Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - Bad Hasbara 31: Traum-Com, with Dr. Arash Javanbakht

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Matt and Daniel talk to Dr. Arash Javanbakht, Director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Center at Wayne State University. Plus, the definitely real and not fake phone recording from Rafah. ...AFRAID by Dr. Arash Javanbakht Subscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Mashwama bitch, a ribbon polka toast. We invented the terry tomato and weighs USB drives and the iron d'all. Israeli salad, oozy, stents, and jopas orange crows. Micro chips is us. iPhone cameras us. Taco salads us. Both out about us. Olive garden us.
Starting point is 00:00:22 White foster us. Zabrahamas. As far as us. Hello and welcome to Bad Hasbara, the World's Most Moral Podcasts. My name is Matt Lieb. How's it going out there? Terrible. Thank you for listening to this Most Moral Podcast.
Starting point is 00:00:47 What a, what a day. What a everything sucks. Like and subscribe. It has just been one of those days, the last couple of days, have been fucking atrocious and awful and terrible and I think anyone who continues to listen to this podcast
Starting point is 00:01:07 I know that people come here for a little bit of sanity and sometimes you know, I don't know if I can offer it things are bad but that doesn't mean you can't give us five stars in a review
Starting point is 00:01:24 do that and um yeah and also once again telling everyone to please go on to um your podcast apps and press subscribe and shit uh that would be sick and without further ado i'm going to bring in daniel mate my most moral co host to share in the misery of life what's up bit sorry i'm having a bad one What the fuck did I do? I've been cherishing this album recently. Oh, what is it?
Starting point is 00:02:04 Oh, okay. Gene Gray and Quelle-A-Cris, who are actually a married couple. Gene's last rap project. She's one of the great underground rappers of like the late 90s and early odds. Now she doesn't rap. Now she just does comedy and music and stuff. But her husband, Chris, is an amazing rapper and producer. And they have this album called Everything's Fine.
Starting point is 00:02:23 And I just pulled it off the shelf when you were talking because you can see by their expressions that they feel exactly the way I'm doing. Everything's great. Everything's super great. Nothing's weird. And that looks like a great album. Maybe I'll listen to it. It's so good.
Starting point is 00:02:41 Yeah. But we, you know, we kind of. Hannibal Burris has a guest spot on it, actually. Hannibal Burris has a guest spot on that album? Yeah, yeah, he raps on that album. Oh, see, I thought you were saying that that album was from. the early 90s and so i was like no no no no it's from 20 it's from 2017 they that makes more sense i got john hodgeman's on there nick offerman's on there they get a
Starting point is 00:03:05 john hodgman huh yeah yeah i like that um but yeah we we've got a great episode listen it's going to be a great episode uh we are later in the pod going to uh have a interview with um a trauma doc uh and his name i was saying yeah i don't have enough trauma doctors in my life it's Yeah, I know. I've decided to add some more. You need... Fucking Jesus Christ. The trauma doc is of no relation to either of the podcast hosts this time. It is Dr. Arash Javanbacht, and he is...
Starting point is 00:03:43 He's great. We had a great interview, and we're going to throw to that in a bit. And before we do that, we got to talk about... Listen, this is a comedy podcast. at least it tries to be and I will be the first to admit that, you know, the last week or so, the episodes we put out
Starting point is 00:04:03 while great and awesome and informative and fun, I've not been like super funny and the reason for that is because occasionally you know, life comes at you fast and
Starting point is 00:04:19 shit, you know, the conversations that we end up having end up being coming from a place of vulnerability and you know, emotion rather than I know, I know, I don't want it to be that away from me. You understand that like what I want to do is like
Starting point is 00:04:36 dick joke, dick joke, dad joke, pun. Dick joke, dick joke, dad joke, pun. Yeah, yeah. But then, you know, mass atrocities carried out genocide via social media. And also, like, thoughtful guests who are not dumbasses like us like they come in and they and they deepen the
Starting point is 00:04:58 conversation against our will yes explicitly written in the contract that we do not yes do not be deep do not say interesting resonant things do not make the podcasters feel anything yes i try and then yeah every time i tell them like remember you like even if you're smart in real life you got to be a dumbass for this podcast and then they won't be a dumb ass and said they'll be really thoughtful. And I'm just like, well, way to make me look like an asshole. I'm out here trying to do jic joke, jic joke, that joke pun. And you're out here talking about trauma. But yeah, let's, you know, break down just what's gone on. Let's give the people some post-comedic stress disorder. Yeah, exactly. PCSD. So as people may or may not know, I'm sure
Starting point is 00:05:47 you do, there was a some sort of event. you know, what the New York Times called a, I think a mass casualty event in Rafa. I guess that would make Benjamin Nahu a mass casualty event planner? Yeah, he's a mass casualty promoter, you know? He's just like, you know, it's the, listen, this is the job A.J. Soprano wanted when he told his parents what he wanted to do for a living. He wants to be an event planner. And for him, it's mass casualty events. Oh, I'd like everyone to gather in the tents, please.
Starting point is 00:06:26 It's a very, very good Netanyahu impression. Everybody gather in the tents. The good thing is he doesn't have much of an accent. No, it's the sinister lack of an accent. It's just a slight. Yes. It's because he was, you know, he raised as much of his life in New Jersey or Philly or whatever. Philly, yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:47 Yeah, yeah. I would call it a satanic lilt. Exactly. Exactly. It's a satanic... It's not quite an accent. It's a satanic lilt, you know? Eastern seaboard by way of the deepest sulfuric pits of hell. Yes, yes. You will just occasionally, you know, it'll sound like a...
Starting point is 00:07:07 Oh, that's an American accent, and he'll add a... Do you know that his born name is a completely Polish, Ashkenazi... Of course it is. Nebishy sounding name? Yes, yes. What is... Benjamin Netanyahu's... It's like something like, you know, like.
Starting point is 00:07:23 Niemowitz. Yeah, like Benny. Numenowski. Numenowski, yeah. It's something, now we got to look it up because it's like, come on. He is born. Oh, look at that. Did they take it off?
Starting point is 00:07:39 It would be great if they took off his actual name from Wikipedia. Yeah, he was. Anakin Skywalker. What the fuck? It is Anakin. guy walk uh his last name is uh myli akowski um or amelia kowski yeah you know again that's uh that's him uh anyways uh there was a mass casualty event that happened in rafa after um you know weeks and weeks of the israeli government um saying oh we're going to do this no matter whether
Starting point is 00:08:20 or not, you know, Biden supports us or not, you know, luckily for them. Israeli atrocities are the opposite of the Spanish Inquisition, you know, per the Montepidon show. Everyone expects the Israeli atrocities. Exactly. Yeah. The most, like, you know, telegraphed shit of all time is basically you can expect to happen when it comes to Israel. You know, if they say they're going to do something, they're going to do something. It's like Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth pointing at that part of the fence. Every town within a hundred miles of that direction is going to be incinerated. Yes, just like a pool player.
Starting point is 00:09:02 Rafa, corner pocket, boom. Yeah, and he said he was going to do it. They said they'll do it no matter what. They said it. They meant it. They're here to represent it. That's right. And lo and behold, that is exactly what was done.
Starting point is 00:09:16 And yeah, they recently bombed a, you know, refugee camp. You know, this is after, you know, months and months and months of telling people to go south and then bombing everything up north as, you know, as they were going down. And finally, the last refuge for millions of people has been the southernmost point of the Gaza Strip, Rafa. and they were told it was a safe zone, and of course, the other thing with Israel is if they tell you something, they're also lying. So you have to remember that. But yeah, there was a, it was, I believe, a refugee camp,
Starting point is 00:10:05 I forget how it was described, but that was bombed. And I have some footage, not of that. I think a lot of people have been posting the raw footage of shit that's happened, and the shit I've seen in the last couple of days has been, for me, something that I, you know, choose not to show to everyone on this podcast, because as we're going to see later, we're going to have a conversation about the effects of seeing these images over and over. Suffice it to say that as Winston-Zenemore, the fourth Ghostbuster said, I've seen shit that'll turn you white. yes exactly um and as bill murray said it's true this man has no dick um it's just also quoting ghost busters for no reason about well yeah that was a totally inappropriate ghost bruce just quote on my part yeah but i i it's self defense as we'll talk about with the doctor as we'll talk about sometimes it's like a tick you know you got to you got to pull up oh must uh horrible horrible atrocities incoming
Starting point is 00:11:09 Must find 80's movie reference from back when life seemed nice. Normal and good. Uh-huh. Yeah. Anyways, here's a CNN report for people to. The Biden administration, it used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafa, but that the explosion from the strike ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed the camp. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netany.
Starting point is 00:11:37 I just before we continue on this I have to say one thing what what is it with these fucking guys that every time they do a mass atrocity they have to explain how oh no it technically wasn't our fault and they invented an entire Rube Goldberg machine of destruction in which they're just like well I actually, this is Hamas's fault, you see, because we bombed, it was a precision bombing, but then a toaster went off, and the bread came down, and then there was a conveyor belt that led it to the eggs, and then the eggs got in there, and then there was a mouse that ate some cheese, and then it went down another conveyor belt, and then it blew everything up. It's like, you fucking psychopaths can't continue to invent these elaborate reasons why Hamas is actually at fault, especially when you later apologize for it. Yeah. But here is more of that. A tragic error while still pointing the finger at Hamas. Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night and we are investigating the case.
Starting point is 00:12:56 For us, every non-combatant that is hurt is a tragedy. For Hamas, it is a strategy. I'm sorry, but just the video of him. doing saying tragic mistake but that's translated what you see him doing in that video is just yelling is as loud as he can we are sorry about the tragic mistake
Starting point is 00:13:18 like that is the most aggressive I'm sorry I've ever fucking seen yeah oh just and it's just you know the the images that have come out of this you know the last two days of the camp that has been was in incinerated. I mean, you've seen, I've seen some things that will turn me white.
Starting point is 00:13:40 That, oh, yeah, that'll keep me white. And, you know, we're talking, you know, mass fires that broke out as a result of these bombings. I mean, you know, all collateral damage that is, you know, an insult to collateral damage in terms of intention. And collateral damage itself. as an insult to the English language. I mean, that very term, all of these terms, you want to just, I get the most sickened, actually. I mean, obviously, looking at these horrible images,
Starting point is 00:14:17 it's just beyond anything. Like, the system doesn't even know what to do with it, you know? And it's like one after another, every single one of the debunked false claims about October 7th is now coming back to assert itself in reality, on camera in Gaza. Beheaded babies? You want wanted beheaded babies? We got that.
Starting point is 00:14:39 Yes, exactly. You want, you know, like people torn limb from limb, you know, you want... Yeah, you want people hung on walls. Hung on walls, just like mass shootings, fucking parking lots of cars, all destroyed.
Starting point is 00:14:58 You know, like, they're just... It's like their attempt to, you know, to manifest the shit that they claim happened to them on October 7th. And it just, you know, I have, it's almost like the,
Starting point is 00:15:12 it's almost like a kind of, uh, rhetorical voododal. You know, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to create this, whatever,
Starting point is 00:15:22 whatever little nightmare, uh, narrative and fantasy we need to get us into action. Yes. And then we're going to go and, yeah, it'll have that effect out there. But,
Starting point is 00:15:34 not here. Yes. It's incredibly dark. Yeah, incredibly dark, incredibly sickening and incredibly evil. But speaking, yeah, yeah, I was going to say, but sickening, though, is that you hear military people and political people use these terms like precision munitions. Yes. Or mass casualty event or collateral damage. Try to sit through a White House press briefing or a State Department press briefing these days with Jake Sullivan or or Matthew Miller or any of these or Karin Jean-Pierre and see if you can make it through a single sentence without them saying something so absolutely deadening like these these these crimes against language and you know you hate to mention George Orwell because
Starting point is 00:16:19 any idiot can quote George Orwell when things are getting bad in the world but it's fucking Orwellian yeah the the just the way that language and and I don't I don't like people talking about how language is violence but in the hands of empire in the hands of power systems you see it you see how how the twisting of reality
Starting point is 00:16:42 and the flattening of reality and the twisting of words that allows things like this to happen it's I mean I don't even have anything funny or insightful to say about that's what really makes me the sickest is the crimes against truth. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:05 And it's, you know, also the crimes against originality. And, you know, like the fact that we have to say something as hackneyed as this is Orwellian. Like that's a crime in and of itself, you know. Fuck you for making me quote Orwell. Yeah, exactly. Fuck you for being that fucking unoriginal, you know? Like, you're just going to do a facsimile of just what is Orwellian. And now we have to sound like one of those fucking guys who's just like, oh, you know,
Starting point is 00:17:38 it was pretty Orwellian the way that, you know, McDonald's, they don't let you get a 10 piece anymore. You got to get a 12 piece. You know, it's just like we got to fucking sound like someone. It's just, it's all so. Fuck you for making my reality more sort of. Kinne in because now I'm starting to spout, now I'm starting to spout, you know, political cliches, bad writing.
Starting point is 00:18:05 Oh, my God. This is a side note, but I, for no reason other than just masochism, I rewatched the newsroom. Yeah. Just because I was like, you know, I ran out of stuff to watch and I was just like, oh, what if I, let me revisit this fucking trash. And I got to say, there is a special place in hell for Aaron Sorkin. Like, it just, the way that that show runs on smugness and, like, the way that that show is proud of its own hindsight, like, it's just like, oh, it's, it's terrible.
Starting point is 00:18:51 Anyways, Sorkin invite out to you to come on the Most Moral Podcast so it can yell it you and call you a bitch to your face um but uh you know so when this attack happened uh initially the uh idf was um you know celebrating the successful uh precision attack of you know some humas commander you know doing the same fucking bullshit that they always do which is like oh you know we successfully you know completed our mission nothing to see here folks we killed a Hamas guy Don't worry about the 45 dead, you know, and over 200 injured in this attack. Did you see Rapaport on Twitter? It was like, oh, 40 were killed?
Starting point is 00:19:41 Where did they get that number? Like, he was like, he thought it was some own that he could be like, are you sure it was exactly 40? Sounds pretty specific to me. I'm like, no, you fuck, they're rounding up or slightly down. It's like somewhere around that. And also, I mean, like, just in terms of, like, Zionist scumbags, like, Michael Rapoport's one of the worst. He also quote tweeted the video that we've all seen of the actual decapitated baby.
Starting point is 00:20:10 Quote tweeted it saying, like, you know, they have videos of everything except for the hostages. And, you know, at this point, like, you know, there's no more perfect example of, like, how Zionism degrades the human soul. than Michael Rappaport's Twitter feed of the last like seven months watching this fucking guy go from like this kind of like tribal reaction to the attack of October 7th
Starting point is 00:20:39 of just kind of like you know hey Jews of the world we're going to unite and we're going to destroy Hamas you know you've got to kill Hamas and all that to being able to just casually quote tweet one of the most horrific things I think a lot of us have seen in a long
Starting point is 00:20:55 time with some pissy smug fucking glib comment about how oh you know how come show why don't you just show the hostages instead of this and it's just like you you've got to have lost your soul
Starting point is 00:21:11 entirely and in seven months you must have not had much of a soul to begin with um but after uh you know the whole incident of um you know the IDF celebrating their victory soon after it was reported, you know, about the official
Starting point is 00:21:35 or Israeli line of it being a tragic mistake. And then the most recent thing is this video that I'm going to show. So the IDF has released another of their famous videos in which they show a intercepted conversation between two Gazans about the strikes in Rafa and I'm going to play a little bit of that just because I just find it to be just I mean you got to you got to see it and I'll read out the
Starting point is 00:22:13 subtitles for people okay so first speaker and they say Hamas they say they the Hamas terrorists were bombed. Oh, I see. And they say that they sat in a meeting and that there is a facility. And in addition, they had ammunition.
Starting point is 00:22:40 And because of all the ammunition, that started exploding. And furthermore, bags of money were flying in the air. These, the ammunition that exploded, were really ours. Yes, this is an ammunition warehouse. I tell you, it exploded. So this is a, you know, this is the same thing that they put out after, maybe it was El Shifa Hospital or... It was very much the same format, too.
Starting point is 00:23:17 You're muted, Daniel. Sorry, yeah, it was very much the same format. It was like, are you talking? telling me that this thing that people are conveniently blaming on the Israelis was in fact due to us? Yes. I tell you that in fact it did belong to us. And furthermore, then this happened. Yeah. It is me, the representative of all Palestinians on the line. How are you doing other representative? Fine. Kill the Jews. Anyways. So here is the exposition to the T of exactly how I want this narrative to go.
Starting point is 00:23:51 I mean, you can't get anything more perfect than just this type of bullshit, especially when they only seem to put out these, you know, intercepted calls when there is something that is just so egregious done in broad daylight for everyone to see that they can't explain it away. They can't say it didn't happen. And they can't say actually it was, you know, it wasn't as bad as everyone's saying and said they say, yes, it was bad. Yes, it was Hamas. And, you know, we just have to sit here and listen to these fucking, you know, clearly fabricated videos. And here's the thing, even if they weren't fabricated, even if this was an actual intercepted call, which no way it isn't. No way it is an actual intercepted call. The idea, like, this is just two, they're not even saying these are like two Hamas guys. Like, they're not saying, yeah, they're just like a strike between or a conversation between two
Starting point is 00:25:01 Gazans, just two Gazans. Just, just guys. Two Gazans work, two Gazans walk into a Tel Aviv recording studio. Yeah, exactly. I'm just like, oh, you know, you see shit like this and you go like, Who is this for? Like, who's supposed to believe this? Who is supposed to go off? Good. You know, at this point, I just, I don't even know who they're trying to convince anymore.
Starting point is 00:25:30 I mean, months ago, I was saying they're just trying to convince themselves. But at this point, they all know it's bullshit. They all know that they're just going to do the same thing over and over again, which is just find a way to say, you know, this is not our fault. after weeks and weeks of saying we're going to go into Rafa and then to call it a tragic mistake is insane. You know, I felt like back early, in the early days of this genocide, they were hoping that these bombshell intercepts or whatever would catch on and have long-term traction. At this point, it just strikes me as a short-term diversion tactic. Like let's just push, let's just get enough
Starting point is 00:26:14 controversy out there and the controversy will last 30 seconds before it implodes but that's enough time to run interference you know that there's value in that they don't have to convince anyone of it they just have to muddy the waters enough
Starting point is 00:26:27 have enough people reshare you know give just feed more food to the people whose job it is to post like you're telling me this isn't incriminating to hummus and you know you muddy the waters and then people forget where they move on
Starting point is 00:26:43 and yeah I mean, but I still, you know, and maybe it's all, we're all in our different, like, social media bubbles and we're all in our, you know, with our stuck in our worldviews and think that our reality is reality. But I just, I'm like, who the fuck? Who is watching this and going, yeah. And I can only imagine at this point, it's liberal Zionists who will do anything to believe. It's like it's for an American audience to, you know, and at this point, You know, I'm even willing to believe it's for an Israeli audience. Like it's also, you know, they have to convince even their own people that, no, no, no, this was Hamas. We would never do that horrible thing you just saw us do. And I'd like to believe that there's at least some portion of Israeli society that sees this and needs. this kind of diversion tactic in order to, you know, rationalize.
Starting point is 00:27:51 Like, it's almost a worst case scenario is if they didn't need it, you know, if they were just like, no, that was us. Good. Glad we did it. You know, that's almost, that's worse. So, Daniel, you just shared with me an article from Haaretz. Do you want to talk about it for a second? Do you want to intro what it is you sent to me? Apparently, I'm subscribed to them or something. I don't know if I'm paying the money. But it does, it does give me a, daily briefing on what Israel is saying to itself. Oh, and in particular what the part of Israel
Starting point is 00:28:21 that still wants to consider itself liberal is saying to itself. And yeah, you want to put on the screen? Excellent. Okay. So the head, this is from Monday, the 27th of May. And it's by Alison Kaplan Summer. And the headline
Starting point is 00:28:38 is, are right wingers celebrating Palestinian deaths in Rafah, the true face of Israel? And here's the the subheader, some, because they have to complicate it because otherwise the article would be one word. Yes. Some say this is the true ugly face of Israel. Those who believe in and know a different Israel face the impossible challenge of proving otherwise. Oh, I love a good. I love a good, that's not my America from Israel, you know what I mean? That's exactly right. Yeah, I know it's not, but it will be impossible for me to prove otherwise.
Starting point is 00:29:14 There's literally no evidence to suggest otherwise. Yes. Israel, for me, is this good feeling of the possibilities of us not doing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Exactly. And that's just, that's not provable in the same way. It's true, but no one will believe it because people want, you know, evidence and facts. So let's, this is actually just the writing is just so mealy-mouthed and so. It was inevitable.
Starting point is 00:29:41 No matter how carefully planned an Israeli military operation against Hamas and Rafa may be, is it? With over a million Palestinian refugees camped out sooner or later, there was going to be a mass casualty incident. Mass casualty incident. And what's, okay, so that paragraph itself is crazy. It was inevitable, right? Yes.
Starting point is 00:30:05 No matter how carefully planned an Israeli military operation, blah, blah, blah, with over a million Palestinian refugees camped out sooner or later there was going to be a mass casualty incident. Okay. So the logic here is it was inevitable, no matter how much we tried to kill one person at a time a million times over. Eventually we were going to kill. From afar, by the way. Eventually, there was going to come a day or a moment where 40 people died in an hour. Exactly. And then the world was going to get all up in arms. And so the inevitable took place Sunday night. An IDF air strike reeked Large-scale destruction.
Starting point is 00:30:42 Oh, for the first time, an IDF, like, what the fuck are you talking about? You've destroyed entire buildings. You've killed hundreds of people at a time. Killing at least 45 people in the southernmost Gaza city. Footage showed that civilians living in tents were trapped in an inferno. And it's just like so insane. The inevitable took place. Yeah, it is actually inevitable that there's going to be a mass casualty event
Starting point is 00:31:05 when you use a fucking, what, 2,000 ton bomb or whatever to, fucking to bomb a fucking uh refugee camp like yeah like that's your careful plan that's your careful plan no matter how careful no there's nothing we could do to avoid the fact that we're definitely going to use this giant bomb against people packed into a camp like you have to be a complete fucking psychopath to look at this and be like yeah you know it's cost of doing business oh god so then the next paragraph which we don't need to read is basically you know recapitulating what the Israeli government says, saying, despite we tried to avoid it. So, and then the idea being that it was unfortunate and regrettable collateral damage,
Starting point is 00:31:50 and they talk about the International Court of Justice and so on and so forth. But if you go down a little bit, oh, and they talk about the most moral army, Israel's far-right media voices quickly began celebrating the flames, and by extension, the deaths of those engulfed in the fire, by jokingly comparing the images to commemorative bonfires lit on Lagba-Omer, which we just had on Sunday. Sunday, the Jewish holiday that fell on the same day as the tragedy. They said with glee that the blaze was the central bonfire in Rafah, wishing them happy holidays in tweets that were deleted and won't be forgotten
Starting point is 00:32:22 and will be pointed to as evidence that the fire was deliberately sparked and was celebrated. Well, it was celebrated as far as deliberate, but yeah. Yeah, and it was deliberate. I mean, I'm sorry, but you know, you can't at this point, and I think this is like my main problem with this kind of mealy, mouth liberal Zionist talk is the idea of deliberate or not. Like, if it is inevitable, if you truly believe this is inevitable and you continue to do it anyways, that's called deliberate.
Starting point is 00:32:55 Under international law, you're right. Yes. Because you deliberate about the possible consequences of what you're going to do and the probable consequences. And if you do things that have probable consequences and those consequences come true, then whether or not you meant to, you opted to, and that's deliberate. And it's exactly the same status as intentionally targeting them. The most prominent journalist who fed the flames of hate, Yunnan Magal, is consistently proving himself to be the Idemar Ben-Givir of Israeli media.
Starting point is 00:33:25 Like the extremist minister, he appears to delight and take pride in shameless displays, excuse me, shameless demonstrations of disregard for Palestinian lives and denial of humanity, as opposed to the sorts of demonstrations of disregard for Palestinian lives that Haarets and the Israeli liberal left prefers, which is shame-filled, you know, contriate demonstrations of disregard for Palestinian lives. Right. And then pointing rightward and saying, like, that's those guys. That's not us. We are in no way complicit with that because we believe in a better Israel that, you know, has somehow managed to elude us in the years and years and years we've been saying we want to. better is real but also we've sobered up and they do need to die like right it's completely just the most scatterbrained moral approach like political approach these guys have no idea what they believe other than bad things aren't our fault and good things are what would happen if humas well and they love they love blaming the right you know and they love blaming the
Starting point is 00:34:31 you know, the Likud supporters, which is also racially coded because now they get to blame the unwashed Arabs and the Mizrachim, right? Because yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. It's like the Mizrahi Jews is perfect. But as as Max Blumenthal pointed out in a interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, just the other day, I was listening to it this morning, he pointed out that the vast majority of the war crimes committed by the Haganah during the Nakabah. Yeah. That was done by the leftist Kibbutz-affiliated socialist wing.
Starting point is 00:35:06 The labor government is by far the bigger settler party over time. There's been a few periods during the Sharon and Begin years when Likud took over as the primary
Starting point is 00:35:18 motors of ethnic cleansing, but it's actually just not the case that the Israeli center left can look at itself and say, oh, no, no,
Starting point is 00:35:29 it's the right wing. No, is now learning its lessons from what the so-called Israeli left has always done. The Zionist left, I should say. There's an Israeli left, and we had Noam on last episode, and she represents the, I'd say, a genuine Israeli left, a peace and justice and equality left. One of six.
Starting point is 00:35:49 Exactly. Anyway, but the one of six, as she said. So the article concludes, and it's not even an article, it's just a little news brief, while one could argue that both Ben-Givir and Magal represent a minority of the sentiment of Israelis, one could argue it, and you are arguing it, but you're not offering any... But you're choosing to pretend not to. That's right, and you're not offering any real evidence for it. They provide enough evidence of malicious intent to disrupt any attempt for the country to defend its military's behavior.
Starting point is 00:36:17 Well, good. Some say this is the true ugly face of Israel. Those who believe in and know a different Israel face the impossible challenge of proving otherwise. And I just love that little interjection and no, because you're suggesting to me that you have evidence that you somehow can't share. How do you know it? Sometimes you know things deep in your heart, Daniel. Deep in your heart. By talking to your nice ante?
Starting point is 00:36:39 Deep down inside. I know Israel isn't really like this. It's just right now it's just, it's mad. It's hungry. It's hangary. When you get hungry for the blood of the Palestinians, you act up, okay? Have a Snickers bar. That's what those commercials are about.
Starting point is 00:36:57 You have a Snickers and then all of a sudden you stop killing Palestinians and then you just do a slow world ethnic cleansing and genocide. It's all very traumatic and that's why we need to take a quick break and talk about our trauma after the break with an interview we did with Dr. Arash Javanbacht and it was a great one. Please stick around. Listen to these ads and we'll be right back.
Starting point is 00:37:24 And we're back. Today, I wanted to introduce our most moral interview that we are doing here on Bad Hasbara. We have an expert. Now, we've had, you know, all sorts of guests on the show, comedians, you know, journalists and whatnot. And sure, you could say a journalist is an expert. But today, we have an actual expert. someone who is the director of stress trauma and anxiety research, sorry, excuse me, someone who is the director of stress trauma and anxiety research clinic
Starting point is 00:38:05 and author of Afraid, Understanding the Purpose of Fear and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety. Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, welcome to the podcast, Dr. Arash Javanbach. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on the podcast. We really appreciate it. So to begin, the last few months, I think, have been an interesting. I think a lot of things are happening to our brain chemistry based on the last few months of videos that we have seen online of people dying in horrible ways.
Starting point is 00:38:52 And one of the reasons why we wanted to bring you on this podcast is we wanted to talk about the effect that that is having on people, the effect that that's having just seeing the images over and over on their phones every day. So I want to get into that with you. But first, let's just talk about you for a bit. You know, I read your intro, but can you tell me more about what you do and what your research is? Sure. I'm a psychiatrist and I'm specialized in trauma and stress on what they do to the human brain and body from changes in genes and intergenerational transmission of trauma to advancing our treatment methods, mostly focus on special populations, refugees, war exposed people, internally displaced people, and first responders. Basically, civilians exposed to the most horrific things humans do to each other. And I also treat patients ranging from all these different populations in my clinic. And I'm involved a lot in public educations via media outlets.
Starting point is 00:40:02 And you mentioned the book, which is part of that work, talking about fear, stress, anxiety from evolution to diseases and treatments and politics and media and issues like bravery, all different aspects of fear and trauma. okay and so you know you're talking about people who have been exposed to traumatic things directly and i can imagine obviously that when it comes to being you know directly traumatized especially as like a refugee from a place that's you know currently experiencing war um or just the trauma of having to flee a country. That's what I would consider, you know, for lack of a better term, a more classic type of trauma. There's a new type of trauma, I believe, you know, or a more modern type, a technological trauma that I'm interested in talking to you about with regard to the way in which people now more so than ever are exposed to images and video of things that
Starting point is 00:41:20 I don't think previous generations of human beings have had so much easy access to on their phones. And I wanted to know if that, you know, I would, you know, call that, you know, indirect trauma or something. But what is that and is that, not to compare the two, but would you say that the effects of that are similar to actually experiencing it, or is it completely, completely different? So I think first we need to establish what trauma is because these days trauma as a word and terminology if she's used by everybody in all these different contexts in a very loose way. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:42:12 Do you look up on TikTok and people are talking about a difficult conversation they had with their peer with their boss and can call it traumatic. I was so traumatized you guys. Yeah. Yeah. He told me I had to come in on a Sunday. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:27 And then the other person says, this is not PTSD. This is complex PTSD. So, but when it comes to the field of, like, Psychiatry and psychology, trauma is horrible experiences that can be significantly threatening to someone's physical, sexual integrity. We're talking about war, explosions, shootings, rape, robbery, assault, domestic violence, serious motor vehicle accidents, natural disasters. All these are considered trauma in that field.
Starting point is 00:42:55 And these are the conditions that we consider to lead to what we call post-traumatic stress disorder. We can talk about later. But that's not the only outcome of traumatic exposure. depression, anxiety, substance, use a lot. There's a wide variety of things that trauma can do to people's mind, brain, and body. But then it comes to the type of exposure. Trauma can happen directly to me. Let's say I'm assaulted or I'm shot at or I'm in a horrible motor vehicle accident
Starting point is 00:43:23 or it could be indirect. Indirect exposure is mostly through whether it's like a close relatives of myself or family members or people and I get indirect exposure. to details of their horrible traumatic experiences or dental injuries. And then there's exposure, another way of indirect exposure we see a lot is in first responders and journalists. This is the kind that this didn't happen to them, but there's a school shooting they have to go clean up.
Starting point is 00:43:52 There are journalists in these war scenes and they see horrible evidences. And then, for example, there are people who I work a lot with first responders. As I mentioned, there are cops who are in special sex crime units. And they have to go through these documents and review them over and over and over. And the people like Facebook staff, they have to go review all these details of these images and videos which are posted. This can lead to PTSD by definition. Now you're talking about exposures that happen. I'm scrolling and I see pictures of puppies and someone's weddings and this and that.
Starting point is 00:44:25 And then I see a burnt baby, those kind of images. You see the videos. These could be, I mean, now we are getting in the realm of terminology. is how exactly would they fit within the definition of what causes PTSD or not. But I could consider these traumatic and they can have significant impacts. Actually, there are studies that show, for example, post-9-11 people who had exposure to the news and other terrorist attacks and other situations like this, people who had exposure to the news and ongoing exposure to the images.
Starting point is 00:44:59 And as you mentioned in the past, news was more screened and more basically. what's the word selected for us yes so kind of yeah in that sense or you would hear them rather than seeing them now the exposure is a lot more vivid not that these are happening more than let's say a hundred years ago it's like we have all these phones in our hands and everybody can be reported and we get the exposure so in that sense there's data that actually shows they can people can develop symptoms of PTSD anxiety depression so I went on a long run to tell you yeah I could consider of these two men. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:36 So as we were talking before we started filming, you and I have met once before. And we didn't realize this until we got on the call here. But one of the weird things about me, you know, I'm not a comedian that I co-host a political comedy podcast with someone who is, Matt. I'm not a trauma expert. I'm not a therapist. But I co-wrote a book with someone who is. my dad, Gabramate, and I wrote a book called The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a
Starting point is 00:46:07 toxic culture. So I'm sort of in this position in this interview of like knowing more about this than I feel like I ought to based on my own area of study, but here I am. Definitely more than me. Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I'm just learning the names of words right now. So you and I, Dr. Javenbach, met at a gala for a nonprofit that does work raising awareness. about the prevalence of trauma in our society. And one of the things I remember from that evening was a sort of an informational reel or film that they played, which was really quite in line with what we write about in the book,
Starting point is 00:46:46 which is that while the kind of big T traumas that you just described are the ones that we classically think about as the main sources of lasting emotional, cognitive, neurological wounding, right? The wars, famines, genocides, rapes, all that kind of stuff, rancorous divorces, alcoholism, the family, things like that. That given that the word trauma comes from the Greek word meaning to wound, that many of us in our society are walking around with emotional wounds that are harder to see and that the sources of which are harder to pin down in terms of specific events and incidents. And there's, there's, I'm winding my way around to a question here. I'm just sort of
Starting point is 00:47:32 setting up my working definition that I'm coming from. And if you want to dispute it, fair enough. But that any sort of either discrete or repeated experience that leaves us diminished inside, fractured, alienated from ourselves, are, you know, incapacitated in some way, could be said to be trauma inducing. And when we look at the, um, the events of, let's say, the past eight months. And without getting into the political specifics too much here, I think one of the things that you're seeing is that people on multiple sides of this issue slinging around words like trauma saying, I was so traumatized by what happened on October 7th, or I've been so traumatized by everything that's happened since. And one of the
Starting point is 00:48:17 things we say in the book is that trauma is not what happens to you. It's what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you. And that has to do with partly the meanings we make. And this is where propaganda comes in. This is a podcast about propaganda. And I'm wondering what you can say about the ways in which narrative and storytelling, which when you talk about people consuming, say something like 9-11 through the media, they're not just consuming raw events. They're consuming a story about those events, right? And it's a story that is coming from a particular government line. And if you're watching it from another point of view or in a different media stories, you'll get a different story. What is that nexus where the facts of what happens meet the method of delivery
Starting point is 00:49:01 for receiving it, meet the kind of superimposed meanings that human beings can't help but add to events. And I mean, that's a massive, massive cluster of questions for you. But that's just what comes up for me when we talk about this. Is it? Are they? Good. Excellent question. So first thing I have to whenever we talk about trauma, I will emphasize that when I say this thing is the trauma and this other thing is not trauma, it doesn't mean this other thing is just flowers and butterflies, right? Right. So there are a lot of adverse experiences.
Starting point is 00:49:33 There are a lot of difficult experiences. There are a lot of stressful experiences that will impact our genes, impact our mind, impact our our brains and impact our bodies. So when we say one thing is traumatic and the other thing is not traumatic, it doesn't mean that you're discreding that other experience. Now, that leads to the second part of your question and that actually I have an interest in the meanings that we create or others create for our experiences. As you said, exactly, different people experiencing the exact same event might have different
Starting point is 00:50:03 interpretations created by themselves or by the environment for them, right? For example, and this is something I all the time work in my clinic with because we always create a meaning or an explanation for our experiences. And then based on that, we are impacted by those experiences more or less. For example, I was in the shooting. I lost my partner as a police officer or a firefighter. 10 years later, I'm crying because I feel I'm guilty. I should have done something differently versus I might have thought that I did the best I could do and that led to saving two of my other partners. The outcome is significantly different. So now you're talking about the aspect that's especially in this era, everything is
Starting point is 00:50:44 extremely tribal. You're talking, I have a whole lot of different conversation about politics of fear and tribalism and how fear and trauma are used within a tribal setting where this is us, this is, there's them, and there's a distinct, clear definition comparing us versus the others. Usually when it comes to us versus others is not like, oh, let's look at their philosophical ideas. It's just want to. We are this, they are there. We are Democrats, they're Republicans. We are Muslims. They are Jews.
Starting point is 00:51:17 We are this. It's something that is very, very easily defined even to the dumbest before the dumbest people. And then the them are after something we want or that them are against something we are or what we have. And anybody can be dragged into the them. Like that changes over time. Look at the politics of the U.S. politics these days. Everybody can be grabbed and put in this other category that we just defined or we had defined before. and they were not part of it, but now our basically agendas
Starting point is 00:51:47 basically require them to be within that definition. So coming back to what you ask, definitely, when I see an image, it is within a context, it's a social context, it's a biological context, it's a genetic context, it's an environmental context, it's a tribal context, and it's even within the context of what I was doing right before that. When you hear the same news, I have this thing,
Starting point is 00:52:12 So when you hear a news on BBC versus you hear that same tragic news on Fox and CNN, the emotional intensity and tone is different. And for Fox and CNN, it depends on what is their agenda, right? Is it us or them and how we want to gravitate the situation in the mind of the people who are hearing it? Because specifically, we are emotionally queued humans. If you put any of us, any of the three of us, we put them in a brain scanner, and we see a face of a human scared or angry. Amygdala, which is the emotional part of the brain, emotional salience, fires up.
Starting point is 00:52:49 I'm sleeping in the scanner. I don't even know what I'm seeing. I'm just bored with what I'm seeing. It's a black and white picture of a human face. But the amygdala fires up. The emotional intensity that is attached to whether it's through words or through even the motions or through the emotions and volume and tonality of the voices that can affect how I am perceiving.
Starting point is 00:53:10 that thing. Even a lot of times, you watch the TV and you look, yeah, this was such a huge bad or good thing. And then if I challenge you logically, you're like, well, I don't have the answer. It just, it was relate to me that way. So in that sense, then others can decide and define for you what is bad and what is good and what is how, if something is bad, how bad it is. And you mentioned the amygdala, which is this almond shaped, sized, what is it, gland or it's just a part of the brain that controls our sort of our sort of fear center, right? And it gets our nervous system going in certain ways. What are the mechanisms by which I mean, I don't know how neurobiological we want to get here, but it might be interesting.
Starting point is 00:53:56 You have, there's a scary experience. It's frightening. Fear is supposed to be a short-term biological event that motivates us to either hide or flee or fight or whatever, what are the mechanisms by which a discreet, short-term, healthy survival instinct turns against itself and becomes what we would call a lasting wound or a lasting trauma? How is it that that doesn't get discharged or why does that become toxic for some people and in some situations and not for others? So, as you mentioned, the Megdalot is a very subconscious part of the brain. We have had on both sides in the temporal lobe, it's near our use.
Starting point is 00:54:37 His job is sailing detection. Every time I see something, Magdala decides should I attack it, should I run away from it? Should I eat it or should I have sex with it? Very primitive animal salience detection instincts. Can I tell you, Matt Lieb, confuses my amygdala like crazy? I just whenever I'm around this guy,
Starting point is 00:54:53 I don't know which of those to do. Do you want to eat me or do you want to fuck me? Everyone asks this question. I'm sorry. So then, so amygdala sees the lion. Amygdala fires up. You should run away. Then there are other parts of the brain that come in, hippocampus and prefrontal cortices involved very much
Starting point is 00:55:12 hippocampus is right here, again, next to McDonough and prefrontal, what we call the human brain, which is debatable. And the hippocampus is involved in basically looking at the context. Okay, I saw the line in African Sahara is near me and there's no bars between us, so I should freak out. Or I see that there's zoo, there are people having fun, and there are all these different things in the context that tell me they're okay. and I enjoy. So the emotion is suppressed by the hippoceros. Then the prefrontal cortices are involved in, let's say, I see that a lion or a snake, and I freak out. So my friend tells me that this is a pet snake or a pet lion.
Starting point is 00:55:54 I don't know where you can see a pet lion, but this is safe. And immediately this response is limited. But the prefront, that friend of mine could also tell me, approaching your funny and cute dog and tells me, hey, watch out this dog, but it's and I immediately have a fear response. And that's actually where our fear secret is very much abused by the tribe leaders. And I can go back to the evolutionary function of all of these different ways that we learn to be afraid of things. But this is how the system works. And then when it comes to traumatic experiences when the exposure or the intensity of the pain and
Starting point is 00:56:32 suffering is beyond the threshold. What happens is the McDowler goes to the, we go to a state of fight and flight and we stay there. I don't know how much time you have, because one thing that helps us understand this is the evolutionary purpose and function of fear. The system was put in place to prevent us from being destroyed and killed and annihilated. And the experiences that we had when the system evolved were just all physical threats. So now the system goes to fight and fight for to fight against physical efforts. That's why a lot of times in modern world we get confused. My heart is pounding because of having this conversation with you guys and I'm worried that you may not like this. But that doesn't make sense. That's not helping. Reality is that 50,000
Starting point is 00:57:16 years ago, if the three of us were talking and you didn't like my conversation, chances where I could get killed or you could be one of us could get seriously injured. So I had to be able to attack or run away. So brain and body go to fight and flight mode and they don't come down. And the prefrontal and hippocampal cortices, which are involved in emotion regulation, slow down. And they will not be able to slow the unleash amygdala. So my heart is pounding all the time. I feel very anxious. I'm on edge.
Starting point is 00:57:44 I'm constantly looking for a threat. So that's when we are talking about PTSD, right? But at lower levels of threshold, let's see that horrible image. I'm in the state of some level of fear and disgust arousal. Now my brain and my attention are redirected towards anything related to that emotion. and I'm looking for the negative. And that's why I look at the politics of people these days in the U.S. Everybody's angry.
Starting point is 00:58:07 Everybody's negative. You watch Fox, CNN, MSNBC one hour later, you feel extremely hopeless about the humanity. There's no good news there. And that leaks to other aspects of life, and that leaks to how you look at other people. Actually, now that we are talking about the brain and we talked about tribalism, there's like interesting studies. And actually, when we talk tribalism, it's not necessarily a bad thing. our tendency to be attached to other humans and connect with our cons specifics, which are other humans, has saved us.
Starting point is 00:58:39 And that's why you and I are still alive and we're not destroyed by other animals through the history of humanity. The reason that any time there's a disaster somewhere, we start sending money and support is because we are tribal creatures, so it has good aspects. But there's also the competitive and bad aspects. I mean, the finest ways of tribalism is that you have your football team and I have my own football team and we cheer for it.
Starting point is 00:59:00 and even sometimes get stupid enough to pray to God to support our football team, right? Look, I'm still traumatized by when the Vancouver Canucks, both in 1994 and 2011, lost game seven of the Stanley Cup, and my city was so traumatized that they went and rioted both times. That was the tribal response to a disappointing loss in a hockey game was torching the place. Which also tells us the next thing, that when we go tribal and motivate,
Starting point is 00:59:30 that by fear and anger, we become more primitive and less logical and more animal, which is what we see that. It's easier to kill and it's easier to hate and it's easier to destroy. That's a whole different conversation, how we dehumanize the others. But this is a study. So in Australia, they bring students from two competing universities. Let's say if I'm in Michigan, University of Michigan and Michigan State University, they hate each other because of the football teams.
Starting point is 00:59:58 now they show me a photo of someone hitting someone else with a broom seat in one of the photos we tell me the person hitting the other person is from my college in another one they tell me the person being beaten is from my college and they found that people have different responses different emotional responses even different levels of activation in brain areas involved in emotional processing and moralities that's the extent of tribalism so we are not designed to be tribal about like, okay, I am of this race, I'm tribal about this race. No, we are designed to be tribal, not racist, which means we are designed to acquire a tribe,
Starting point is 01:00:41 whether it's a tribe that I was born to, or it's my city, or is the college I go to, it's a political affiliation I join, anything that we require, we have a tendency to trust our tribe and mistrust the other ones. Well, it's interesting because, you know, I feel like personally, you know, sticking with the broom analogy, I have at least in the last, you know, few months, and also for many years with regard to this, you know, situation, Israel, Palestine, have felt very much like I'm seeing the picture of someone from my college with a broomstick hitting someone else. And can you talk about the effect? Except in your case, Matt, and in mine, we look at that and we're like, why did I join this college? Right, exactly. I don't want to like.
Starting point is 01:01:39 Yeah. God damn it. It's because my dad was an alumnus. Now I'm in this college, this college of being a Jew. The damn legacy program. In terms of that analogy, you know, the way in a, which we, I guess, internalize tribalism and the way that it expresses itself, it feels like it's not a monolith for people. So like some people, they feel connection to a certain tribe
Starting point is 01:02:13 because they are born within it. And some people later find a group of people and are, you know, consider themselves part of that tribe, whether it's in spirits or whatever, not in a race sense, but just in kind of like a spiritual sense or a moral sense. I want to talk about how that's used or, you know, how that is manipulated in an unhealthy way and whether or not it's something you deal with in, like how far does the, the, the trauma study go, does it talk about, do you talk about deprogramming people from certain levels? I guess the question I have is, do people need to be previously traumatized in order to allow themselves to have their tribalism trump what would normally be, you know, the moral side
Starting point is 01:03:16 of their brain or the rational side? Universal morals. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, no, no. So these are the separate stories. So trauma, and we can talk more about basically how these images traumatize people. And what are the things actually that you would like us to talk about how people can
Starting point is 01:03:35 protect themselves against the traumatic experiences of these images and how they can have a more productive response to it rather than just being heard by it. But I disagree that you are in a tribe that is holding this. broomstick and you hate it. That's a tribe that is being defined these days. These days, this has become Jews versus Muslims.
Starting point is 01:04:01 I mean, there were Jews and Muslims who were friends. They were bodies and now they're a little bit having challenges messaging each other in America. Yeah. This is something happening in a total different part of the world. But what is happening? There's forces on both
Starting point is 01:04:17 side which are pushing this to become a Muslim Jew issue. So that anybody who's on red ones. So basically that is the tribalism of fear. Basically creating this easily defined boundaries
Starting point is 01:04:33 and then put you in one of these whether you wanted or not. Right? And then people start and then people stop talking to each other. And social media is basically doing a lot in the service of these strategies. Unfortunately
Starting point is 01:04:49 not that social media are evil, have evil intentions, but social media's job is to show you what they think you're like. And if you follow one person, they show you more people like that person and more people like that person, and you will see more and more and more and more content. And then you're within an echo chamber of whoever you are, whether you are liberals or Democrats or conservatives or this and that. And the only thing you hear from the other side is their heads on spikes, like the worst
Starting point is 01:05:16 stuff like this. If you're a Democrat, all you hear is Marjorie Green Taylor in America. I'm using American equivalent so people can connect with this more. While there's so many other Republicans you don't hear about, and the other way around. So for this, you don't need to have been traumatized. You have a tribe that you listen to and going back to our evolutionary purpose. 50,000 years ago, I could be beaten,
Starting point is 01:05:39 I could be attacked by a wolf in a part of the woods to learn that partisan safe. Well, they would never go there. I sometimes also saw my tribe mates were attacked by the wolf and I would never go there. But sometimes the tribe leaders would tell me, hey, watch out. Do our predators in the corner of the woods don't go? We wouldn't go there and we would be safe. That has a purpose that we trust our tribe mates. You may hate your neighbor and totally not trust them, but you walk out of your house
Starting point is 01:06:09 and your neighbor tells you, hey, did you hear there's a gunman in our neighborhood? You would go inside. So our trust of our tribe and tribe leaders intensifies when we are scared. So the fear is mongered and pushed upon us. You are not traumatized you, but we are scared. And of course, part of the strategy is to show you and make you hear over and over and over and over and over, the horrible things the other tribe did to you and to your people and want to do and will do and said they will be. Right.
Starting point is 01:06:39 Is there a, do you, how much stock do you put in the notion? that it's not only those who are at the receiving end of atrocities who end up with trauma, but in fact, to perpetrate these atrocities is inherently traumatizing. And so to be in the position of the aggressor, the powerful one, the occupier, the attacker, to be in that position, I mean, I guess this is sort of in arguable, given that, American soldiers coming home from Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq, they had PTSD, not necessarily just because they got attacked, but because they had to do things or they witnessed their fellow soldiers doing things that lined up with the orders they were given and lined up
Starting point is 01:07:33 with what they were told. Their tribe was justified in doing, but in some level ripped something apart inside of them in terms of their connection to their own emotional vulnerability. How do you work with people in terms of understanding the trauma of the victimizer. I mean, that is a big issue, but the more modern the warfare has become, the less of an issue that has become. Once a soldier told me when you are shooting someone in war, what you see is not a human. You see a dot in your scope. Or you see a dot and you push the button and a bomb or missile is fired. So less of that is but still is happening. There are always. lot of people who go back to what happened, what they did, or they become disillusioned
Starting point is 01:08:18 about what they believed at some point, or they become, you know, they come back because there's also within the crisis, there's very heightened intense emotions that kidnap our logic. And then they have, they come back and they have the time to look at it and explore. And also, even there are people who lose partners, lose their friends, lose a lot of things, lose family members. And then they come back to it years later and they ask, was it worth it? What did we achieve? What did we not achieve? Because usually when horrible atrocities and wars happen, years later, you will start to learn what was going on, really. I mean, now with the social media, you see the details of horrible things, but then you may think of an agenda or things you are hoping to achieve, and it depends on years later, you look back and see if you did or did not achieve this.
Starting point is 01:09:06 So I want to ask you regarding sort of this like modern trauma. You know, your work as a psychiatrist, do you deal directly with patients? Are you more researching or do you have patients as well? I do both. Okay. I have friends who are not psychiatrists, but like, you know, MFTs. therapist, right? And one of the kind of unifying things that they say is they all say the last seven months have been a fascinating case study in trauma in terms of they have
Starting point is 01:09:55 they have patients who are not directly experiencing, you know, any of the things. They're not in Gaza, for example, but they are getting it through their phones and they, it's kind of all they want to talk about. I want to ask, just in your experience, have you seen an uptick in terms of mental health crises in the last few months? And do you think there's a way to mitigate it that does not? not involve completely shutting that part of your empathy down, where you're just like, oh, I'm just going to not, I'm just not going to read any news about it, and I'm going to be
Starting point is 01:10:44 completely avoidant. Or is avoidance healthy? You know, what's your opinion on this? So first, the first part of your question, I haven't seen an immense increase, but I mostly work with traumatized PT actively PTSD people and we are talking about the trauma. So we don't go much to that field. But one of the challenges of these days is that it has become a topic that nobody even dares talking about, right? People are even terrified of bringing up these conversations because it has become so what's the divisive these days, even inside America.
Starting point is 01:11:20 All this is happening not in America. Americans are fighting each other over this issue. But I have a lot of advice for people, including my patients who are highly stressed, not only with this, but also other horrible, horrible things, news that they hear and they see and the images they see. So absolutely, we don't want people to be ignorant. People need to know. People want to know.
Starting point is 01:11:43 And I in no way recommend people to stop learning about what's happening, but there are ways that we can be informed, but limit the negative impact. So one thing is that a lot of people feel if they are not feeling horribly bad, they're doing something wrong or they're not doing something for the people who are suffering. Reality is that me, actually I was telling another reporter in another conversation, she was basically a child of Lebanese refugees. So she, this reporter specifically had the emotional suffering even more intense, right? And one thing was that if there is another person who is not around to enjoy anymore
Starting point is 01:12:23 or is not allowed to enjoy anymore at this point, that includes. It increases mine and your responsibility to have as prosperous a life as we can for ourselves and that other person. Me, suffering is not going to reduce anyone else's suffering. So the question is, number one, what am I going to do with this? So I want to be informed, right? So to be informed, I don't need to go over those images and videos 10 times. Right. The first time I read, the first time I heard, the first time I saw was enough.
Starting point is 01:12:55 So no enough, nor our limits. When I work in my clinic with the patients, I work with people who have seen the worst. I have survivors of torture, first responders, refugees, human trafficking. I don't, I overcome my desire for disaster, pornography, or voyeurism to want to know all the details of the worst things that happen to them. I know enough to be able to help them. Now, I want to know enough. I want to avoid overly dramatic, emotionally charged news deliveries. So if I'm listening to the news, I will look.
Starting point is 01:13:26 listen to an anchor or reporter or a channel which has composure and which shares facts with me. I don't care about the super excitement of Tucker Carlson or Wolf Blitzer. I don't care about their emotions. And I always talk about both sides of the media, so I will not appear as a person who was on one side because I want to be neutral here. And then, so avoid scrolling over and over and over. We need time. We need breaks. Some people are constantly going over. And know your limits. Each person has different limits. I have learned through my experience and work that I've been doing. I have a better capacity for exposure. My wife cannot. I will not show to her something that I see, which I know is extremely bothersome to her. So number one, to do it to myself
Starting point is 01:14:12 and also to do it to other people who are around me. And then we need to, as I said, not be manipulated. That's the very important part because a big chunk of the emotions come through the manipulation and their turn to hatred, then what do I want to do with these emotions? So emotion is energy. If I let it be on its own, it's going to eat me up and it's going to hurt me or it's going to hurt others. How can I reduce the intensity and how can I transform this? If I'm really motivated and moved by an emotion, whether it's hate or not hate, if it's sadness or anger or disgust or fear, what am I going to do with it? How can I transform it? Like a lot of people who have been survivors of shootings in America, what are they doing?
Starting point is 01:14:58 They're advocating for better gun regulations, right? How can I turn this to something useful that helps those who are suffering or help others who are suffering that I can help now? So mobilizing those energies. But then there's another aspect of how we deal with it with kids because it also should be age-appropriate. Children are getting these exposures these days. They may be impacted.
Starting point is 01:15:21 They may have questions. Ignoring them, ignoring it is not going to be helpful. And the first thing that kid wants to hear is that they are safe. Because for a child, when they see the scenes of explosions or the disaster images, whether it's on TV or on social media, it's for a younger child, it's hard for them to even know this is not happening here. So the first is to tell them this is safe. And then in an age-appropriate way, talking to them, and of course we want to limit the exposure to these scenes for children. They do not need it. And another actually important aspect of, for those who want to be empathetic,
Starting point is 01:15:56 another negative aspect of too much exposure is desensitization. This becomes the new norm. Now I'm okay, with it. The same way when they say, okay, five people died is horrible. Ten people, 15, 20, 100, 1,000, 50,000, it becomes statistics. It becomes a concept. So constant exposure, there's been actual research that shows concept exposure desensitizes us. and reduces our ability to empathize.
Starting point is 01:16:24 Yeah, I have to say doing what we're doing on this podcast strikes me as, and I've been doing it since before, I started co-hosting with Matt, but now doing it together, you know, trying to do satire. And the feedback we get is that the effect is that it's not desensitizing for people, it's regulating, that people are able to laugh or discharge or just feel seen and heard that, no, you're not crazy. We're seeing the same thing and, and, you know, together we're going to, it's almost like emotional, intellectual antioxidants. It's harder to manipulate people who can laugh at and see through things.
Starting point is 01:17:00 But at the same time, satire has another edge to it, at least for me, I know that my capacity to perceive and point out irony can sometimes in many ways diminish my need to feel things. Because it's like, ha, ha, this ironic veneer, a facetiousness. and it becomes so routine for me to see the ridiculousness of things that I notice myself sometimes pushing away opportunities to really have an emotional experience now. And it's almost like my brain is saying, ah, I'm over it. I felt, you know, back in November, back in February,
Starting point is 01:17:37 I felt those things. Now I know what's going on. Right. So if there's a new incident that needs to be witnessed, if I'm going to talk about this, with any authority, but also it needs to be experienced if I'm going to stay emotionally connected. There's a part of me that wants to use my humor and my irony to push it away. The defense, right? As opposed to using it for the purposes of like the defense of my tribe,
Starting point is 01:18:04 which is people with moral conscience, like using it for good. Now I'm using it for self-defense and then my satire might become, I don't know, more narcotic than cathartic. I don't know. I'm just kind of spitballing here, but have you seen this fine line when it comes to these kinds of coping mechanisms that can be very helpful and healthy, but then they can turn against us? Actual humor is considered a mature defense mechanism and psychodynamic approaches, right? But I think another thing that's... Even bathroom humor, which is our favorite here.
Starting point is 01:18:37 Whatever is consensual of both sides, absolutely. Here's the thing. But another way humor can even help people understand these concepts better is that. that they are less rigid, their boundaries and their tribal, because when you are not afraid, when you're laughing, when you're not angry, when you're laughing, you're more loose with the boundaries and you're more open to accepting those new concepts, for instance, because unfortunately, one of the things is that right now the system has become that there are people who totally believe in their own tribe and gods, and they will never leave that. So no matter how much
Starting point is 01:19:16 you and I and this and that other person with whatever agenda keep repeating over and over and over it's just an echo chamber those who believe and agree with us continue who are in our tribe and the others don't and I think humor and satire is one way that we can loosen up a little bit these boundaries because again when people are less scared they may be more open to information and instructions sure yeah which is why yeah which is why fascist or fundamentalist contexts are so wary of comedians and of humor. And I mean, Matt and I have noted the sort of the death of the sense of humor in certain corners of, say, the Jewish world that staunchly supports Israel. There's an inability to see ironies. And I can't presume to speak for what happens in other
Starting point is 01:20:05 tribes. But we've certainly lamented that because one of the things we love the most and try to embody the most from the Jewish tradition is that ability to see a scantz a little bit, to look at the world a little bit from the outside, which you need to be able to have humor. And to lose that, to me, is to lose an essential part of what makes our tradition so valuable. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, as you were saying, Daniel, this is like for me serving this dual purpose. And one of them is as sort of a self-defense mechanism of being able to um being able to joke about it is the only way that I can I guess function I'm a comedian so everything for me is is self is defense mechanisms I'm built out of them you know and so I I try to um you know protect myself uh
Starting point is 01:21:08 using jokes and whatnot. And I don't, I don't even think I do it in a wholly unhealthy way. I'm not saying that as a negative. I'm saying it as a positive. It's, you know, it's better than avoidance for me.
Starting point is 01:21:24 But, you know, I'm wondering if the effect of people, you know, listening to this podcast or, or consuming, you know, humor. I mean, we don't make fun of dead people. It's not, it's not like that, but it is
Starting point is 01:21:44 something where we're trying to bring light to a subject that is incredibly dark. And I sometimes find myself wondering whether or not we are participating in the desensitization phenomenon that happens around subjects like this in which you are talking, you know, flippantly about something that in general should be taken seriously and I guess my personal feelings on it are that
Starting point is 01:22:20 there's just so few outlets where anyone in especially in entertainment is willing to even joke about the Israeli government and they're constantly you know they're constantly degraded PR machine that keeps getting weirder and weirder and more and more detached from reality.
Starting point is 01:22:44 But yeah, so my hope is that people see it as a positive and that it does have a positive effect on people. But I wonder if it is desensitization. I'm trying to avoid normalization while at the same time trying to still make jokes. My hope is that it's fortification, not desensitization. that we're fortifying people's immune systems rather than desensitizing them from the capacity to feel.
Starting point is 01:23:14 That's the hope. I think it also depends on how it is done. If you start everything and end everything, we're just joking about what's happening there. It's different than, I don't know, do you know John Stewart and Colbert's styles? They are like, well, the joke is joking, and then they get serious and talk about the serious thing.
Starting point is 01:23:31 Right? So you have, I'm sure, you have a mix of the serious, deep, thoughtful conversations, and then there's humor is in the mix. It's not just joking about everything. So in that sense, I mean, it's not, I haven't done research in this field, but I'm hoping this is not going to do the desensitization. And the other thing which I miss to say is that to accept the fact that these are horrible
Starting point is 01:23:53 things that we are seeing and hearing. I mean, empathizing with oneself, accepting that I have horrible, I mean, I have had horrible painful reactions to these and other things I hear from my patients, right? So this is okay to suffer to some extent from when we hear these things. But we don't want to make that point of it my own suffering. Let me ask you about that. What is this compulsion?
Starting point is 01:24:17 Because you talked about how the fact that you even need to tell people consume this news in moderation, don't keep scrolling, which indicates that there's a compulsion, there's a tendency, there's a vortex that pulls us towards more and more bad feeling, more and more suffering. And we could liken that to addiction, but that might be flattening the case a little too much. But what I'm wondering is what is this compulsion either in, I mean, you could talk about in the lives of people with complex PTSD to relive and relive and relive aspects of the inciting incident
Starting point is 01:24:53 or for those of us who maybe haven't been through anything comparable to what's going on there. Still, you could call it a sick fascination, but maybe that's pathologizing it too much. But either way, there's some kind of magnetic pull I can feel it when I'm scrolling and whether I'm magnetized by outrage or I'm magnetized by sentiment or I'm magnetized by ironic humor
Starting point is 01:25:15 this is a part of me I'm telling you that gets disappointed when I run out of Twitter posts to read that I haven't read. I'm looking for the next hit of something. What is that about? I think there's two aspects. One aspect is as you said,
Starting point is 01:25:31 the kind of stimulation and the negative emotions are stimulating to the brain. Yes. It's like a cocaine. And that's why actually that is what, one reason the media and social media have become so viciously negative these days
Starting point is 01:25:46 is that it has been learned that the negative emotions keep you around. You keep watching, you keep listening, you keep scrolling, you keep clicking. Number one is because of that stimulating effect that has on the brain. And our animal brain wants stimulation,
Starting point is 01:26:02 whether negative or positive. The other part is that your attention is redirect. Emotions redirect our attention. It goes more towards threat detection. The animal in me is looking and seeing danger and then goes to full precept preservation or other preservation mode combined with fear and anger and I look for any sign of threat around me and I keep looking and looking and looking. The other aspect I believe is that some of us feel like we have to be doing something.
Starting point is 01:26:29 You feel like if I don't keep scrolling and if I do not suffer, I'm a bad person, I'm a cold-hearted person, I'm a person who doesn't care. And that has become a way of showing care for some people. But in reality, my scrolling and my suffering is not going to help anybody who's suffering now. I should think about what I can do to really productively help those people or other people that I am advocating for and not feeling it before. Otherwise, I'm wasting time on energy and emotions and neurotransmitters. Yeah, that really resonates. I mean, one thing I was saying a lot early on in this, and I'll say it again, is that, you know,
Starting point is 01:27:06 we can chant free, free Palestine, but if we can't be free, free ourselves, what are we even talking about? We don't, you know, we want something to stop, but we don't, we're not able to embody the thing that we want to create more of, which is going to create, you know, that kind of deficit of imagination and just an inability to live consistently with our values. And as far as not deny, ourselves pleasure. My friend Katie posted this today. She says, in your moments of joy, hold on to Palestine, not because, quote, I don't deserve this, but because they deserve this too. Joy is a reminder of the universality of human pleasure. Joy is one piece of liberation. Joy is a lived example of what exactly we are fighting for. And that, if you come into your activism or your media
Starting point is 01:27:53 consumption with that in mind, then you're magnetized by wanting to bring something positive into the world rather than just that just divert my attention just make me feel useful just take the pain away for a second by giving me something even more intense yeah yeah absolutely you got as i said earlier also i agree if someone else is not around or able to enjoy now my responsibility to enjoying and being prosperous and being productive is doubled and triple and multiple yeah that really resonates well doctor we thank you so much for coming on and talking with us about trauma and about, you know, everyone's responses in the last few months and what's going on in our brains. Before we get out of here, I just wanted to know
Starting point is 01:28:43 I was looking you up. Do you have a Malamute? I have a great, I have a great Pyrenees dogs. That's a Pyrenees? Yeah. Okay. How many pounds was, how big is that? dog. So the guy you saw probably is Jasper, who was my former great Pyrenees. He was 110 pounds. And when he stood up, he put his paws on my shoulder and looked at my eyes. But the other guy's Mishka and Lucy are smaller around 100 pounds now. Beautiful dogs. I saw those and I immediately was just like, you know, I got to get a dog. They were just beautiful dog. That immediately, I was like, I've never had a picture be an emotional support animal before. Speaking of that,
Starting point is 01:29:31 I was on the subway yesterday or no, two days ago here in New York. And sitting across from me, it wasn't a very full car, was a woman with a little dog on her lap and a man with a cat on his lap. And the dog
Starting point is 01:29:47 and the cat were like looking at each other and it was, you know, my instant my impulse was to take out my phone and wanted to film it. Oh, isn't this cute? Because my compromised damaged brain now sees everything through, oh, this wouldn't just make a great reel or a great post. It's terrible.
Starting point is 01:30:06 Like the world is just little clips waiting to happen. And the person I was with sitting next to me said, what are you doing? You need to ask these people for permission. I'm like, come on, it's a dog. It's a cat. It's cute. And so I didn't.
Starting point is 01:30:18 And I looked at the cat. And I noticed the cat was actually in a carrier. And there was words written on the carrier. And I looked closely and it said, PTSD emotional support cat, no eye contact, no sudden movements, like really a request for respect and space for the purpose. And I looked at the person holding this cat and the person, you know, was wearing dark glasses clearly trying to regulate themselves as best they can on the subway with this cat. And here I was about to be like, hey, can I take a picture of your cat so people
Starting point is 01:30:55 will like me, you know? And just speaking of trauma, like I'd never seen a PTSD cat before, but the cat really did look like it took its job seriously. That's beautiful. Well, you know, this is if you get anything out of this podcast, it would be highly recommending
Starting point is 01:31:12 emotional support pets because they sound great. And if not, then just choose us as your emotional support. Yeah, it would be your emotional support pod. Doctor, can you tell us one more time, name of the book, and just generally what it's about.
Starting point is 01:31:30 It's afraid, understanding the purpose of fear and harnessing the power of anxiety. Basically, it's written for the public to have a good understanding of fear from its evolutionary purpose, to how we learn and unlearn fear, what we love to be scared, how we can utilize our own anxiety to our own advantage, what are the diseases of fear, trauma, what are the cutting edge treatments, how we can get those politics, media, all these different aspects of fear and anxiety. And I also wanted to add a very quick note. So I'm not religious.
Starting point is 01:32:02 I'm more on the spiritual side, but I'm Iranian from a Muslim country. And two Jewish people sat here and had a very stable and nice conversation and we enjoyed and we didn't hate each other. So whoever is listening, going back to full circle back to where we started. The boundaries and lines others draw for us shouldn't apply to us. I mean, why would I be scared for someone else's benefit? At least if I want to be scared around, let it be for my own benefits. Yeah, let it be because there is a lion, not in a cage, not, you know,
Starting point is 01:32:36 because you were told to be afraid to have a conversation with someone that you were told was a lion out of a cage. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dr. Jabinbach. The people who tell us that are just lying to keep us in cages. Oh, wow. He got the pun in. I was wondering if he was going to get one in.
Starting point is 01:32:57 Beautiful. Thank you again, Dr. Jevinbach. It's great talking to you. Thank you for having me. So that was our interview. Please check out his book. It is a great, I haven't read it, but I bet it's a great book.
Starting point is 01:33:13 I'm pretty sure it is. And that is your most moral podcast for today. Daniel, thank you so much for being. my most moral co-host on this podcast. Always a pleasure, Matt. Next time we see each other, you might not recognize me. I'm planning to shave this ferret off my face.
Starting point is 01:33:34 No, I like it. It looks good. But I actually, I did see a video. I looked back at us recently when we did our first episode together where you came over. And I saw that you were clean shaven. And I was like, oh, you also look good, clean shaven. So both works. Both works.
Starting point is 01:33:52 I like looking. Yes. uh thank you for being here thank you for listening patreon.com slash bad hasbara please join up and all right everyone thanks again so much for listening and until next time from the river to the sea i think i have PTSD i need help jumping jacks was us pushups was us god maga us all karate us taking molly us Michael Jackson us Yamaha keyboards Us
Starting point is 01:34:26 Georgia makes not us Andor was us Heath Ledger Joker us Endless Brent success Happy Meals was us McDonald's was us Being happy us Bequam yoga us
Starting point is 01:34:40 Eating food us Breathing air us Drinking water us We invented all that shit Yeah.

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