Jocko Podcast - 004 Jocko Manual: The War for Your Mind

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< How the 24-hour news cycle morphed into a 24-minute news frenzy — and how social media’s algorithms are engineered to hijack your attention. From dopamine loops to emotional triggers, discover the hidden mechanics keeping you glued to a screen, and why switching to “manual mode” might be the only way to take your life back.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the manual podcast number four sitting here with Kerry Helton and I'm going to talk to you about this. You know, this is something that started in the 80s in the 80s. This is when I grew up in the 80s as a matter of fact. It started with CNN and it was the 24 hour news cycle. So they went from like a half an hour of news a day into this 24 hour news cycle and once you make the news 24 hours, once you've got a channel that you're supposed to fill with news for 24. hours, then you've got to start to do things in order to fill that news cycle. So I got to see this transition because when I was a kid, the news only came from Walter Cronkite. Do you know what Walter Cronkite is? I do. Okay. That was it.

Now, Walter Cronkite's news started as a 15-minute show. And then in 1963, it expanded to a 30-minute. We're going to talk about news for 30 minutes. Right, which by the way, with commercials, 22 minutes. So in 22 minutes, you knew what you needed to know about the world. And that lasted for a long time. But then, I think 1980, I think it was like 1980, maybe 191, something like that. CNN kicked it off and said, we're going to do news 24 hours a day.

and then came the financial news network and then CNN2, which I think they called headline news, and then CNBC and then Fox News and then MSNBC and then Bloomberg television and Fox Business and Newsmax and News Nation and One American News Network. You see where I'm going with this? Not to mention you got foreign things like BBC. So there's all these channels and they're going 24 hours a day,

not 22 minutes a day, 24 hours a day. And when you do that, when you want it, when you when you got to fill 23 and a half hours a day with news, you got to create stories, you got to create drama. And what you have to do is you got to keep people watching. Why are you going to keep people watching? You got to capture the attention of people.

That's how you get people to watch. That's how you're going to get paid for advertising and make that scler. You see what I'm saying? You got to make that money. You've got to get people to watch. So the way that we get people to watch, we got to draw them in. Now we know psychologically what's going to draw people in. We know it because when we're driving down the road and there's a car accident,

why is there a traffic jam? Because there's a car accident. The car accident's been cleared to the side. Why are we slowing down? Because everyone wants to look at the car crash. That's the human nature. And that's why the press knows that if it bleeds, it leads. if we can show some freaking bloody chaos,

we're going to get people to watch. Or we can show some big negativity. We're going to get people to watch. So that's what starts happening. And then you got to inject the emotion in there, right? We've got to inject some emotion in there. Because if you feel emotion, you're going to watch. Like, why would you go see a scary,

you ever seen a scary movie before? Oh, yeah. Do you like them? No. My wife can't even watch a trailer. Like, she won't even watch a trailer. to a horror movie she'll run away right but my and like ranna she'll go my daughter she'll go to a movie a horror movie and she'll i'll say oh how was it she was like it was horrifying like i i'm not

going you know outside well did you like it yeah it was awesome so people like to have that feeling or like why would you go see a sad movie right what's a sad movie um old yeller Old Yeller. Like these are movies that are sad movies. They make you sad. Why would you go see something that makes you? Well, it's going to trigger it's emotion. And so people are drawn towards emotion.

And both of those are like being horrified and being sad. Those are negative emotions, right? They draw them in. So we get this news cycle and now they're running stuff. Another way is just by giving opinions, right? If I give my opinion about something, if you hate my opinion, you'll keep watching. If you love my opinion, you'll keep watching. But I don't care as long as you keep watching.

That's what my goal is. So then you take this 24-hour news cycle and then you throw in the social media activities, right? Twitter, X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, substack, Patreon. Like you got all these things. And they're all doing the same thing, which is they're trying to get you to pay attention to them as well. And they're doing whatever they have to do to sucker you in for 15 months. more seconds or 30 more seconds or one more minute or 10 minutes or half an hour or five hours I had friends of my kids tell me that they had to take TikTok off their phone because they'd

wake up in the morning and four or five hours gone four or five hours daily gone and these people like so that the content creators they're want your attention And then of course the algorithms being given to you what you want So you give them time and your your time is gone, but they got what they wanted and what they got was your eyes on And so it's gone from this 24 hour news cycle to a 24 minute news cycle it's 24 minutes man Like if a new story breaks when a new story breaks within 24 minutes there's reality action videos, there's commentaries, there's debates, there's conspiracy, there's shock journalism,

right? That's what's happening. Like a story breaks and we are going to be there with the commentary and with the like, oh, that shouldn't happen. This is what the cause was. The debates are coming. The conspiracies are kicking off. Like it's all, it's all coming. Shock journalism, right? This used to be called yellow journalism, which broadly meant exaggeration, scandal mongering. I like that one. Oh, we got to find out about that scandal. Got to find out.

Especially, you know, I've explained this to people back in the day there was a magazine called, I don't know if it still exists, but the National Inquirer, does it still exist? Do you know? Yeah, I believe so. So why does that exist? All of students is just talking smack. about people, right? Am I right? Yeah, was that the National Enquirer? Was that like aliens are? It was part aliens are, but I think it was, and maybe I'm confusing with some others, but they're

similar vein, which is, you know, so-and-so celebrity got a drunk driving accident. So-and-so-celebrity. It's like TMZ magazine style. Yeah, yeah, TMZ magazine, right? Why do those things exist? Because people want to watch them. That's why they exist. Scandal-mongering. Misinformation, whatever it could be done to provoke an emotional response and get people to pay attention. That's what yellow journalism was. So people writing headlines, dramatic freaking headlines. So that's what's happening. That's what's going on.

And there's literally millions of people that are trying to get you to watch. And it's working. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do, right? It's doing all the things. It's got all the little psychological and physiological things that it's supposed to have the dopamine little reward loops, right? The very, it was actually Echo Charles that explained variable rewards to me because I didn't know about it.

But if you give, and then I learned this from dog training as well, you don't give the same reward every time. You don't, like, you could have like a nice little cube of prime rib for your dog. And if you give him that same, you know, one inch by one inch cube, of prime rib eventually that's just kind of what's expected you got to keep them guessing a little bit sometimes you give them prime rib sometimes you literally don't give them anything when you're training in a dog sometimes you just say good dog then maybe two times later you give them a little little little hunk of that prime rib and they're feeling good right but they come back for it called that the jackpot the jackpot the variable reward by the way yeah like you're right this is what leads to addiction

This is why slot machines give you like a little reward, a big reward, a little reward, no reward. They do this over and over again. This is psychological engineering. Variable rewards. That's part of it. Dopamine hits, reward loops, endless scroll, endless scroll, endless content. That's there. You don't ever have to stop.

It's going to give you there's one, there's another. dopamine reward variable size in one finger swipe and you can't say no to it your program not to say no to it and by the way all the things that they're going to show you are made tailor made for your brain to draw you in that's what's what's going on it's made for it's personalized for you isn't it amazing isn't amazing that instagram can show you exactly what it is you're interested in little emotional trick are in there. They show you things that piss you off and they show you things that you love because it doesn't matter. If I hate it, I'm going to share it. What an idiotic take this is. Share. Or this guy's got it right. Share. Either one. That emotional level that I get to makes me want to

share it with other people. And then, of course, on top of all that, you get the validation, right? We get the lights and the comments and the views and all that. Another thing is, about this that draws us in is it gives you a level of a weird form of control because because you get to have a strong opinion about something right you get to say man this is bullshit or i can't believe this person did that you get to you get you get you get like a control over it and you feel strongly about it and it feels good to feel strongly about something like that feels good you get to have a little bit of an emotional release over something, right? Even if it's only five seconds long, you go, damn, I'm going to reshare. I can't believe that happened. I can't believe this person

did that. I can't believe that person doing that thing. Like that, it feels good to people, except for none of the thing that you're investing this emotion in, none of it doesn't matter. It does not matter at all in any way, shape, or form. It does not matter. It only feels like it matters, but it doesn't matter. But that's what we're up against. Dopamine, variable. rewards, endless scroll, personalization, emotional triggers. That's what we're up against. Things specifically, specifically engineered to distract you and steal your attention and make you pay attention to something that literally does not matter at all. But they engineered it that way. So what, so what are we supposed to do? I'll tell you what we're supposed to do. I'll tell you what we're

supposed to do. Go to manual mode. That's what you have to do. If you go in cruise control, you will scroll until you are dead. You have to go into manual mode. You have to turn the trash off and get away from it. Because if you don't go into manual mode, I'll tell you what's going to take over. Your natural, psychological, and physiological instincts will take over. They'll follow the path of least resistance.

They'll be with their hands out begging for that neurochemical release. That's what's going to happen. You have to deny these things from happening. You have to switch into manual mode and get out of the 24-minute news cycle and get your ass into the real world that's all around you. right here real life go live it and that's what I got if you want to go support what we're doing here go to joccofuel.com origin usa.com jocco store.com eschlonfront.com Thanks for listening now stop listening and go get after it.