Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 330: Post Truth with Cara Santa Maria

Episode Date: December 8, 2016

Tom and Cecil have Talk Nerdy host Cara Santa Maria on the show. They talk about the rise of “fake-news” and how personal biases can influence how we consume media.   About Cara:  Cara Santa Maria is a Los Angeles Area Emmy and Knight Foundation Award-winning journalist, science communicator, television personality, producer, and podcaster. http://carasantamaria.com/

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome at. This is episode 330 of Cognitive Dissonance, and this is the Cara, Pinta, and Santa Maria episode.

Let's go, Nina. I didn't make that joke because I'd forgotten about that boat. And it just didn't fit. It just didn't fit. Yeah, it just didn't work. So we are joined by Cara Santa Maria maria cara you've got um you obviously you appear on skeptics guide to the universe which is actually the first podcast i ever listened to cecil turned me on to that show um got what 912 years ago when podcasts first came out it was the first podcast i was listening to no shit i was listening to uh no shit, I was listening to Coast to Coast AM on the, because they used to have a live stream of it, right?

So Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell was on the internet. And I remember listening to it thinking, this doesn't sound real. All this stuff sounds fake. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, what's the opposite of somebody who's credulous? And so I remember sort of typing that in and I came across the Skeptic's Guide. And it was the first real podcast I had found and immediately I turned Tom onto it. And this was when they were on episode 30.

And so I'd been listening for a very long time. Yeah, you turned me on to that show and I started listening to it. And I listened to the whole back catalog. And then that was kind of our introduction to podcast. And Karen, now you're on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. That's very cool. And then you've got your own show, podcasting. And, Kara, now you're on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. That's very cool. And then you've got your own show, Talk Nerdy.

I do, yeah. I've been doing my show for a little bit longer, not than the guys, obviously. The SGU guys have been going for, I think, 11 years now, which is insane. And I think Talk Nerdy has been up maybe pushing three years. I've been on Skeptic's Guide about a year and a half now. That's terrific. So, Kara, what other projects do you have kind of percolating right now? Is that primarily what you're working on? I know

you were at QED. We met you at QED. Yeah, we did meet at QED. That was a ton of fun. Yeah, I have a weird job because I'm a freelancer. So, you know, oftentimes you work to work. I'm lucky enough to get a lot of work in television. I do have an agent who helps negotiate some of that and helps to find work. So it all just kind of depends on where I am in the year. Because it's December now, it's very slow in Hollywood. So generally speaking, most of the shows I work on are on hiatus right now. So I actually do get to focus on the podcast and on just kind of catching up and getting organized and, you know, getting my taxes ready. Oh, God. But I know.

No. No. But for the most part. And you also have time to guest on terrible shows like ours. So we want to thank you for joining us. I have time to guest on wonderful shows like yours. Cecil, can you make a mental note that December is the time next year to get Cara back on the show?

We'll put that on the calendar. Important people in December. That's what we do. But yeah, I mean, for the most part, you know, I work on multiple television shows throughout the year. I have a local show here in Los Angeles called SoCal Connected, which is a public television network, KCET. You know, just like PBS, it's user viewer based. And so we don't have commercials and we always have to do pledge drives, but I get to do some good journalism with them. And then there's a couple different shows I work on. One of them is America's Greatest Makers, which is a reality competition show for people in the maker movement.

That one's a lot of fun. What is the maker movement? I don't know. The maker movement. Oh, it's cool. Tell me about that. I don't know the maker movie. Oh, it's cool. It's like, I don't know. It's like if you're into coding or if you're into carpentry or you're into doing circuit boards, like doing electronics. If you're into 3D printing, it's kind of all these different crafty meat computer trades. And so their maker space is popping up all over the country where people can, you know, pay a fee to become members and then they can use desk space there

and they'll have access to all the heavy machinery and all of the 3D printers and things so they can kind of make whatever they want. Some people do it as a career. I feel like I would just make catapults. I would make nothing but catapults. I would make trebuchets and fight you.

I know. That's how we die, Cecil. This is how. Put it down. I'm putting it on the board. This is how we die. Remember before how we die is bulldozer fights? Now it's catapult versus

trebuchet. That's so much cooler. That is so much cooler. And there are literally people that do that. It's amazing. Some people will make stuff and sell it. You know, it'll be their career. And some people just like to blow off steam, kind of playing around in the maker movement. Like they'll make stuff and then unmake it and then remake it. So it's a super

cool movement. And this'll make stuff and then unmake it and then remake it. So it's a super cool movement. And this specifically is a competition series where the individuals are competing for like a million dollars. So they're making something that they want to take to market. That's tremendous.

Can I ask a silly question? I saw the other day on Reddit, there was like an AMA with Adam Savage. He described himself as a maker. Yeah.

And I just thought that was a term he had made up. No, yeah. There's a whole movement around it. So that's totally – Adam Savage is a great example of somebody who does that because as a guy who worked in set decoration and design and some robotics involved with that, that's what he did. He would like tinker. He would just find stuff and put it together and make machines out of it.

I love that this is a movement instead of just being that eccentric weird guy with shit in his garage. I know. All of those eccentric weirdos got together. It's amazing. They have their own Burning Man. It's the most organized Burning Man. It's all powered by magnesium flares.

It's amazing. It's great. Kara, let's talk a little bit about your background. So are you a neuroscientist? Is that sort of what your specialty is in? I mean, I feel more comfortable saying that I studied neuroscience. So I did an undergrad and I did a master's. And then I started a PhD, but I dropped out.

And that's when I started doing science communication full time. Ah, so you're more like a science educator then. Exactly. Like I did work in neuroscience labs and I did some neuroscience research. So my undergrad was psych and philosophy was my minor. And then my master's degree was in biology with a neuroscience focus and I was in a neuroscience lab. I did a master's thesis.

I was the cell culture, like I ran the cell culture facility and did all of the technical stuff in neuronal cell culture. And then when I started a PhD, I did about a year towards that working in a bird lab. I was in a mouse lab when I was doing my master's, but that's when I left. I really was finding that I was loving teaching. I love the coursework I was taking, of course, and I love my professors. And I really like being in the classroom. And, you know, I taught undergrad biology and psychology at different levels, like animal phys, anatomy and physiology, and also like bio 101 and psych 101. And I loved that. And I found myself kind of shirking my wet lab work, like I didn't really want to go in and like, mess around with bird brains all day, I wanted to go teach. And so I think it was a good transition for me to move into kind of public communication of science. So yeah, I never finished. So I don't

really feel comfortable using the term neuroscientist because I don't work as a scientist anymore. I see. You know, we get a little bit of background here. We know that you are a science educator. Now, one of the things that's been popping up and one of the things that's been, it's certainly been bothering me and I know it's been bothering Tom, is this sort of fake news things that's been popping up and one of the things that's been it's certainly been bothering me and I know it's been bothering Tom is this sort of fake news cycle that's been happening. And one of the things we talked about on our show a couple of weeks ago was a Facebook. It was a it was a Facebook post that was blown up into an actual news story. Someone had found a Facebook post about an ambulance stopping and a man dying and leaving a four-year-old fatherless. And it was literally a Facebook message that they were quoting as if it was true.

And we're finding this more and more in the online world is that there's a lot of unattributed stuff that's coming out. But we don't, we're, Tom and I are just, we're just lay people. We're just, you know, we're just normal, you know. We're the most lay people. As lay people go, whatever. Is there something underneath lay people? Whatever that is. Like your hillbillies?

Is that what you're trying to say? No, keep going deeper. We need to go a little farther. Is there under the hill? People under the stairs. People under the stairs. There you go. You're like the sewer people.

You're chuds. On a good day. On a good day. With a strong downwind. Oh, yeah. There you go. You're like the sewer people. You're chuds. On a good day. On a good day. With a strong downwind. That's fair. But we're, you know, we don't, I don't have, I think,

a very deep toolkit to try to work through this sort of thing. Do you have any advice for us to try to remain skeptical, to try to find the, to get to the bottom of some of these stories?

Well, you know, it's a really tough thing. And it's obviously tough for everybody. And we know now that these fake online news stories really, or at least we think played a big part in this recent election, especially in outlets like Facebook, where it's sort of still the wild, wild west. I think that Mark Zuckerberg, after it kind of came to light, really does want to crack down. But it's difficult. I think there are some better standards on legitimate news outlets. Like, generally speaking, if you're going to visit the New York Times, or you're going to visit the Washington Post, you know that you're at least getting curated news, news that was written by journalists who have a certain set of ethics. But you do have to be careful because even on those sites, there are things like sponsored content where it's actually an advertisement that has all of the sort of semblance of real news because it's written in the same typeface.

But somewhere on it and usually at the top, it will say the word sponsored content. That right there should be a red flag for a lot of people. There's an interesting study that was recently put out by the Stanford History Education Group where they were interested to see if kids, like kids who are digital natives, so middle school, high school, and early college kids had this kind of baloney detector for fake news online because they figured, okay, they're digital natives. They grew up reading their news on the internet. So they actually sent like, I think it's nearly 8,000. They got nearly 8,000 responses on these different tasks that they collected across a bunch of different states, across a bunch of different students.

And I just want to read you. This is so sad. I feel like this isn't going to go well. I could be mistaken, but also I'm not mistaken. I'm going to read you just like the world's quickest quote. Here we go. When thousands of students respond to dozens of tasks, there are endless variations. That was certainly the case in our experience. However, at each level, middle school, high school and college, these variations paled in comparison to a stunning and dismaying consistency. Overall, young people's ability to reason about the information on the internet can be summed up in one word, bleak. Oh, yeah. Okay. So pretty much what I expected. Also, a little vomit inducing. Yeah, it's a little scary. So what they found is that

at different levels where the tasks became a little bit more difficult, consistently, students would not be able to tell the difference between something that was sponsored and something that wasn't. So like advertorial work and pure editorial, they couldn't tell the difference between opinion or letters to the editor and actual news. And oftentimes, if they did see something that was on a more kind of biased news site, like something that was sponsored or paid for by a political action committee, they would either take it at face value, or if they did say that it seemed slanted, they wouldn't click the links. And even the ones that click the links that were included in the

tweet or in the news article very rarely would open up another browser to be able to determine, you know, to type in those search terms and determine on their own whether or not that was a valid news source. So that's really scary. Can I ask, do you think that that's a lack of skill in terms of, you know, I like the term digital native. So the digital natives that you're referring to, I wouldn't think that they would have a lack of technical skill to be able to search for those search terms, right? Yeah.

Is it a – and this is just a guess, and I get that. But do you think it's a lack of desire to fact-check something like that? In other words, is fact-checking as a virtue kind of gone to the wayside? Is it something we don't think of as something that's really necessary at this point? Yeah, and that becomes the question, right? Is it a function of, oh, I'm too lazy or, oh, it doesn't really matter? Or is it a function of literally not knowing that you have to? And that's the real scary part is just this idea,

I'm just going to take everything at face value if it's printed on the internet. Do you care to speculate at all on which it might be? I think it's probably some sort of combination. I really do think a lot of students, you know, they're in a psychological study or they're doing a project for school and they're like, I'll just look it up on Wikipedia, like whatever. It's probably correct. And so there's a certain amount of laziness that goes into that. But I think another part of it is just this kind of gullibility, you know, this credulity that a lot of people have. That's not a virtue. Yeah, not at all. And so translate that then to adults.

Let's say we're dealing with this last election cycle. We're on Facebook and we're seeing all of our friends and peers posting news articles. We're on Facebook and we're seeing all of our friends and peers posting news articles. And of course, these news articles believe it? And because I want to believe it, I'm not willing to, you know, flex my skeptical muscles. But also, let's remember, a lot of people never learned how to be skeptics. It's like an intrinsic skill that they just don't have. And as we know, as skeptics, being skeptical is super uncomfortable because you're constantly having to quest your own ideas about reality. And that's scary for a lot of people. And it kind of sucks because nobody wants to be wrong. You know, it's interesting this last week, and we talked about this on our podcast last week, and I'm going to bring it up again. But last week, there was an opinion piece sent out by

The Guardian. And it was about Sam Harris and how he turned, basically the opinion was it turned my mind into poison and I became radicalized alt-left online and it said I started with Sam Harris and I went to Milo Yiannopoulos and I eventually became this hateful person and I was a diehard liberal and now it sort of twisted and warped my mind

and I referred to it last week as reefer madness for the modern age. it was just a really sort of hyperbolic a really terrible terribly written article but immediately the the far left this sort of um what a lot of people refer to as regressive leftist and i don't really like that term but but me neither but i know what you mean and i. I get it. Like I have a very good friend, Dave Rubin, who is very much on that kind of like war path against the regressive left. And I get what he's doing, but sometimes I see him crossing into like scary right-wing behavior. It's, it's a fine line. This example is really, this example is actually really interesting

because it takes both sides. So the one side, this side, the C.J. Werlum and Glenn Greenwald immediately found this article, which was an anonymous piece submitted to The Guardian. It's just an anonymous opinion, and they tweeted it out, and they said, see, this is what happens when you listen to these new atheists. This is what happens, and this is where it can lead. And then later on that same day, there was a guy on Twitter who claimed that he wrote it. So he said he was a troll and he said, oh, I wrote that piece and I lied to the Guardian. And everybody immediately said Sam Harris and a bunch of other people took his word and said, oh, see, it's a fake article. And look, don't you feel stupid? Don't you have egg on your face, et cetera, et cetera. And you kind of went back and forth. And there was no proof on either side.

All you had was an opinion piece on one side and then Sam Harris saying, see, it's a fake. But Sam Harris, you know, somebody who I look up to as a man with a very high level of intellect, looked at that and said, no, it's a fake article because some guy on Twitter said it's fake. Yeah. And it's really worrisome when you publish something with an anonymous byline and the newspaper itself doesn't do its due diligence or stand behind that byline. Like the newspaper should have either confirmed or denied that guy's tweet

because, of course, they know who it is. And if their source is willing to come out, then they should confirm that their source came out. If that guy was not the source, they could have very easily denied that and still protected their source. So I think the worrisome thing here is that Sam Harris is a good example and Glenn Greenwald. They're both very good examples of traditional of like a deep understanding of traditional journalism and journalistic ethics, especially Glenn Greenwald, of course. These are people who have Glenn more than Sam. But Sam, you know, when he was finishing his PhD in neuroscience, he wrote his first book and he

was doing a lot of deep diving and really, I think, kind of was in the journalistic trenches at the time. And this was a little bit before this sort of new media wild, wild west. And so I think these guys honor and respect journalistic principles. And the scary thing is sometimes we assume they apply when they absolutely don't. You know, what's what's what's also scary about that is after that happened, someone else on Twitter wrote an article about it. And then in the comments, supposedly, the Guardian did comment and say, no, this person on Twitter is lying. And then the people who were sort of against that, that wanted this, that sort of wanted to believe that this guy had written it, this Twitter troll had written it,

they said, we don't believe the Guardian. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it's just this crazy feedback loop where everybody is just finding their own biases. And it really does come back to what you were saying, where, you know, maybe people don't even need to check into things because we find what we're looking for and we immediately just latch onto it. Oh, for sure we find what we're looking for. I mean, you guys saw that the Oxford Dictionary chose as their word of the year this year, post-truth. And this is how they defined it. An adjective defined as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. cleanly enough and you basically outwardly say, I know it's not true, but doesn't it feel true that people will be like, oh yeah, that's much more important than objective truth because

objective truth is really not objective. It's kind of subjective. It's the same thing you see a lot of times with these intelligent design advocates and other kinds of anti-science movements sort of trying to make people question science as if it's just another way of thinking, like this postmodernist application of science. Like, no, science is the only kind of falsifiable system that we can use. It's a fundamental way of thinking and way of interrogating reality and incrementally changing our understanding of reality. But some people want to frame this idea of science as if it's, oh, just another way to explain what's going on. And I think that's, you know, that slippery post-truth slope that we're talking about.

It's really worrisome because it's becoming more, I don't know if it's really changed in terms of how gullible sort of the populace is. I think what's really changed is that there are unscrupulous people in positions of power who are more brazenly using this to their advantage. That's what worries me. Politicians have always been politicians, but they've never been so overt about it. It's different than like reported news. You know, reported news is not biased by its own definition. Of course, we all have biases. Of course, there's always going to be some that creep in. But the goal of pure journalism is to try to write the most unbiased piece possible. That's how we end up with things like false equivalencies, which are like dangerous

on the other end of that. But at least they're trying oftentimes to show every angle. And that takes place not only on the – I'm not saying that all journalists are disingenuous, but there is very much an intentional manipulation that's going on with these fake news stories. I agree with that. And I think there's still very, very good journalism that does take place. There's excellent journalism that takes place. The Atlantic is full of excellent journalism, for example. I think we have to point out the difference, right? It's like saying is that really still the goal of journalism? Absolutely. The same way that the goal of science is what the goal of science is. And it's kind of unfair to cloud good science

by throwing pseudoscience in with the same bucket. And I think we're talking about the same thing here. There is absolutely good journalism. There are people who are trained in journalistic methods and journalistic ethics at very good journalism schools or even on the job who care about truth and who care about, you know, informing the public of what's happening and who still do pure long form investigation, even though it's very expensive and who still believe in a free press and who care about making sure that all angles are reflected in their work and that they're unbiased and blah, blah, blah. Now, it's unfair to say that that journalism is sullied because of all the pseudo-journalism out there. But I guess what I mean is like, is that changing? And what I mean by that is that we've seen a change in journalism in terms of medium, right? So it used to be – I'm 38. I'm not 28. So when we were growing up, Cecil, you went to the library to look something up.

You flipped through the card catalog. You found books. You found periodicals. If you were going to read a newspaper, you subscribed to the newspaper. Money flowed into these mediums, right? And that created this journalistic space where people could go to journalism school. And they could get a degree, and they could get a job, and they could be journalists. And that was a job. And it was a respected job. And I still think there's space for that, but we know that space is dwindling.

Absolutely. And so what I mean is that, you know, clearly there's still people out there who want to be that kind of journalist. But I wonder if the landscape isn't shifting so that the majority now of what we see is blog space journalism or amateur journalism or intentionally misleading journalism or some combination of those with only a minority of the space being taken up now and really increasingly dwindling by what we would think of as traditional or respected journalism. Absolutely.

And I think it's a twofold problem. It's a bottom-up problem and a top-down problem. So from the bottom up, we as consumers need to be more responsible about where we find our information. We have to say, yes, I care about the New York Times, so I will pay for that subscription or I'll have an online subscription or I'll subscribe to this freemium model where I'm able to, if you notice with New York Times, you'll find a New York Times article online, and your first few are free each month, but then after that, it'll clip them, and you'll have to buy them in order to get more. So

I think they're trying out different things with freemium models, but you as a consumer, or if you find an individual who's doing good journalism, but they are more under the radar, but you really respect the work that they do and they have a patron or something like that, you need to be a patron of that. You need to show them this is where I want to get my information. So I'm going to do my a good job to try and support it or NPR or what, you know, whatever the place is, because a lot of them require that kind of support. Put your money where your mouth is.

But on the flip side of that, we need to see that these institutions are willing to maintain an unbiased nature. And it's very difficult because they're trying to stay afloat, right? So the minute that we see advertising muscling its way into editorial, that's where we start to see a lot of these big problems. And that's why most people have a hard time taking things that they see, whether it's CNN or Fox News, or maybe I should say MSNBC or Fox News, even though CNN is kind of going the way of MSNBC as well, taking that seriously, because of course, they're selling ad space in the middle of these news programs. And you don't know how much of the editorial is

being taken over. You know, before the Reagan era, the news was delivered in a very different way. The nightly news on, you know, CBS, NBC, whatever, those channels that you had on the dial, it was serious business, and it didn't make a profit. That was not intended to make a profit. You would watch the big dramas and the comedies and the game shows, and they would be full of ads and endorsements. Think about the game shows back in the day because they didn't see any ethical quandary with that. And all of that was editorially distinct. So the game shows would pay for the news. And that was like mandated by Congress.

And then after the Reagan administration, when a lot of things were deregulated, we started to see a huge change in the way that the news was funded. And I think that was kind of the beginning of this problem. The internet, all that did is open up a wild, wild west atmosphere where the barriers to entry were now gone. So some kid who was trying to get on a news desk for years and years and years, you know, going down to their local paper saying, please, you know, buy one of my stories. Please let me write for you. And they're saying, no, you can't. Now they just have a means to publish it on their own. That's the difference. What the internet, I think, has also done is it has created a culture where we have an idea that there is

almost a virtue to the idea of free information. And that's problematic because if nobody pays for it, there's nobody going to go to that journalism school. And that and this is all I mean, that that virtue of of the democratization of information, which we all really like about the Internet, means that, you know, there's tons of information, but we expect it to be free. We I mean, most people, I think, expect it to be free, especially young people expect it to be free. Most people, I think, expect it to be free, especially young people expect it to be free. And it just can't be free if it's going to be vetted and high quality and it's going to pay for that next generation of journalists.

My concern is that I can't imagine coming out of journalism school in 2016. I can't imagine how bleak your prospects are. All the paper sites that you go to now, if you have Adblock on, they will stop the site, a lot of them. And they'll say, please turn ad block off. I'm not going to show you the paper, the story that we're going to show you until you turn ad block off. And so, you know, they're trying to, they're trying to survive. Yeah. It's the only way they can. But they're swimming upstream. Yeah. You know, they, they, we know that they're swimming upstream and I think that they're, they're going to lose, honestly, my speculation, and it's just speculation, I recognize that think that they're going to lose, honestly, my speculation, and it's just speculation, I recognize that, is they're going to lose because of that cultural difference. Because people expect everything delivered from the internet to be delivered for

free. And that's just impractical. But that's culturally what at least all the people that I know that are younger than I am, they don't expect to pay for anything on the internet. If they have to pay for it, they just go sideways and find it somewhere else. And so what we're seeing now is that crisis point. We're even seeing it with places like YouTube's where they're struggling with their revenues and they're trying all of these new models that are subscription-based models. I don't know how much longer YouTube is going to be sustainable. We don't know how much longer these different formats are going to be sustainable. Netflix is doing very well with their subscription model and you can see that they're growing and they're getting better.

You know, HBO decoupled, I think we're going to start seeing more of those kinds of changes where you can sort of buy your entertainment, or maybe your information a la carte instead of having to bundle and buy it all at once. So I think it's going to be a culture shift. You know, the internet in many ways still is the wild, wild west. It has not been around for that long. And especially the ability to go to websites for free have not been around for that long. Now, obviously, I'm not talking about the internet service providers having any control over that. You know, we've talked about net neutrality separately. That's not what I'm talking about. But I'm talking

about the ability to get, you know, premium content that you really trust. The scary thing is, you're right, a lot of people are going to say, oh, I just want whatever's free. So they're going to go for the lowest quality. And that's always going to happen. But I am glad that we're talking about this right now. I am glad that this idea of post-truth and this idea of fake news is trending right now. And I just hope that it, you know, continues to be in the public consciousness so that people think about it and they start making decisions based on trying to get outside of the echo chamber. But a lot of that, I mean, if we're going to be honest, is going to come from digital literacy. It's got to start in the schools. It has to start in the educational

programs of people when they're very young. How do you get out of your echo chamber? That's the thing, right? Is that we really do seek out these things that confirm our own biases all the time. I mean, I know what I listen to on podcasts. I mean, you listen to what you like and you like what agrees with you. Yeah, and it really is true. And I feel like sometimes I'm feeling intellectually dishonest if I'm not finding myself a way out of this echo chamber. Do you have any advice on that at all?

Well, I mean, it kind of comes down to the same things we always say when it comes to grooming yourself as a good skeptic. It's about, you know, constantly trying to stay up to date with skeptical literature, making sure that you study philosophy, you read philosophy, if that's something that you feel like you need to bone up on, because it will remind you of all of the sort of personal biases that we have. And it'll remind you to keep them in the forefront of your mind so that you can go like, oh, is this just a case of confirmation bias? Is that why I'm into this? But on kind of beyond that, I think that the more that we move into a moderate neutral state, the more we leave our echo chambers. I think the worrisome thing, I think the reason that we maintain those walls and we stay within that silo is because outside of it, we see something that's

like the polar opposite. We see like alt-right, I don't even, I shouldn't use that term, like racist, bigoted, regressive, ultra-conservative. You know, we see this dichotomy of like, those are the only ways that people are. And the truth of the matter is there's a whole lot of people who are really moderate. And in the moderate area is where the real discussion happens. Think about bipartisan politics in Congress. Where is the actual shit getting done? It's getting done when Democrats and Republicans find some sort of common ground and they're able to work together. find some sort of common ground and they're able to work together. And I think it's the same way when it comes to the news. A lot of the best news that you'll read feels balanced. And there are some things you agree with, but there are other things that challenge your opinions. But none of it seems way over the top. None of it seems really extreme, like the piece that you guys described previously. So I think it's about moving that goalpost back to the middle a little bit. It's going to be easier for us to

get outside of our comfort zone if we're all sort of operating in this like reality area and not this hyper-partisan area. Ready to stick it in the glory hole? Get links to their Facebook, Twitter, and if you still use it, Google Plus account at their website, dissonancepod.com. If you need to be all discreet about it, contact them by email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Or you can call and leave a ransom message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Want to hear Cognitive Dissonance commercial free and gain access to exclusive content,

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Earlier we were talking a little bit about Facebook possibly cracking down on this and we had read a couple stories about this. We didn't cover it really deeply on our show. We don't cover much very deeply. That's really not my jam. I don't go

deep but I go shallow often. Nice, nice. Jeez, nice. Cecil is just moving right along. I am, just rolling right past it. Like your love life. So one of the things that somebody brought up to us, and I don't know that I have a good answer for this,

is Zuckerberg says that he wants to take a look at this on Facebook and he wants to see if there's some way to label things fake news. How does he decide? You know what I mean? Like, how is it that they're going to be able to decide? Is it going to be that this is a vetted place that we can get news? And the thing that that that Tom and I were talking about specifically was and how is that not going to be alarming to the people that are on the far right? How is that not going to be something that they're going to say, well, see, they're censoring our news, they're censoring our Facebook, and they're trying to say that this isn't real news, even though it is? Yeah, I mean, there is going to be that issue, right? But I

think that part of it, and probably the easiest thing to start with, is just vetting whether or not something is an advertisement. Yeah. Like right there. Are you trying to sell something? Is this an overt like is it an advertisement that's like masquerading or being camouflaged as news? If we can make that distinction and have basically a warning label that says you are looking at an ad, you know, this was purchased by a corporation with an intent to sell you something. That's right there. A good way to start. And I don't think people on the right or the left are going to be frightened by that. I think it's when you start talking about, sure, this idea of these like ultra right wing newspapers. And let's be honest, there are some ultra left wing outlets that do the same thing.

And sometimes it's even hard to put a political slant on it. Let's say it's an anti-vax website. Like, I don't know if they're right or left-wing, but they're trying to move, you know, they're trying to influence one specific policy. And so that's where things might get a little bit creative. And in that point, maybe it's not about removing it, but it's about ensuring that the funders are explicitly denoted at the top of the piece. The truth of the matter, some people don't care.

That's what I'm more afraid of. I'm more afraid of the people that are like, yeah, I know that the NRA paid for this piece, but I like the NRA, so I want to read what they have to say. That's news. And you're like, oh, God. But that's kind of where some people stand. It's interesting because it's that idea of – you brought up Facebook.

How does Mark Zuckerberg – I know you're speaking about him metaphorically. How does his corporation decide what stays, what goes, what's labeled, how it's labeled, all of that? What's interesting about that is we have this thing called Facebook, which is self-curated. And that's different than the news, right? I'm going back to your example of the news during the pre-Reagan era, right? You didn't get to pick what was on the news. You had no choice, right? No, absolutely not.

And you had a trust in the editors. You were like, okay, these people are curating, and they're using their editorial discretion to tell me what is important. And I trust that they're doing it in the most unbiased, neutral way possible. They're giving me reality. And the whole algorithm and the whole design of Facebook is built around this idea of showing you what you want to see, right? That is how Facebook has actually built its entire model to provide you. And it's an entertainment platform.

That's really what it is. Yeah, and I don't have any faith that that's going to change at all. I don't think that Zuckerberg would want to change that. I think that what he's hopefully going to change is just labeling what's news and what's not. Right, but crazily, I read something not that long ago that said that, you know, I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was a distressing number of people get their news or start their search for news from their news feed. And their news feed is the most inappropriately named thing ever, right? Because it's not news and it's self-curated and it is the very definition of echo chamber. And even if all that information gets labeled,

it's still only going to show you, you know, if I'm left, it's only going to show me stuff that's left, right? Very likely, or at least it's going to always bias in that direction. Yeah, and maybe there'll be an option in the future, the same way that there's an option to have like a curated friend feed, right? Do I want to see the things that seem more relevant to me? Or do I want to see everything just as a fire hose? Maybe there will be an option to do that as well. I think that people got really upset when Twitter started to mess with their algorithms

to try and only show you what they thought you would want to see. People are like, no, I want the fire hose. Like, that's what's important to me. And of course, it's still self-selected because you're only following who you're following. But I'm going to be honest, I get my news from Twitter way more often than I get it from TV or the newspaper. Granted,

I'm following most of those same outlets on Twitter. And so I like to be able to open up Twitter and just flip through headlines and see kind of generally what's being reported over and over, what's, you know, trending right now online, you know, what a scientific American have to say, but what does The Guardian have to say, what does The New York Times have to say. I like that. I also have a feed reader for my science news, at least, where I can just sort of look through a firehose of a million different headlines and pull out what is relevant to me so that I can do the work that I do. But I don't get a paper newspaper in the morning. I don't sit and drink coffee and read

the newspaper every day. And I don't think anybody, I'm 33, I don't think anybody my age does that, or very few people do. No, I can't imagine. And that's a world we're not coming back to. So I'm like, don't get me wrong. I'm not lamenting that, right? So I'm not like, oh, woe is me. We're not, you know, where's my dog and my slippers? Like, no, none of that nonsense, right? So, but it is interesting because this is a new space where our access to information has never been greater. And we have a handful of big companies, you know,

and I'm not an anti-big companies guy, but a handful of big companies that we sort of rely on as the platform that we jump off from to gather information, Twitter, Facebook, you know, maybe Reddit, whatever it is that you use. And these are your self-selecting, self-curated aggregators that you use to go gather information from. And so, you know, Cecil, you were asking, like, how do you break out of that echo chamber? I'm wondering if that's even, you know, other than just going through and being extremely conscious, which I think we would do, right? I think you and

I would do. See, so I trust that you and I would, after this conversation, you know, take a look at what's on our aggregators and say, you know, I need to expand that list. But how is somebody like my dad going to do that? Or how is somebody who's 21 going to do that who doesn't have the same, you know, seeing skepticism as a virtue skill set? Yeah, I think that those are two different questions. So is it something that we're going to be able to quote unquote help the people who don't want to do that do? No. The people who don't want to see, you know, moderate news, balanced news, news that will help them maintain their skepticism, those people are never going to do it. But the 21-year-old who maybe doesn't

know that that's what they want, that's different. And I think that's where we have to push for better digital literacy and just better literacy in general. I mean, obviously, this comes down fully to an educational problem. It really is about making sure that kids are getting decent training from the time they're very young and how to look things up online and how to question the things that they read and how to use critical thinking skills and how to, you know, listen to their own biases and try to overcome them. I mean, this is an age-old question about instead of teaching people what to think, it's teaching them how to think.

And I think this is just a new extension of that. But am I going to be able to convince my Mormon father not to read right-wing news? Probably not. Like, I don't know if there's anything I can do about that. Yeah. Well, hopefully when Donald makes America great again, he fixes this as well. I'm going to come over there. Oh, he would love to fix it.

No, I mean, my real concern with Donald Trump is that he is going to, I mean, I actually kind of want him to do it because I think that we might be able to impeach him for it. But he's going to start really creeping on some First Amendment rights because he's really distrustful of the press in a scary way. And so the fact we saw lots of hints during his during his election where he wasn't letting certain reporters in, where he wasn't traveling with a protective press pool. There's a lot of things that he's decided to do that kind of fly in the face of what we think of as an ethical openness to the press. And so the more that he tries to kind of, I don't know, wall himself off, the scarier it should seem to all of us. And the minute that he starts to try and do things like sue the press or suppress the press in any way that could eventually elevate to the Supreme Court. That looks good for us.

I actually kind of want him to practice what he preaches a little because a lot of what he preaches is unconstitutional, you know, and it might be able to give us some room to impeach the guy. You know, crazily, though, that guy keeps winning. Like he keeps doing insane things and then he keeps winning and there's a part of me that's like he hasn't done anything yet let's be honest he keeps saying insane things right but i mean like i mean he like he stood in he stood at a podium and openly mocked a disabled reporter yeah for his disability and and he's still it's all rhetoric at this point he hasn't done anything

policy wise absolutely absolutely he's fucking up left and right with these diplomatic calls. Oh, my God. We do know that. He's a disaster. I mean, he's a disaster. He's a disaster. He is also picking his lineup, and it's a fucking horror show. Yeah.

Right. It is, but it's less of a horror show than it could have been. Well, I mean, yeah. I guess Palin could have been in there somewhere. Yeah. He's talking. Although she came out against his career. Ben Carson could have been in there somewhere. Yeah. He's talking. Although she came out against his career. That's true.

She came out against, and Ben Carson could have been the secretary of education, but he's finding that all of these like wackadoodles either aren't fit for the jobs or they're not willing to do them. So he's having to go to sort of middle of the road. Like he's talking to Mitt Romney. Yeah, I know. I know. It's so funny.

That conversation. I would love to be a fly on that wall when Mitt Romney just stares at Donald Trump uncomprehendingly like I lost the memes were hilarious where they're sitting at that table facial expression it was amazing

and so yeah honestly like I think that his cabinet is going to be much more establishment than we thought I get it like I'm I'm scared too but I'm trying not to fan the flames too much. I try to only share things on kind of my social feeds when there's a legitimate piece that's written in a scientific outlet about kind of if this person who he's already said he might want to make in charge of this aspect of government is put into place. These are some of the things that they've historically said that they would do. So like, you know, really trying to stick with what is and not like freak out about what could be.

Because the truth of the matter is, I bet you it's very establishment. And we all survived Bush. Like he's crazier than Bush. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you know, 100,000 Iraqis didn't. Right. No, that is absolutely true. And please like understand that that is not what I meant when I said we survived Bush.

No, it's true. It's true. But, like, one thing I will say is that it doesn't seem, I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like Donald Trump is going to be a warmonger. We have no idea what happens after a terrorist attack. There's a part of, like, I know we're trying to stick to the facts. That's not my thing. I'm just going to make a joke. I'm just going to make a joke. I'm just going to make a joke.

That's more my thing. I feel like on purpose is the part of that. He's the kind of guy I could see getting us into a whoopsie war. Like, whoopsie doodle, guys. I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Well, he's already started it with Taiwan and China.

I can't even believe that shit. I had a dream about that last night. They call those nightmares. I know. They call this whole year a nightmare. It's really worrisome, the things that he's doing off book. There is only so much he can do as a president. He can

do and say stupid things that fuck us diplomatically. Absolutely. He can't, you know, he can't call a war into action. That's Congress's job. He can't legislate. That's Congress's job. We have to remember some of this stuff. He's, you know, he's not as capable of doing things

as a lot of people think the president is. But when it comes to perception, he could fuck us for decades to come. I mean, I think that what we need to do is we need to start to change the social and public consciousness in a way. I think some people are already doing a good job of doing it, but they also are seeming like extremists,

like the not my president crowd, which I fully disagree with. I get it. When Bush was in office, I wore a t-shirt that said not my president. I was new to politics then. It was one of my first elections. I was old enough to vote in. And i was like really hurt when he was elected and then elected again

and i was like you know listening to no effects and like being really angsty and and being like he's not my president but the truth of the matter is that's just as bad as the donald trump rhetoric that actually questions free and fair elections. Like he was elected. Granted, he did not win the popular vote. But because of the way that we do election in this country, as far as we know, to this point, he was elected freely and fairly. So screaming how he's not my president is actually kind of in lockstep with his rhetoric. I'd rather us just have a very balanced and intellectual air of this guy is dangerous and we need to keep him in check as a citizenry. We need to keep our eyes open and keep him in check. But what that also requires is sort of

a shift in the public consciousness or maybe an awakening in the public consciousness that being an intellectual and being a thinking person is something you want to be. It's something to aspire to. It's not something to be embarrassed by. And that's what worries me the most is this new idea. Anti-intellectualism? Anti-intellectualism that's only on the extreme, extreme right. Because the moderates aren't like that. The moderates are thinking people.

Even the right-wing moderates, they're pro-thinking. It's only this crazy tea party. I can't even believe that we're going to have a conversation called there are people who are not pro-thinking. Yeah, absolutely.

And I know that we are, and I know that we have to have that conversation. But can we just point out out loud that we are about to have a conversation called, hey guys, do you know there's a movement that is not pro-thinking about stuff? There's a movement that thinks that like, you know, we shouldn't have the opportunity for everybody to go to college because not everybody should have such elitist ideals where they'll go off to these liberal institutions and be indoctrinated like that is how a section of the population thinks with them that somehow i mean exactly that somehow intellectualism is equated with

like snobbery and it's scary that you can't be a well-rounded salt of the earth a blue collar hard-working person and also be a thinker, which is bullshit. We all know it's bullshit. And it's insulting. Absolutely. And that's so insulting to the millions of hardworking, blue-collar people who do value critical thinking. And we get so many of them that email us. We have so many of our listeners because of the nature of our show.

The nature of our show is we're a lowbrow show. Like, we're the lowest possible brow. Exactly, yeah. Like, we are like, grow your eyebrows down to your ankles, bro. Like, that's it. But we get emails all the time from, like, what you just described. Like, these are the quote, quote, average Joe. But these are not thoughtless people.

These are incredibly thoughtful people. No, they're just working people. Right. They're middle class people or what used to be middle class people, people who are in labor unions, people who are actually contributing the most to our economy, the people that really matter in this country. They think and they want to be thinking. And they want to be heard and they want their thoughts to be respected because they're fucking people like all the rest of us, right? You know, the number of real, genuine, quote-unquote, intellectuals is de minimis by comparison to population. They're not the driving force behind policy, behind culture, behind society. That's driven by the, again, quote-unquote, everyman.

And the everyman is a thoughtful, thoughtful person who wants to be respected for their thoughts. This idea that they are somehow less worthy of an education or their children would be less worthy of an education or that they don't value education as a virtue in and of itself is an insult to them. It's an insult to their intellect. Do you think, though, that there's a problem now? We talk about intellectuals, there's a

problem with higher education where people are lashing out against higher education because they equate it with coddling and safe spaces and trigger warnings and there's all this anti, the anti-intellectualism is tied

so closely to anti, that sort of PC culture. They muddle them together. Yeah, they do. And I think that we need to also draw a distinction between public and private education, because the truth of the matter is in these public institutions, that is unconstitutional. And when it does start to rear its ugly head, it's usually stomped down pretty quickly in a private institution. I don't give a fuck. You want to go to a Christian college where they tell you you're not allowed to say the word fuck, that's fine.

You know, where there's a morality code and you're not allowed to sleep together under a dormitory roof. Whatever, that's great. You chose to go to a dumb Christian school. But you're paying out the ass to do that, too. If you go to a state school, which should be the more affordable option, a lot of these what we think of as like regressive left quote-unquote – and I'm doing the air quotes because I like you don't like that term. It's become social justice warrior. It's become all of the things that –

All of it can go away. It's all useless. Feminopsy, all of that shit. It's all useless. All it is is it's a lazy way to categorize somebody you disagree with. That's all it is. Exactly. I'll put them in the other category. Yes. Whatever these movements are that we see that are very easy for us to bucket together as this, quote, regressive left movement, which really is things like trigger warnings and safe spaces, which I also have a problem with in a public setting.

spaces, which I also have a problem with in a public setting, you know, that is not something that should be able to exist in a public setting. And we know that. So we're seeing it being tamped down. So, yeah, maybe people are equating it with that. But I think that's spin more than anything. Do you catch a lot of hell for being middle of the road like you are? Because you feel like you're you feel like you have a nuanced opinion. Right. So like one of the things we talked about, we talked to Seth about, I don't know if you know Seth Andrews. We talked to Seth Andrews about this. We talked to a lot of different people about this.

And we find that if we are not 100% total social justice is the best way to go, or the other side of that, whatever the other side of that is, if we're not doing that, we catch hell no matter what. If we're not, if we didn't plant our flag somewhere, we catch hell. Do you find that you, you know, walking in the middle of the road, sometimes you get squished here? Oh, well, the funny thing is I never catch flack for being too wishy-washy. I am never, you know, emailed or get like hate on the internet for like not making up my mind. I get hate all the internet for like not making up my mind i get hate all the time for being a social justice warrior like people always call me a feminazi and an sjw

and you know like this quote mr this men's rights movement like fucking hates me and so it's funny because if i say anything even remotely like oh women in science who are molested should get their day in court. They're like, you fucking feminazi. So it's like, you know, at that point, like, how do you please these people? It's like, I just can't listen to them. But no, I actually don't get much flack for being middle of the road. And I appreciate that you guys think that I am a little bit more moderate, because I too see myself as an incredibly progressive thinker, who is also a pragmatist and who allows my kind of decisions and opinions to be formed more by the science than by any sort of political persuasion. So sometimes what happens is like liberals don't like me because I'm pro-GMO and I'm like super pro-vax and I'm really anti like crunchy granola bunny hugging hip like hippie bullshit.

You're in the middle of it in California, though, right? I'm in the middle of it. And the thing is, I grew up in Texas, but that's not why. Because I'm also super anti big oil and I'm super anti a lot of, you know, things that I see happening in Texas. Like just drill, baby, drill this idea of like, let's fucking take everything we can out of the ground and we'll worry about it later. Like, I don't have that view at all. I drive a fucking electric car. Like, so the truth of the matter is I just try to look at the science and sometimes it doesn't play into partisan politics very cleanly. And so, you know, a lot of people who

like to see the world in black and white don't know what to do with me because I'm very, very gray. And that's probably the same case with you. So sometimes people lash out and they say, make up your mind. Like the same people who don't think like bisexuality is a, is a, you know, thing they're like, ah, shit or get off the pot. But there's other people who are like, oh, you said this one thing that falls like a centimeter to the left or to the right. So you must be an extremist. That's what we get. Yeah. Yeah. We don't get called out for not taking a stand. It's just we get misinterpreted about what

that stand is. And it's hilarious. And at that point, you're like, wow, that's amazing. I was wearing a t-shirt during election night when everybody thought that we were 81% to win. Fuck you, Nate Silver! Fucking asshole.

I'm fighting that guy. I would fight that guy right now. I'm fighting everyone he knows. I don't blame Nate Silver. I blame polls because polls are bullshit. But beyond that, I was wearing my T-shirt that said the future is female. And I posted a picture of me, you know, that said the future is female. You couldn't have done anything to rile those fucking knuckle draggers up anymore. I know, and that's theggers up anymore. Holy shit.

Holy shit. All those guys who have never seen a vagina in their lives probably lost their full fucking minds. They lost their minds. And the crazy thing is they would say things like, oh, yeah, because it's so smart to vote for somebody based on their genitals. And I'm like, why the fuck do you think like in what universe would I have been like, she has vagina. I vote for vagina. I didn't vote for fucking McCain and Palin. She has a vagina.

Like it's the dumbest thing. But that's what they do is they find this one thing and they like glom onto it. And you're like, no, OK, just because I want this woman to be the next female president doesn't or the first female president doesn't mean I want just any old fucking, you know, person with tits to take office. It makes no sense. Well, with Donald, we did get a guy with tits. That's true. So, I mean, I think we're OK there. I believe it's gynecomastia.

Gynecomastia, that is a thing. Let's call them moobs. Like Bob had bitch tits. It's our first lactating president. The curdles in the hair. Horrible. What is wrong with that guy, really? I don't know if medical

science can fully explain it at this point. I guess we'll have to wait and see. You know, didn't he tweet out something recently about SNL? Oh, yeah, that was awesome. That was great. The tweet I'm referring to is when he just had no information whatsoever on the amount

of people that voted that was voter fraud. It was like he said two million people voted and he just said it and there was no backing, no anything. No, yeah, it's because he was he was responding to the idea that he didn't win the popular. So it was basically like it was a response to the idea that the margin was so big and the popular vote at this point, we know the margin to be over 2 million. And so then, of course, Jill Stein has been raising money to do her recounts because there have been some irregularities, which it looks like are honestly just irregularities. Like, yeah, I mean, we still don't know. But that that in places with certain types of machines, there was a heavier Republican vote than a Democrat

vote. But it also turns out that some of those machines happen to be in predominantly Republican areas. And so, you know, even though there's no evidence to support that there would be any voter fraud, there was enough irregularities for the Voting Commission to say, like, OK, we might want to look at this. So Jill Stein's like, yeah, let's raise the money so we can get the recount, whatever. And then Donald Trump is like, yeah, OK, maybe I lost the popular vote by by two million. But that's the margin of error of people who probably fraudulently voted for Hillary Clinton. Plus or minus two million. Yeah.

And it's like and he didn't use the word probably. You know what I mean? He's like, yeah, but that's like the amount of people who who, you know, fucking, you know, voted for Hillary Clinton illegally. And it's like I think there's this assumption that there's like just all these illegal aliens running around, like fake passports, like voting for Clinton because she's going to give them all, you know, a safe haven. A check for $100,000. Exactly. It's like, it's crazy. And of course, the only documented case of voter fraud that we found so far was a Trump supporter. And it was one lady. It's like, come on. It's just, one lady yeah it's like come on it's just it's a non-issue we know it's a non-issue and so yeah he does that all the time though like during the election during the his candidacy he caught so

much flag because he would just like retweet things from fake news sites and then when people would be like hey you realize you retweeted something from a news site that was fully manufactured and that nothing you were tweeting was factual don't you know that that like makes you look bad he was like what you think i have time to fact check like he was so overt about yeah that that's like not his job i think i i think i'm gonna be i don't this is not how i i just feel like putting my fingers in my ears and going la la la for four years. I know. I can't. I just, it's crazy because my hope, and I keep saying this and it's such a bummer, but my hope is that he does something so egregious that it actually fucks him and he has to leave

office. Now, I get it because people are like, but then you've got Pence. But honestly, I'd rather have Pence. The devil you know, right? I'd rather have the devil I know and the devil who knows how to play the game and who's just going to kind of, you know, stay the course and be Bush 2.0. I would much rather have the devil i know and the devil who knows how to play the game and who's just going to kind of you know stay the course and be bush 2.0 i would much rather have that think about what you just said for a second i know like i know but i don't want our best case alternative is bush 2.0 because i don't want a whoopsie war and you don't either

whoopsie doodle sorry about that everybody i don't invite it to country. Oh, God. All right. That's it. Yep. Yep. Because he will do something fucking crazy and he won't know he did it. And that's what we've got to be really careful of. Or he will start trying to move into a more fascist regime, which is also really scary. I mean, he's never going to get away with it.

Our government would never allow it. We just have like way too many checks and balances. But he can do some fucked up shit while he's in office, like put in a new justice or two or three, depending on how well our super old justice is fair. They're going to be fine, thank you. I've decided they're all

going to be fine. I just hope Ginsburg turns into this six million dollar woman and they just replace everything. I don't care. We've got the technology. We can make her better, faster, stronger. I don't care. Like, we've got the technology. We can make her better, faster, stronger. I don't care. She can have my body. I'll take hers.

We should have a direct link to her Fitbit that just ticks, you know, so everybody online can just check how she's doing all the time. It's like she owes us that. She owes us that. We're all racing to her house in the middle of the night.

Her pulse slowed. Her pulse slowed. Her pulse slowed. Awesome. No, but it's scary. You know, we already know we're going to end up with a justice we don't like. Like, that's kind of, you know, said and done. For sure. And, like, okay, we're going to have to fucking deal with that.

Yeah, we had Scalia, though. So it's like, okay, we'll trade down. That's fine. And maybe he won't be worse than Scalia. Because I also, it's not that I hold out hope about this, I keep trying to say over and over like you don't we don't know what's going to happen it's very hard to know and part of the reason it's very hard to know is because Donald Trump has no morals and he has no ethics and he has no platform so when you look back to his history a lot of the things that he's backed or promoted were actually pretty liberal

because he just does things to further his own career and pockets. He's a popularity candidate, right? Well, not even that. He's a criminal. He's just a swindler. I am loving this right now. But he really is.

He's a con artist. He's a swindler. He will do what he needs to do to make the deal. Like, we know this about this man. He wrote a fucking book called The Art of the Deal. And so,

what he does is, you know, historically, he's been very pro-reproductive rights. Like, he never had even an inkling of like anti, or,

you know, anti-abortion until this election. Like, this guy, he's all the fuck over the place when it comes to his politics. He's absolutely not a Republican. We know he's not a Republican. It's hard to know what the fuck he is. And so who knows? He might put somebody up who's actually way less conservative

than we think he will, because he's not trying to win the popular vote anymore. He is the president now. But I think he's trying to win a constant popularity contest. That's what I mean. It's like, I think this is a guy who's going to be obsessed with his approval ratings. Yeah, but he already knows. He knows that if he does those ultra conservative things, he won't have good approval ratings. He did not win the popular vote. The majority of people in this country did not want him to be the president. And what is the core of what a narcissist wants? They want a legacy. And he doesn't want to be fucking Nero. He doesn't want to be playing while Rome burns. He's going to want a positive legacy. He's going to be an accidental fascist. Yes, maybe. But he definitely is going to want to make certain decisions and put forward certain

policies that will make him look good in the eyes of history because he's a fucking narcissist. And you're already starting to see it with him wheeling and dealing to try and keep industry here in the States. And the truth of the matter is, if he goes about that the right way, it might be a good thing. And ultimately, as easy as it is to make fun of this guy and as much as he fucking scares the living shit out of me, our goal and our interest should be to have the best possible presidency under him.

Sure. You know, we don't want him to fail unless he fails so big it means he gets kicked out i just have every reason to believe he will right like all signs point to yeah and what i can't get past about him i think the thing that that makes me the most crazy is that he's such a fucking petty like infant like the tweets and the things that they're all just like you were mean to me so i'm gonna sue you like he has no sense of humor and he has it's all hubris all the time like there's nothing about him that's real snl tweets are exactly that right it's it's a it's somebody who's mad that someone's making fun of him. Yeah, it's so Hitler. It's so scary.

You know what I mean? It's so scary. He's just like such a bratty baby dictator. And so I would love to see, I don't know, I don't think that's going to change. But maybe it'll fuck him. He should be like the star of an adorable dictator show like Lil Hitler, where he's just,

he's the voice of Lil Hitler. That's our life right now. and little pol pot you know little dawn the little dawn yeah i mean it's just such a bummer like as as obama is gracefully leaving office and we see all of the great you know we saw the trick-or-treating at the white house and we saw the the pardoning of the, you know, we saw the trick-or-treating at the White House, and we saw the pardoning of the turkey at the White House, and all the dumb things that he has to do, and how he does them with such grace, such style, such humor. Like, who is this new guy who might not even fucking live in the White House, because it's like beneath him, and he needs his, like, gold leaf everywhere?

That's a good thing, because can you imagine, I know we talked about this previously, but can you imagine Cecil and Cara, if he redecorates, he redecorates the White House, you come to visit it, it's all gilded, the whole thing is just like covered in fucking Trump sign above the, like it's just like a big garish

like blinking neon Trump sign on the dome outside. Hey, it's beautiful. It says Trump. It's more beautiful than it was before. I put a fountain in all the fountains. There's extra fountains. There's like White House workers with strike signs on the lawn. Oh, God.

I put a flamingo in every room. I don't even know why. I just like them. It's pretty bad. Jesus Christ. All we can do is laugh so we don't cry. I know. It's either laugh or cry, Kara. It's laugh or cry. This week I had a

great experience because I hadn't ever, and you know this is a sort of confession, I hadn't ever listened to Talk Nerdy, right? And so I had an opportunity to do a little research and I found your podcast and I was just blown away with how good it is. We get a lot of podcasters on the show, but this is one I'm going to definitely subscribe to. I was so blown away with, you know, especially I listened to, I went to go try to find the controversial episodes, of course.

Right. So I went for Ruben. I found Ruben. And then I found Gad Saad and I'm thinking, oh, the Gad Saad episode is just going to be somebody talking about feminism versus this guy. What's going to happen on the gad sod episode and i was blown away by the conversation on that episode i just i it's a great conversation great it is a great conversation like if i'm gonna talk to gad what am i gonna talk to him about not all the bullshit that he like doesn't have any expertise in i'm gonna talk to him about what he does for a living and it was such a good conversation and he asked the perfect questions. And I just was, I was just blown away with the skill in which you were able to interview

him and then just his demeanor and everything. I don't know anything about the guy except for what he tweets. And most of what he tweets, I'm like, God, what the hell is wrong with you? People say, you know what people say, I'm going to be honest, people say the same thing about PZ Myers. I'm like, whatever you think about the guy, he in person is just very mild mannered and he's very sweet. You know, I think that he has a big bite online. And, you know, whether you like that or you don't like that, you are completely free to

have your opinion. I am, you know, friendly with him, but I don't know him that well. I definitely wouldn't call him a friend. And I think Gad is kind of the same way. Like, I don't know him that well i definitely wouldn't call him a friend um and i think gad is kind of the same way like i don't know him he was recommended i think by dave rubin to come on the show or maybe he even reached out and was like i think we would have a good conversation i was like sure let's do it was fat if anybody you know anybody listening to this show should go seek that episode out episode 75 i was look at that. Thanks. I was just flabbergasted. You know, the funny thing is, is because, you know, when you're doing research and you know this, you know, sometimes you're trying to find the meat.

So maybe you might skip ahead a little. Maybe I'll skip ahead and see if they come into something. I started listening. It was fascinating. And so I'm anxious to sort of dig into your back catalog, Cara. It was really a great show. If people were going to try to find you on the web, where would they look? So if you just go to carasantamaria.com, that'll link you out to everything. The podcast is listed there under slash podcast. And, you know, that gets updated

all the time. And then, of course, my Patreon is there, my Twitter, my Facebook. It's mostly under my name. That's Cara Santa Maria with a C. So you can pretty much find everything there. Cara, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank find everything there. Cara, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, guys. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue,

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