I'm behaviorizing myself.

B (72:04)

I feel like Amory deprogrammed me from being a person who inadvertently was pushing procreation.

A (72:15)

How so? I want to hear that story.

B (72:17)

We did an episode about the child free community, and I think. Emery, I don't know if you would. I don't know if you're a fence sitter. I'm not sure how you would describe yourself at this point.

C (72:29)

I think I'm a fence sitter. I think most of my life, I was leaning no and the fence sitter. On having kids, that is. And the fence sitter part of me is just the like, well, we haven't. We haven't, like, taken all of the extremes to never have kids ever. So I'll still identify as a fence sitter, even though it just. It has not felt like now is the time.

B (72:53)

Well, I think Amerie, over the course of the episode, sort of deprogrammed me from, like. Like, I. I think I showed up for the episode being like, whatever. It's cool for me to say, like, you'd be a great mom. You know what I mean? And I think Amory helped me understand the pressure that can be applied culturally, especially for women, you know, with. With those kinds of statements and comments. Right. And I still feel like in the episode, I was still kind of coming from a place of like, well, you know, we're close. We're good friends and longtime colleagues. Colleagues. And, you know, we're honest with each other. And so, like, it feels not right for me to not tell you how I feel about this if we're talking about it. But I think Amory helped me realize how some of that language, just more broadly, culturally, and especially when someone, you know, when you're talking to somebody who you're close to, like, you can. You should be careful about how you do that and not be putting pressure on them unnecessarily. And so she. I. I feel like, Emory, you, You, you. Maybe that's not full deprogramming, but you really helped me Kind of come from a place where I wasn't seeing the. The sort of truth of it. And I think you brought me towards that.

A (74:16)

Thanks, Ben.

B (74:17)

Yeah.

A (74:18)

Yeah, I'll take a Demi. Demi. Deprogramming. Deprogramming. I feel like also part of what you're. You're identifying with that story is the film fact that in looking at kind of human relationships and this idea of having someone who's not giving up on you as being the antidote there to this kind of bigger technological sweep of rhetoric that people are responding to, that there can be a big cause, but maybe not an equally sweeping solution, which is so often the case, annoyingly, but also that a big part of this is you or anyone else being receptive to the idea of someone being like. Actually, when you say that, it causes me or theoretically another human being to feel these things that you might not have thought of. And then for you, the person be like, oh, I didn't think of that, and now I'm thinking of it because someone told me about it, and now I know. And that ability to alter your behavior out of consideration for somebody, in a way, also feels like the antidote to what feels like to me to be the cause of a lot of conspiracy theory fandom, I guess, which is the idea that the man is oppressing you, which he surely is. And therefore, in order to fight back against being told what to do, that you're gonna rebel. And I feel like if you feel oppressed by being told what to do, then if you can be receptive to the idea that someone is not telling you they're asking you to help, help them, which is very different from giving someone orders. And I feel like if someone can understand that distinction, then that can mean a lot.

C (75:58)

I think my example of deprogramming is in a very squishy place, and I'll offer it up with the asterisk that I feel like I'm a real work in progress, and I'm still figuring out,

A (76:12)

well, I'm finished, and I am just right. So that must be embarrassing for you. Yeah.

B (76:17)

Sarah's fully baked.

A (76:18)

Yeah, the toothpick came out clean.

C (76:20)

Well, on this particular issue, are we all. But on this particular issue. So I. Probably my least popular opinion has to do with the fact that I'm vegan. And it's not something that I really talk about publicly, but it is, because

A (76:36)

people would put you in the stocks if you did. Yeah, it is.

C (76:40)

It is a part of my life, and. And yet I feel a lot of feelings about it. It And I get really sort of hurt when I still hear veganism being the butt of jokes among a group of people that I wouldn't expect to be making it the butt of jokes. And it's still like, still you hear on certain public radio programs, even jokes being made at, like, vegans being this

B (77:10)

weird group of people, which is insane,

C (77:15)

when I actually really do think we need to pay attention to factory farming and our planet dying. And so a lot of times I feel like a crazy person for feeling this way. And I'm aware that social media, this is also a place where the ideas are, the opinions are very strong, the ideas are very polarized about this. And I have felt myself getting pulled like, further down a particular, particular rabbit hole with regards to my veganism. And I am actively trying to figure out what is the way that I want to exist in the world. And if these, these beliefs that I do hold dear, how do you resonate with people? And how, how do you feel all those feelings without letting yourself become, I think, as Jatar we were talking about before with QAnon, he said that when he was really in the depths of Q, he resented other people who didn't believe what. And he didn't understand how they couldn't see what he saw. And that's a really painful place to be in. And I'm not trying to compare my feelings towards him to the extent of his, but I am still trying to figure out what social media do I want to pay attention to, what is helpful to me in figuring out how I want to exist in the world in this way and how can I maybe help other people understand some traits, truths without thinking that I'm a crazy vegan and wanting to just, you know, shut me down altogether.

A (78:49)

Well, and also I feel like, and this is, you know, obviously people are different from each other. There's, you know, positive stereotypes are annoying too. But like, I feel based on my experience that like most vegans I've interacted with do not want to bother anyone. And then in fact, people love to tell them, them about how they could never not eat meat and how much meat they ate and how great it is.

C (79:15)

Amen.

A (79:16)

And it feels like there's some projection happening there, perhaps because, like, what we really hate, what we claim to hate, is someone proselytizing to us. And of course that's true. I certainly don't like it. But I think what a lot of people don't like is someone quietly abstaining from something and not even talking about it because it just like Bothers us to think of somebody, I don't know not being annoying about doing something that we find difficult.

C (79:46)

Yeah, there's like a defensive offense that is head spinningly frustrating.

A (79:52)

Please stop bothering vegans. And also I know that like the numbers for vegans have probably held pretty steady for a really long time, which is. But as food becomes more and more expensive, we're all going to be eating vegan more whether we realize it or not.

C (80:12)

So I got some great recipes.

A (80:14)

Be nice. Exactly. Be nice or you won't get the recipes.

B (80:20)

Also like Emery really is like she was talking about before, trying to kind of like whatever, live as an example. And I think, Emory, you really do that with how you live as a vegan. I think you're really, really, really good at that. It's a quiet, strong and very respected position that you take if to. To me, if that makes sense.

A (80:41)

Thank you. I'm trying.

B (80:43)

You're doing great. You're doing great.

C (80:45)

Figuring it out.

B (80:46)

You know, every once in a while when we're trying to go out to eat and you're like, what about this place? I'm like, oh, God damn it. But you know what? You know what? It's great. Generally speaking.

A (80:58)

Figuring it out.

B (80:58)

Yeah, exactly.

A (81:00)

But no, I think that's great. And Ben Emery, this has been so, I don't know, just like a very, very hopeful conversation for me and I hope that this has brought some hope to our listeners too. And obviously you don't have to talk to your family, you don't have to talk to anybody, but we all need community and you deserve to get the closeness and the connection that you need to. Just so you know. And in terms of listening to more Endless Threat, especially if people liked this episode and want to know where to. What are some episodes that you can recommend to people?

B (81:32)

Oh. Oh man. I'm like ready for the Newsies fanfic episode. We should delve find Sarah's old posts.

A (81:43)

Look, there is some great literature in the Newsies fanfiction archives and I'm not even talking about the one I started about what if the Newsies went on the Oregon Trail because I did not finish finish it. Maybe I will this year. We don't know.

B (81:58)

Love to hear a song about dying of dysentery. That sounds great.

A (82:03)

Imagine having to deal with all the problems of being a newsy and then dysentery gets you. It just be too sad.

B (82:10)

We've got a couple of episodes that I feel like we usually send people to. One is called we want Plates and There's a follow up to that one

A (82:19)

called I Love that We Want Plates subreddit. Those people do deserve plates.

B (82:24)

Yes, totally. Same.

C (82:26)

If you want to hear us go on a journey into the woods looking for a mountain of abandoned dishware.

A (82:34)

I do.

C (82:35)

This is the episode for you and the second part where we may or may not have found the dishware called Pile of Crockery.

A (82:45)

Beautiful.

B (82:45)

Amerie did an amazing one called Artist Known about a Madeleine Lengle book cover.

A (82:51)

Oh, yeah.

C (82:52)

Wrinkle in Time. The most famous book cover for a Wrinkle in Time.

A (82:56)

I feel like that book cover probably creeped me out as a child.

B (83:00)

Definitely creepy.

C (83:01)

I think you. You and everyone else. And it was uncredited up until. Up until that episode that we made.

A (83:08)

Oh, my gosh. So you're. You're putting right what once went wrong. You're doing a quantum leap.

C (83:13)

Exactly.

A (83:14)

We're.

C (83:14)

We're wrinkling time.

A (83:16)

I love these topics that you're describing, especially after the kind of. Of, you know, the more serious kind of ground we've. We've tried in this episode. Because the world is just so odd and amidst everything, just the little. The ways that humans, I don't know, like humans, do the most awful things imaginable.

B (83:39)

Yes.

A (83:40)

And yet when you look at us as a species, like, for the most part, I remain convinced that we are not even good. Just weird. Weird and charming in our eccentricity, you know, And I just. I love media that allows us to see that. And I feel like you're doing that with your show.

B (83:58)

Well, thank you.

C (83:59)

May we change in many, many, many ways, but not that one.

A (84:09)

And that was our episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you to Miranda Zickler, who is our editor and producer, and Nicole Ortiz, who is our administrative assistant. We also have a new bonus episode that you can listen to about all things dolls, creepy dolls, haunted dolls, Dolls with dolls, and a doll survey for our listeners with our guest, Chelsea Weber Smith of American Hysteria. You can find that on Patreon and Apple, plus subscriptions. Thank you again for being here. We'll see you next time.