EverydaySpy Podcast - CIA's WARNING: The Dangerous Impact of Tribalism Unveiled | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 26

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Narrative and propaganda are as real and relevant today as they ever were. And the building blocks for both exist in emotional and rational thinking. Whether you're watching breaking news or reading about the newest fad diet, you are constantly being bombarded with messages that are designed to shape the way you think. In this episode, Jihi and I break down how you can combat the biases built into politics, advertising, and media to keep yourself and your family safe. Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Learn more from Andy: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the SpyTribe: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverydaySpy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Without even intentionally realizing that we do it, we surround ourselves with people who think like us. What you think is gonna happen when you share your opinion or someone else shares their opinion? Everybody's gonna confirm that that opinion is correct. As pack animals, we have created a pack around ourselves of people who think and feel and believe like us. And it's very, very hard to get out of that.

Even awareness isn't actually enough to fix it, because it's so natural. It's just built into our human psyche. So I'm really excited to be on the phone with you, and I woke up this morning to this incredible thunderstorm in the deserts of Arizona, which is, if you recall from when we lived in Abu Dhabi, rain in the desert is a good omen. Yeah. Well, you know, it's... So I feel like today's got to be off to a good start. So this conversation, I already know it's going to be amazing because there was a thunderstorm in the desert.

That's so funny. You know, it's funny when you bring up the rainstorms in Abu Dhabi, because oftentimes they were, the precursor to the rainstorm were these, like, giant sandstorms, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. So I'm actually a little curious in the United States, you know, in the desert of the United States, is it the same way? Or is it really just the skies open up there? So I remember when I was a kid growing up, I mean, I was little, but I remember it when I was little, four, five, six years old. that there were sandstorms in Arizona when we lived in Tucson. And I don't remember if they correlated with thunderstorms or not, but I really remember, like, getting rushed into the house

and everybody closing the doors and closing the curtains and closing the windows. And, I mean, that was 1985. So I can't imagine that our, like, window technology was anywhere near what it is now. So the houses. And remember when we were in Mexico, remember how the houses weren't sealed? Yeah, you have to keep the windows open. So I don't even remember how sealed or unsealed the houses were in Tucson in 1985. But I remember running away from windstorms.

But what we saw in Abu Dhabi when we were in the Emirates, the United Arab Emirates, I have never in my adult life, I have never seen anything like that. I mean, that was a wall of sand that would roll right through civilization. It was astounding. Yeah, and it always seemed to happen so fast. You see the cloud in the distance and you're like, oh my gosh, I remember being in the office one day. And it's me and two other guys desperately trying to close a window that got stuck. And we start being like hit with sand in the face.

And we're like, oh, please close. Yeah. It's funny to us, but the Bedouins that lived there before there was like modern day civilization, that was dangerous. I mean, that's sand. It gets in your lungs. it gets in your mouth and your nose, it literally like pulls the skin off your body. Yeah. Right?

If your body's exposed to the sand. And, you know, it is funny because in Abu Dhabi we had, I mean, sandstorms would just be sandstorms. They didn't always turn into rain. They rarely turned into rain. Yeah. And even when it did rain, it didn't rain a lot. It would just like, it would sprinkle or it would we'd have like a five or seven minute shower. but it was a big, big deal.

But yeah, so it was exciting to me this morning because I've got this incredible view out this full-sized window in my hotel room. And I look out over the Arizona desert and I woke up and saw this gigantic anvil-shaped thunderhead. And I heard the crash of lightning and the crash of thunder and the sparks of lightning and then everything opened up.

And it was awesome. It was awesome. It made me. think of you, it made me feel a little bit less far away. Yeah. You know, because I've been traveling so much and I really miss being at home. And this has been a rough week for me to be away from home because the kids have started new activities. Yeah. And they seem to really be doing well with those activities. And I don't get to be there to see it. And it's just, it's a little bit of like it pulls on my heartstrings quite a lot. Yeah. I think, you know, for any family who has a parent in particular that, you know,

leaves for long periods of time and your children are still relatively young, it must be difficult because they do hit these milestones so quickly, I think it feels like it takes forever, but they really do hit these milestones so quickly where all of a sudden they're, you know, brushing their own teeth or in their own room or our son is doing his own laundry now. I taught him, he's been asking for a couple of weeks, so I taught him how to do it. And now he's just, he just does it on his own. He runs out of socks. He washes his own clothes. No way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our daughter, like, can buckle and unbuckle herself in and out of the car seat now.

I mean, this is, you know, new stuff, but suddenly there it is. And they're that much more independent of you, right? Yeah. And I know that there's, I know that we're supposed to celebrate that. And I'm sure that it's someday we will celebrate that. I'm celebrating the laundry right now. I still remember spoon feeding peas to our son. Oh, yeah.

And I still remember, you know, holding bottles. for our baby girl. Mm-hmm. And now they're decorating their own rooms and... Yeah. Playing the guitar and dancing and painting and buckling herself in and out of the backseat of the car. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, I'm kind of afraid that I'm going to blink and all of a sudden I'm going to be walking her down the aisle.

Oh, my gosh. And you know what's funny is, you know, I think the other thing that happens when, you know, when one parent is gone for an extended period of time, and these things happen is that, you know, if you're lucky, and I've had to work on this with you, is if you're lucky, you are told a narrative that is really positive, right? So what you get is the, you know, the storyline of the milestones, right? The storyline of, you know, our kids are doing this now and our kids are doing this now. What you get filtered out are all of the other facts. that are actually happening.

You know, like, you get to hear the milestone of like, they're doing this now, but you missed all the, you know, the weeks of trying to get that done, you know, which I think is, I think it's good because I think when the parent is away, it's good for them to be hearing the positive narrative about what's happening back home, right? Because, you know, I think we've talked about this before, like, if there's, if you're gone, there's nothing you can do. So the parent at home is a responsible one. The parent away, you don't want to burden them with what they can't do anything about, right? Because they have to compartmentalize. They are probably away working and they have to compartmentalize what they're doing

with their brain space. So the narrative you want to feed them is the positive narrative, right? But yeah, I think it's really interesting because I find myself thinking about the narrative that we hear in different spaces a lot, especially because I'm a big news reader. And so, you know, I'm always looking at the news through the lens of what's the narrative they're trying to tell me. And then in my personal life, I've had to apply that to try to give you a more positive. narrative because in the beginning when you first started traveling, I had so many complaints. It's like, this is so hard doing this by myself. These are all the things that bother me and these are all the problems I'm having. Even if like one hour later I solved it, right? I just need it to like unleash. But I feel like, you know, I've learned the importance over time of, you know,

of, I've learned the importance over time of narrative and how to apply it to my personal life. I want you to define narrative. I want you to define narrative because I'm not sure that I agree with the way that you're using the term when it comes to the difference between news and government and family. But I want to make sure that I understand how you're using it because I feel like it's a much more nuanced word than most people think. And I want to make sure that you and I are using it in that nuanced fashion, not letting ourselves fall into the habit of what so many people do and they overgeneralize or overuse that term. So narrative, if you'll get up in the dictionary, is really a benign term, right?

It is the storyline that links events together. That's what it is. Right. It's a benign term. It's not, you know, good or bad. It's just storylines that link events together. Right. When I think about it in the context of news, I'm generally thinking about it. It usually, the idea usually gets triggered when I spot narrative that is promoting propaganda. And I think the word propaganda has kind of a weight to it. It's not used as much as I think it could be because it really does apply to so many situations. but propaganda is information that's that's intentionally presented in a biased or misleading way

to get one point of view across, right? Yes. But in order to do that, they're using a narrative. Yes. So this is awesome, right? So here's, I completely agree with what you're saying. When it comes to family life and what you're doing to me or what you're doing for me and with me, when I travel, and I am very grateful for what you do when I travel. And I'm in so many areas.

I am grateful for what you do when I travel. But what you're essentially, what you're choosing to share with me is you're cultivating highlights to share with me. I don't see that as a narrative because there's no story. You're not stringing a storyline together. That's fair. You're just selectively cultivating instances of the day to share. with me and, and I am grateful for this, you are also cultivating moments of the day that you don't want to share with me. Because you know me well enough to know that if you create this smorgas board of hardship throughout the day, I'm going to feel terrible about traveling. I'm going to start busting my butt from a thousand miles away to try to fix things that I can't actually

fix. And I'm going to worry about things I can't actually impact. And it's, it's just going to add hardship to me. Whereas if you create for me, you know, just the highlight reel, kind of like Instagram does for everything. Yes. Here's the highlight reel of the day, right? It's not like it's biased one way or the other. It's just this actually happened today. Other things also happen today, but I'm not sharing those things with you because they're either irrelevant or net negative or OBE overcome by events. Correct. So I mean, I don't see you sharing a narrative with me about family life.

I see you being very honest and very direct and transparent about family life because you're you're selectively choosing to keep me informed so that I can feel connected to the family without misleading me through a storyline about what you think I want to hear. Right. that certainly leans more towards propaganda, that's also the correct, like you were saying, the correct use of the word narrative really is stringing a story together or a story that connects a sequence of events. I don't, I feel like you're being very honest with me about family. And narrative, in a way, narrative has justifiably earned the reputation of being a

word that implies falsehood, right? Interesting. A level of creativity in stringing events together. That's fair. I would give it a level of creativity for sure, because when I think about narrative, I do think about storytellers. I think about people like my dad who are great storytellers. You have no idea what actually happened, but the story he tells is great.

And then I would say that, you know, I think maybe the only time, I think what you're saying is fair about the highlights and that maybe the time that I do incorporate a narrative is when we're talking about a bigger issue and then I pull into and then I pull events through a storyline to bring up the issue like we talk about how our son is a late bloomer our son it just is an out-of-the-box thinker and then I'll pull together a storyline that exemplify you know, that point. Fair. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's really fun. It's interesting to me because, you know, like, I think your dad's a great example of being a storyteller. And one of the areas that's

constantly frustrating you is that I am not a storyteller. Yeah. Like, I have all these experience. I go, I'll go days at a time without talking to you. And then when I do talk to you, you're excited for stories because you grew up with a dad who told stories. And your dad can make the most mundane experience into this fantastical story. Yes. You're right. It's not really honest, but it's a great time. Right. Whereas, you know, I actually have some really cool things that happen, but I don't really realize that they're a cool story until after you're like, did that really happen? Yeah. I'm like, yeah, that, yeah, I got a whatever, right? Last time I was in this city, I was gifted a handmade turquoise necklace by a Navajo medicine man. Awesome story. And when I

told you the story, I was like, yeah, I got a necklace today from a dude down, you know, when I was shooting. And you were like, how did that happen? And then I told it the story. And you were like, that's a great story. Yeah. So, so I completely agree with that. And, you know, it's really striking to me is last year, maybe a little bit over a year ago, I was hired to come in and speak at a training seminar for congressional staffers for the younger generation. So Congresspeople, you and I know, Congress people have their themselves representatives, and then underneath them, they have a group of staffers. So, you know, men and women professionals who read all the bills, do all the paperwork, do all the research, and then tell their representative what they've

summarized. Because the representatives don't read the bills. They don't read 500 pages of whatever. Yeah. Well, then underneath your staffers, you've got junior staffers who are going through the process of becoming staffers, everybody who's trying to build their career in Washington, D.C. So I got called into this event where I had to train junior staffers. And among maybe 40 junior staffers, they were like five senior staffers. and then, of course, all the teaching cadre, and I was a guest speaker. And one of the things that really shocked me was that, you know, this is 2022. I am six years out of CIA, eight years out of CIA by this point, right?

And I have distance now. I've separated myself from government. So when I'm sitting here in the classroom, listening to these junior congressional aides or junior staffers get taught how to carry out their job effectively. One of the core principles they were taught was this idea of creating and adhering to the predominant narrative. Really? Yes. They had like it was a huge part of their training for that weekend. Here's how you craft a narrative that fits the constituents base of the representative that you support. Here's how you adopt the narrative of the staffers above you who have crafted this narrative for the constituent base of the representative they represent because you can't

tell the same story even though the law is the same even though the budget is the same even though there's facts that go into all the effort that's happening in congress you can't tell district 12 of Alabama the same story that you tell district 18 of louisiana and you can't tell them the same story that you tell District 5 in Texas and the same story that you tell District 28 in Florida, even though they're all Republican districts, even though they're all Republican states, they're all different Congress people, so you have to change the narrative. And then, of course, they're also working to make sure that their individual congressperson's narrative flows into the caucus that that that Congressperson belongs to and into the different

like subcommittees and it's an insane amount of work to craft all the narrative. And it was a very discouraging and depressing experience for me to sit in the audience and be like, none of these people are talking about telling the truth. They're all just finding a way to turn the truth, to turn elements of the truth into a story that wins favor with the voting base of their congressional delegate. Right. And we see that so often. I mean, I think, you know, even when we see the you know, the state of the union address, they always bring people in and there's, you know, a story because the story helps, you know, bring their narrative together because they're trying to make a point. Again, I use the word propaganda. I know it's, I'm sure it's not a popular,

you know, word to use, but that's really what it is. But it's the right word. It's the right word. It's the right word to use. Yeah. So so often, you know, in, you know, in media that has a certain angle to it. Politicians for sure because they're running up on various platforms and, you know, they're really running on sound bites because they're trying to get their point. I mean, even when you watch the debates, it's all sound bites. They're trying to get a point across quickly, a quick hit that resonates with their, with the base that's going to vote them into office, right?

And so, you know, I, I, and, you know, it's, it's interesting to watch. And I think it's just so important as the viewer, as an actual constituent, to understand that it's up to you. It's your responsibility to fact find and to understand that everything you're hearing is part of a narrative, is part of propaganda. They want you to feel a certain way. And they're saying things in a way to make you feel that way. But it's really up to you to find the facts. I mean, there might, they're very well could be factual elements to what they're saying. There are factual elements to what they are saying.

Correct. But you need to pull all the pieces together to really make an educated decision in the end. Yeah. And, you know, I feel like this is super interesting and super relevant because we're getting ready to go into an election year. And in an election year, you can rest assured that you're going to be fed a narrative line that connects factual elements, just like you said, into an overarching story that's designed to create a narrative line that connects factual elements, just like you said, into an overarching story that's designed to create. both emotional and rational decision-making in your mind. So they're taking advantage. I mean, this isn't something nefarious.

This is just the standard approach to politics. It happens in every country, in every political circle, whether it's authoritarian or whether it's a monarchy or whether it's democracy, right? Right. There's going to be a narrative, and that narrative is going to be written by pieces of propaganda. and those pieces of propaganda are individually created so that they trigger emotions

and the perception of rational thought, even though it isn't really rational thought, because it's going to be a cognitive bias. They're going to target your cognitive biases, and they're going to target your emotional reasoning, and that's what makes for a really good piece of propaganda. And again, you're exactly right. Propaganda has this negative connotation to it. Because people think it's manipulative. They're right.

Yeah. It is manipulative. But it's not something that only bad guys use. Yeah. Propaganda is something that's used by school districts. It's used by the U.S. military for recruiting purposes. It's used by politicians for voting purposes, right? It's you can get above all of the fear if you just understand what it is.

And we've already talked to them. We've talked in the past about how important. emotion is and getting people to feel emotional. And that's why you hear the president give an address and talk about the poor six-year-old child who died in Illinois. Yeah. Because he's trying to get you to feel emotion. Yes. And just and every time there's a state of the union address and he points, you know, the president points to some person in the stands as like, oh, here's a police officer who did this amazing thing. And here's a nurse who did this scary thing. And here's a soldier who did this brave thing, they're using emotions to stir us, to get us to persuade us to take a certain

action or believe a certain thing. But that's all on the emotional side. I think the really relevant part of propaganda happens on the rational side, the cognitive bias side. Yeah. And I, you know, we have, we have this product we created some time ago called news hacker and the and the very first lesson we teach is awareness of targeting so you have to be aware as an individual that you are being targeted right you are somebody's target market a politicians a clothing store you know an energy drink you are you are on it you are lots of people's target market and the messages that they're sending are specific to target you and to target your cognitive biases. So your cognitive biases are, you know,

there's a number of cognitive biases and they're all just shortcuts that your brain naturally makes so it can, you know, limit the processing time it has to do when information is coming in, right? So we all have cognitive biases and that's okay. But what's important is to have awareness that those are being triggered. And I think that, you know, in reading the news recently, whether it's politics or global affairs, I see a lot of cognitive biases being triggered in people. And the top three that I kind of noticed the most are there's an availability bias, an availability heuristic, where, you know, the, it's availability heuristic is like the, when something's

top of mind. So somebody says something and it's a recent memory for you, you just heard a story about that so it must be true right like I just heard my neighbor talking about that that must be true and then another one is the mere exposure effect I think in the media we see that a lot and I don't think people often put a you know a lot of emphasis on the fact that what we're being exposed to right because it's not like I mean you can go up and you can Google you know different news stories but most people read some kind of news feed or they read news, right? They're ingesting what's given to them. So just by being exposed to something

over and over and over again makes you feel like it's correct. It makes you feel like it's the most important, makes you feel like it's the most relevant, right? Like suddenly the only conflict we're hearing about is Israel Hamas, but there are still many other conflicts going on in the world. It's just what are we hearing about the most? Where are we being exposed to the most, right, that's top of mind. And then the last one is, you know, you and I talk about this one a lot, the confirmation bias, because I think this is the one that people experience the most and don't do nearly enough self-assessment to recognize that they're falling victim to a confirmation bias.

I mean, I do it too, right? I just have to check myself. Yeah, these are three great examples of cognitive biases that play out in the headlines every day that play out in announcements. that play out in, you know, conversations around the coffee table or around the coffee table at home or around the water station at work or wherever else it might be. So you hit on three, right? Confirmation bias, mere exposure bias, and the availability. Availability bias. Right? So what's interesting about all three of these is that the brain, the brain is built.

to find shortcuts. Your human brain, all of us, our brain likes process and pattern and it likes to be able to reach a conclusion quickly because it wants to conserve energy. And the process of thinking is an intensive energy draining process. So that's why the brain really likes

to be able to do things automatically. It's why we get muscle memory. It's why we memorize. It's the reason that things look familiar to us. It's not because we're so smart or we're so good. It's because our brain is literally wired so that it can very quickly learn a pattern and repeat the pattern and save itself the energy of having to process thought. So these three biases that you present are exactly like the things the brain wants to do.

Right. When it comes to the availability bias, it wants to connect recent things with current things. Right. It wants to be able to say, oh, I'm. I heard someone talk about key lime pie yesterday. And here's I'm at a restaurant that has key lime pie on the menu today. I mean, key lime pie sounds delicious. I'm going to eat some key lime pie.

It's not that you actually wanted it. It's just that you've been exposed to it. You've heard it now several times. And because you've heard it, you think that this key lime pie must be good because your friend was talking about a different key lime pie that was good. In reality, that's not true. Right. The key lime pie that your friend had yesterday from a different restaurant has no impact on the key lime pie you're about to have today at this restaurant.

Just because it was top of mind doesn't mean it's good. Right. Mere exposure is another excellent example. In mere exposure, now you're hearing a certain topic talked about over and over again. And just by virtue of how often you hear it, especially if you're hearing the same narrative over and over again, you start to believe that narrative must be true. Right? So whether that's people talking about how bad the school districts are in Florida, right? Oh, school districts in Florida are terrible. Oh, Florida public schools are horrible. Florida public schools are horrible. You hear it over and over again all throughout Florida. You hear about it when if you're an education professional all over the world. You hear about at educational conferences. There are absolutely bad districts in Florida. But there are also very good ones. Right. Right. So just because you're being exposed to the negative commentary about a topic doesn't necessarily mean that negative commentary is true. And vice versa, if you're being told the positive commentary, that's just what you're being

exposed to. That doesn't make it true. Right. Yeah. And you're totally right that that media, media has for its own survival, media has to have these feeding frenzies on topics that are of interest to their audience. So we're seeing it right now with Israel Hamas, just like you said. We saw it with Ukraine, Russia, just a few weeks ago. Do you remember when Progoshan's plane exploded in the sky? Yeah. When was the last time you heard anyone talk about that? Right. For a few weeks, it was all anybody talked about. And now for the last probably month, month and a half, nobody has said anything about it. Right. Because the exposure has shifted to a different topic. Right. And that's the problem with media is media has to shift exposure so that it can

stay relevant so it can get people to read what the newspaper has to say. Meanwhile, we the people are being hammered, just like you said, hammered in our newsfeed, hammered in television with just one topic. And depending on whether you read left-leaning or right-leaning news sources, the narrative is going to be very strong and you're going to be hit over and over again with the same narrative until you start to believe through mere exposure bias that that narrative is accurate. I'm going off in a lecture that you already know. Yeah. But this is so interesting to me because you're exactly right.

Yep. And I mean, the mere exposure bias can be seen recently in Ohio has a constitutional amendment on the ballot that it's a reproductive rights amendment that would essentially legalize abortion to an extent. It still gives the state some power to restrict it. in areas, but the campaigns that are being promoted, the propaganda that's out there right now is focused on something called a partial birth abortion. It's a late-term abortion. That's actually illegal federally. But the propaganda is focused on if you vote yes for this

Ohio constitutional amendment, it will automatically legalize this procedure, which is this, you know, horrific procedure, you know, whatever. That's the propaganda, right? But the truth is that federal law trumps state law. So the nuance, right, the facts are that that is untrue. But if they hit people through media enough with the same message, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. Because even, I mean, from my experience, there are tons of people who won't even buy.

to learn if that's a true statement or not. They'll hear it so often that they will accept it as truth. And then there are going to be the people out there who will look into it and say, I'm pretty sure this isn't true, but they hear it, they are exposed to it enough that they still have that seed of doubt of all the facts point to it not being true, but what if, right? What if I make the wrong call on this, right? And then there's the percentage of people who are like, that's kind of a bunch of malarkey.

So, you know, and they ignore it. But, you know, there's these just the fact that, that, you know, and it's not just news media. It's commercials. It's the availability that people who have an agenda have to us through social media, through commercials. It's just astounding. I mean, through politics. I mean, just more than ever before, we can be inundated with messaging. Do you remember, I mean, I feel like the most tangible example that anyone can recall here,

or that everyday people could recall, has to do with the health and wellness space. Do you remember when low fat was everything? Yes. Do you remember when margarine was everything? I remember as a kid, when the whole world shifted and like butter was bad, margarine was good. Yep. And everybody was talking about like the cholesterol and the fat in butter and you've got to move to margarine and it's so much healthier and it's so much better and it's so much whatever.

And then like 10 years later, vegetable oil was the worst thing ever. Guess what margarine is made of? Vegetable oil. And now it's time to move to sunflower oil and it's time to move to, you know, whatever else. And now it's avocado oil. And, you know, stay away from peanut oil, but invest in sunflower seed oil. And you see it over and over again. You see people say, like, oh, carbs are bad.

Yeah. Oh, fat is bad. And then you just get hit with it over and over and over, especially in advertising. You have, you know, daytime talk shows that come on talking to specialists. And the specialist now is talking about the hidden dangers of whole milk. And it's just, oh, my gosh. when in fact the science behind all of it is incomplete. And that's what gets me.

Like all these cutting edge diets are based on small sample sizes of experimental new technologies. And nobody says that. Nobody says that the panel of people who were interviewed was only 15 people deep. And all 15 of those people were, you know, over the age of 40 and, you know, of a BMI of a certain type, not the average American. Right. And so I think the health and wellness space is so fascinating because I've definitely, like, I'm not a fad diet person, but I've definitely learned in recent years. So, you know, the whole idea of you should have lower carbs. So I make my kids food. So when I started lowering my carbs,

I started increasing their protein and lowering their carbs until I found out that kids actually need higher carb counts. And I thought, and that was the most. moments when I found that out, that was the moment where I realized that wellness and nutrition is so individual that all of these fat diets, they're trying to sell you something, right? They're trying to sell you a book about the diet. They're trying to sell you meal plans for the diet, right? They're trying to sell you. And because of that, they're trying to make you think it's applicable to everybody. And in no way are any of these diets applicable to everybody. and they're not applicable long term.

I know people who have been doing, you know, various fad diets, like picked one and have been doing it for years when that was not the intention of the diet, right? So, yeah, I think that's such a great example. That's the power of mere exposure. If you see enough ads, if you hear enough news articles, if you hear it on the radio, enough times, so-and-so is here to talk to you about why you should cut, you know, vegetable oil out of your diet. So-and-so is here to tell you about why oat milk is so superior. So-and-so's here to tell you about why oat milk is bad for the environment? You're like, well, what is oatmeal good for me or

is it bad for the environment? I'm so confused. Right? That is the power of mere exposure. And that's what makes it so dangerous in the wrong hands. Yes. But also what makes it so powerful whenever we're exposed to it. And then, I mean, you nailed confirmation bias. Everybody knows confirmation bias. It's the echo chamber of our brain when we, without even intentionally realizing that we do it, we surround ourselves with people who think like us. We surround ourselves with people who believe what we believe. We surround ourselves with people who have the same value as us. So then what the hell do you think is going to happen when you share your opinion or someone else shares their opinion? Everybody's going to confirm that that opinion is correct.

Yeah. Even though it may not factually be correct. Right. It's just that as tribal creatures, as pack animals, we have created a pack around ourselves of people who think and feel and believe like us. And it's very, very hard to get out of that because it's even hard to become aware of that. I can almost guarantee you, my love, I can guarantee you that right now, there are dozens of people who are shaking their heads up and down right now as they hear.

this conversation and they're like, wow, that's true. My confirmation, I do, my best, my three best friends all think like me. My family all thinks like me. I do live in a small community where we all think the same and we have the same politics. I don't really have a lot of people who debate big issues with me. Like I can see dozens of people shaking their heads. And the challenge is that as soon as we're done talking, as soon as today's conversation ends, something is going to refresh the brain. and they're going to forget that we had this confirmation bias conversation until maybe tonight or tomorrow or that they share it with a friend, right? And that's what makes it so dangerous is that even awareness of your confirmation bias

isn't actually enough to fix it. Right. It's just the first step. It's almost like as soon as you gain the awareness, you have to jot down a note. You have to put a reminder in your phone. You have to put something on your calendar where it's like, hey, remember to look up confirmation bias, you know, hey Siri, make a note, hey Siri, remind me at midnight or remind me at 9 p.m. to research confirmation bias and how I can overcome it because it's so natural.

It's just built into our human psyche. Yeah, and I think confirmation and confirmation bias is the most dangerous because like you said, even if you're aware of it, you really have to make a conscious decision to take active steps to broaden your perspective, right? To be comfortable with the cognitive dissonance that will come with listening to other perspectives. And I think that, you know, part of the danger too is that cognitive bias flows so well, you know,

oftentimes you'll hear people say, well, it just feels right, right? Like, do you have, you know, what's your evidence? And they'll be like, it just feels right, right? Like, doesn't it make sense to you? and no. None of those things, none of those answers are good enough, right? To say that something is true.

You know what else feels right? Like the first 15 minutes of drinking a beer feels right. It's not until an hour later and you're gassy that you're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have had that third beer. Yeah. Or it's like that first, that first 10 minutes of shoveling ice cream into your face feels great.

Totally feels right. You're like, I am bummed. This is the right thing to do. until later on when you have the crash and you're like, that was not the right thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. So we've got some really powerful stuff going on in the headlines right now, right?

Israel Hamas is a fantastic example of mere exposure. Yeah. The world is really afraid of what's going on in Israel right now. Yeah. When in reality, that's a long-term conflict that's been there for a long time that's really hyper-focused just in Israel. Hamas doesn't really operate outside of Israel. and the Israeli government is fighting Hamas, a proxy for Iran.

It's a hot conflict, but it doesn't really affect us, right? That's a mere exposure thing. You see it everywhere, so you become afraid that it's going to somehow bleed over to the United States, when in reality the highest probability is it's going to stay very localized in Israel. So right there's your mere exposure effect for sure. And you have to remember that the media that you're seeing, the news that you're seeing is is country-specific, right? So in the United States, we are seeing news and media about certain things that are deemed important to, you know, the head of the news

agencies and probably our government, right? And what's important to the government of the United States, to the politicians making the decisions at large, you know, of a country are very specific to them, right? It's not like the news, if you go overseas, the news that you're going to see about any of these things in Japan, in Nigeria, in, you know, Saudi Arabia, it's all going to read very differently. And you can go online and look up, you know, foreign news sources and start to see what are their top stories, right, just to give you an idea. But then, you know, your example about the abortion change to the constitutional law in Ohio is a great example of confirmation bias because you're going to have these people who want to believe something and inside

certain circles, they're going to want to believe that somehow changing a state law is going to impact the federal law. Or they're going to want to believe that somehow they're going to make an impact at a federal level. And that's an example of media taking advantage of confirmation bias. Do you have an example top of mind for availability bias? I don't know if you've read anything that gives a good example of that in recent days or weeks. So I think that, you know, availability bias, what I've seen are, you know, for me, I've seen it on a more personal level of people who somehow have a connection, have an actual connection to conflicts going on around the world. You know, they have an actual connection to the U.S.

Russia conflict, right? An actual connection to the Israel Hamas conflict, right? You know, for example, like you have friends in the United States who are Palestinian and Israeli, right? Yeah. The stories that you hear from them, right, the available narrative that is surrounding you because that is your community, you know, it doesn't represent. So I have actually have an example from when I was when I was in college and I made this really

good friend my freshman year. And I grew up, you know, from the time I was six, I spent, you know, most of my time in St. Petersburg. And I went to school in Tampa, which is, you know, 45 minutes away. So I grew up in Florida and I made this really good friend who was from Alabama and had grown up in Chicago. And we were, I was talking about gangs. And I was like, yeah, I was like, gangs are everywhere and this and that and whatever, whatever. And he was like, gee, he was like, you need to leave Tampa. It was like, everything you're telling me right now is not a applicable to the rest of the United States. This is a Tampa phenomenon that you're talking about, and you really need to meet some other people.

But, you know, my, what was the information available to me was that this is the way it is, right? This is life for these types of people, and you can hear it in the music, and you can talk to my friends about it, and this is the experience here. But it wasn't applicable to everybody else in the United States. It wasn't representative, right? Yeah. So this has been an awesome conversation, and I think it's so relevant to what's happening right now. Do you happen to have a Q&A? Has anybody asked a question recently that makes you kind of think of this topic?

So there was somebody who wrote him recently, and they said they asked if we had any, like, mental tips that they could use because ever since the pandemic, they've been overeating snacks at work when they get stressed. out and they felt like we could give them some tips on some, you know, mental strengths that they can use to overcome that habit that they've developed. So it's really interesting to me to hear that because, you know, first of all, the person identified that it started during the COVID pandemic, which means it didn't exist before that. Right. So it's not that they themselves actually have a mental health issue that drives them to overeat. Instead, it sounds like they really have just create a bad habit. Yeah, and they also identify that it's stress induced. So they know. Yeah, exactly. They know it's a, so what's fascinating to me is that you've got an

individual here who didn't have the habit before, who developed the habit, who understands that it was induced first by stress. But what has most likely happened is they've started, researching for themselves, why can't I stop eating snacks? How do I stop eating snacks? How do I stop from overeating? So now they've probably fallen into this this bubble of information that's telling them or making them believe that they have some sort of mental health issue or mental barrier against being able to stop when in fact it really is just a bad habit that they've started. If we were to If we were to send this person on a two-week trip to Ambodia, they'd break their habit eating. I can guarantee you they'd break their habit of snack eating because all of a sudden, their comfort snacks would not be available to them.

True. Right? Yes. And to somebody who habitually overeats, they become anxious about food. You send them to a foreign country and they're still going to eat. Yeah. But to most people who just have a bad habit of eating their comfort foods, you send them to a different environment. and all of a sudden they're not going to do anything.

So this individual is interesting because I think they absolutely fall into the trap where they're probably falling into a bit of confirmation bias and availability bias because they're probably being told and reading and they might even be part of like Discord forums or chat groups or Facebook groups about people who perpetually overeat. And they don't belong there at all. They're an outsider in the wrong group. And now they're hearing all the wrong information. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So then it makes me think actually of you have an e-book called the Mental Edge e-book, and it talks about, you know, ways that you can make yourself mentally stronger and disciplined. So that, I mean, the fact that they recognize that they're turning to comfort foods when they're stressed is a huge, huge, huge. first step. I mean, normally in our courses, one of the first things we have people do is make a self-assessment, and they've already done it, right? Which is fantastic. Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like this is a very, a very good question, my love. Thank you for flagging this. Because what ends up happening to a lot of folks who starts to feel bad about themselves is they have to, they have to take a

moment to consider that they might have fallen themselves into a bias and put themselves into a community where people are perpetually kind of reminding them of an issue that may not actually be applicable to them. I think about it with folks who join introvert groups and folks who join, you know, religious groups and folks who join community groups, you know, you might you might join a community group because you become very passionate about public education. Then inside that group, they become very focused on neighborhood garbage pickup. And you're not passionate about picking up garbage in the neighborhood. You're passionate about education. That's what brought you into the group. But now that you're in the group, the group is changing its bias, its focus, and now you are being

influenced by the group, right? So I think that's a fantastic, a fantastic question to bring up and thank you very much. Yeah. So, I mean, in essence, what I would recommend for this person and for anybody struggling like this person is struggling is really just make a change to the environment. That's it. Put yourself, if you're part of a group that has to do with overreating, if you're part of a Discord chat group or a forum that's talking about overreating, just pause. Take seven days to not tune into that group. Seven days to erase the bias that's been building. Right. And then at the same time, change. Literally change your environment.

Spend five days or, you know, get yourself a hotel room or get yourself an Airbnb and go work from a different home, a different house, a different kitchen for five or seven days. And what's going to happen is that if you find yourself going back and buying the same snacks, then you know that it's a habit. It's not actually a problem with perpetually overeating. Where if you find yourself like eating anything, if you find, I saw somebody at a cafe, the other day, not even a cafe at a diner. And they walked in and they told the waitress, I am so hungry right now.

And the waitress was like, oh, well, we're kind of backed up. It's going to take a little while. But if you want to have a seat, I'll bring you some coffee. And it took the waitress so long to bring them coffee. The person actually started drinking the creamer packets. So gross. Which sounds disgusting. And I was like, you must be like a whole different level of hungry if you're actually

eating the creamer packets. So my point is just change the environment. find out very quickly whether or not you actually have a problem at all. And what ends up happening is many of us believe this is what goes back to our conversation about narrative and propaganda. We may not have anywhere near the problem that we think we have because the narrative is telling us that there's something wrong with us. The narrative is telling us that we're too ambitious. The narrative is telling us that we're too greedy. The narrative is telling us that we overeat. when in fact there may be nothing wrong with us at all.

We just have to stop feeding ourselves that narrative, right? So that's what I would recommend is that we just change the environment. Thanks. Folks, it's been awesome to have you with us for this conversation. Please, if you enjoy this conversation, if you're still listening, hit like, hit subscribe, share us with a friend. If we said something that's interesting and relevant to you, I can guarantee you that somebody that you're friends with also wants to hear this message or needs to hear this message. And we love sharing our insight. We love sharing our daily lives. You love sharing our in our way that we see the world and the struggles that we have is as parents, professionals, former spies and and business owners. We love sharing that because that's really a big part of what makes our day a fun day, a great day. So we hope you had a great time with us. We had a great time talking to you. Leave your questions. Leave your comments below. Hit that like button. Hit share. Give a subscribe if you haven't already subscribed. And we can't wait to see you next. time.

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