Knowledge Fight - #713: Chatting With Becca Lewis

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Today, Dan and Jordan continue Sneak Week as they sit down for a delightful chat with researcher and expert witness in the Sandy Hook trial, Becca Lewis.  

I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. Hey everybody, welcome back to Knowledge Fight. I'm Dan. I'm Jordan. We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Celine back in its company, very close to the altar. It's right there. And talk a little bit about Alex Jones. Oh, indeed we are, Dan. Jordan. Dan. Jordan. Quick question for you, buddy. What's up? What's your bright spot today? My bright spot is, you know, we're back from our trip to Austin. Indeed. And there are some things that you expect to be really exciting about coming back, like

being in my own space, of course, Celine being around. But then there's other things that are kind of a surprise. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest is my back scratcher. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I didn't have it with me on the trip. And I didn't realize how much I use it. Yeah. Like my back was itching almost constantly through the trip. I was rubbing on doorways like a bear. And coming back, I was like, yeah, I'm going to get a travel back scratcher. I'm going to get like three or four of them. It's going to be back scratcher city. Maybe you just need some back lotion, you know, like get some jargons. Really. You got to, I mean, maybe you just have dry skin. Maybe. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This wasn't meant to be aggressive.

I don't know. Can you have back, can you have dry skin and also be quite sweaty? Yes, you can. Okay. That's paradoxical. What's your bright spot? My bright spot very similarly is a small thing from home that I didn't expect to be such a delight. I took a bath. Yeah. And I had my bath salts in there. I've turned into that guy for sure. It turned into me. Absolutely. Okay. Yep. It took years to get there. But eventually your bath salts penetrated my brain and now it was so good. There were tubs in our hotel rooms. Yeah, there were. How good was our hotel room? I did take a bath. I think I might have taken two baths in that time. Yeah. Very deep tub, but slender. Mine was not deep. Okay. That's weird. Maybe your

bathtub at home is just super deep. I think that's what it really is. You'll have like a jacuzzi bathtub in your home. It does have jets. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bright spot. Yeah. So Jordan, today we have an episode that we're going to be doing. This is very exciting. Over the course of the time in Austin when we were there for the trial. That's where we were. A certain figure emerged from the trial, who our audience has taken to in a very serious way. Oh, yeah. She's somebody who I have paid attention to and admired a bit for her work over the years. And we're excited to talk to her. Becca Lewis, thank you for joining us. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I have been admiring both of your work for many years now too.

That is very kind and awesome. It's great that we can finally sit down and have a chat. But first, I have to ask you, what is your bright spot? My bright spot is really similar to both of yours, actually. I am also back home, which is mixed by the comforts of home are really nice to come back to. And that includes my own alter to my cat, Annie, who is a 17 year old delightful grumpy old lady. Yeah. Love it. I love a grumpy pet. Oh, yeah. She's great. Maybe grumpy is the wrong word. She's very, very demanding of attention. She will let you know that you need to be petting her right now. Am I right? Yeah, I love it. I love it. I love an old pet too. Like just sort of like

not doesn't have that that vibrance. It's not going to try and outrun you just sort of I know what's up. Oh, when we lived a bit when we were at a friend of the deep close friend of the show who helped our audio issues, making him my hero. Yeah. When we were at his place, he had a very old black lab golden retriever. Yeah. Yeah. Golden retriever. And then great day. Great day. So it was huge. It was the biggest dog. It was too big. It was so old. And then whenever she came over, I gave her the right ear scratches, boom, right on the floor, giving me some belly time. It was amazing. That's the thing. Old, old animals are the best. I only adopted my cat when she was 14 and she was they're just chilled, you know, they just sit there and hang

out. And God bless her for it. Yes, indeed. So, Becca, you were a part of the trial for the plaintiff's expert witness. And you want to, would you like to explain a little bit about like what the subject matter you were brought in to talk about was? Yeah, sounds good. So I research communication is the field that I'm in. And specifically, I look at right wing and far right social movements, and also just more broadly, like disinformation efforts across the political spectrum, and how they kind of disseminate throughout the internet. So that was really the role they brought me on to talk about. So like other, other witnesses talked about the, you know, like Fred Zipp, the journalism expert talked about kind of the actual

protocols of genuine journalism, and how info wars wasn't following any of those. Of course, the forensic psychologist talked about, you know, the mental anguish that they, the parents of Neil and Scarlett experienced. And my role was to talk about the role of Alex Jones in the just how widespread this conspiracy theory has become. A topic which I don't think either of you may be very familiar with. I actually found a lot of your testimony pretty interesting. Illuminating it. It is, it is a section of like understanding his reach. A particular is reach in the past is something that we haven't delved too deeply into. We don't even understand our own reach, let alone, we're still, we're still like, I swear, I think there's just 15

people listening, honestly. I was trying to make a bad joke, because I feel like you two are like the most qualified people to talk about this ever. But I'm glad to hear it was interesting. Oh, really? No, we're both on your team. We can talk ideas about like his coverage of things, but in terms of the stuff that's around him, you know, like that, that picture is something that I don't know. I mean, I certainly have a sense of it, just sort of anecdotally from, from like being around conspiracy circles at the time. But I mean, in a way, we know where bullshit is, and you know where it goes. Do you know what I mean? Oh, I like that way of phrasing it. Yeah. And I think it's true, actually, that you, you, when you work in this space, you quickly come to

realize you're like, I am going to bite off one very, very small piece of this puzzle. Because it is just so massive. There's so much to delve into. And so you really do have to rely on the work of other people. And it's incredibly important, I think, to like chat with and make sure you're cleaning expertise from other people around, because yeah, you just, you have to be the expert in your one spot, and then make sure you're, you're looking at whatever it else is doing to. Yeah, definitely. I think, I think that's something that's really important is that people niche and specialize a bit, and then networking can be important. And I think, yeah, one of the failings of our show, I think really is that there was none of that really early on ever, because

I think I was scared because I reached out to a couple of people who I'm, I shant name early on in the time doing this podcast, and they were so resistant. And understandably so. Of course. Like we are not academics. We don't have any real background. And here we are saying, I didn't graduate. Yeah. We study Alex Jones. It's obviously like a concern that like, Oh, these are crazy people. Right. Right. And I think that I got gun shy about that and didn't, didn't really network nearly as much as I could have. Actually, your, your expertise. Oh, no, keep going. No, I was just going to say the cool thing for me is that during the trial, it's been like, your podcast has been the forum where you've been able to bring a ton

of people together, right? You've heard from the lawyers, from Elizabeth Williamson, who's incredible. Like if that wasn't the case initially, it certainly is the case now that you're bringing, like bringing everyone together in a really cool way, I think. Except for those people who I shant and and all of the people that I have spoken to are not brought together. I'll tell you that right now. And all the people who seem to refuse to walk. Yes, exactly. So it's your sense, though, but getting back to this, this idea, like that Alex really was the central galvanizing force behind a lot of the, the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorizing. That was something that

I took away from what you were saying. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, that's, that's what's so fascinating to me as you can see, like their network studies that get done about kind of the dynamics of these things, you see the giant nodes that form in terms of right way, the spread of right wing ideas and information. And it's like, you know, the big institutional hubs throughout kind of the 2010s were Fox News and Breitbart, you know, particularly through like 2017, 2018. But when you look at individuals, it's Alex Jones. There's no one, you know, really the only person with comparable reach to him in this space is Joe Rogan. And like, obviously Joe Rogan is a bit more of a complicated person in the way that he, back then he probably had much less of a

reach. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you go back and you look at what Alex's reach was in 2012, it was much smaller, but it was still huge for the time. It was like, he had in 2011, he already had half a million subscribers and like no one at that point, there was no one with millions of subscribers on YouTube, you know, and by the time of Sandy Hook, he already had like 100 million views on his page. It was, you know, really, really substantial. Yeah, I'm trying to think of like other people who, you know, would be sort of in that conversation and like Bill Cooper was dead, right? So he couldn't really be a widespread individual voice, right? Coast to coast, kind of, but not really. It's not the same thing. Yeah, right. There were a lot of, there were a

lot of Angel Fire websites devoted to Dragon Ball Z that were all about disinformation, if I recall correctly, but mostly about how Goku was a limited hangout. It was a complicated case at the time. Yeah, I feel like, um, like Alex Jones was really this hinge point where it's like you're saying he was, he was there in the 90s, he was doing the public access television, he was doing the radio thing, but then he also was incredibly, you know, questioned in a lot of ways and was able to do the influence, the online influencer thing, you know, pretty early on, he was on the crest of that wave. Yeah. You know, I have a quick question to ask you. One of the funniest parts about your testimony, which of course is the only thing I pay attention to. The funniest stuff. Yeah. It shows. Yeah.

Your Twitter is just full of, hey, that was a good one. Ha, ha, ha. Is the, the count, the juxtaposition of how Alex describes all of his guests as like the most qualified, the top of their field, the single greatest person, everybody knows this person. And Mark could not have tried to twist the knife more at the beginning than when he was like, where did you graduate from? Oh, that's cool. Let me ask you a question. Did you graduate from somewhere even more important? Is that a prestigious cult? Yes. So genuinely the most uncomfortable I was on the stage. It had to have been, right? Yeah. He warned me. He was like, early on, I'm going to make you brag a little bit. You're going to be uncomfortable with it.

And I was uncomfortable with it. But then of course, it's like, you look back at Mark and he knows what he's doing. And, and so I trusted I was in good hands, but it was really funny. How many degrees do you have? Just, just for, just for a concept. I don't want you to name where they're from because I know that would be embarrassing. And you're in bad hands. Yeah, exactly. And he said, one of the institutions, I'd be like, yeah, I got into there. And then I was like, they're so, you know, like, yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's the thing also is that plenty of prestigious institutions have lots of idiots that go there, right? But Harvard has turned out its share of people I've paid attention to, which is not good. Yeah. But listen, but in my case,

clearly, it only turns out, you know, expert geniuses. Yeah. When I went to, I dropped out of high school. And after that, I was applying for colleges. And I was guaranteed basically that I could get into the University of Missouri. Because I lived in Columbia and it was easy. It was a dunk. Right. But the only other college I applied to was Harvard. All right, I'll go with the Backup School of Missouri, I guess. I guess. My dad went to Harvard. And so I was like, Hey, I'm a legacy. This will make up for me dropping out. Did not work out. Did not get it. And went to Missouri. Amazing. I regret nothing. So also another thing that it was fun, I believe it was you who did the jury ask you to swear you

weren't a lizard? Or did that question not make it through? Well, yes, it was the jury that asked me to swear under us that I was not a lizard person. The question did not make it through. So I didn't get to answer that question. Well, I think we, I think we need an answer. Yeah, I mean, you know, now is your time to really reveal yourself to the world, I guess. Well, listen, I'll say two things. First, I'll say that I am not a lizard person. But second of all, I'll say that this podcast is not me under oath. Yeah, that's a good point. We've tried to do that. I mean, if you think Celine doesn't hold you accountable for what you have to say, I would be I can't lie to a cat. In her form of holding people in contempt involves claws.

Accountability greater than that of the law. I'm thinking about this, this, this picture of the media landscape back then in like 2012. And even the thing that I brought up, I realize, like coast to coast AM is probably one of the biggest things other than Alex that touches on some of these issues. But that even seems silly to say, because Alex was constantly on coast to coast. Yeah. So he was using that platform to dissent and even like a couple of times they had Steve Pachanik on, yeah, on coast to coast. Yeah, it's nuts. Hey, if you need a big swing, you call Stevie P's right, but you can't think that that wasn't done through. Right. Right. Oh, no, of

course. It's, I don't know if there are bookers reaching out. It's like, wait, we got to get the guy who murdered Aldo Murrow in here. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I feel like, I mean, yeah, a couple of other things about the internet at that point. And I feel like, Dan, you brought this up in a recent episode about like Facebook being an entirely different place back then too. The other thing you find when you go back and start rooting around in like archive.org and these other like, you know, ways you've tried to try to go back and look at what the internet was like then is it was much less like people didn't have verified accounts at that point. So you had Alex Jones, but then you also had like dozens and dozens of dozens of if you look at what the other

recommended accounts were at the time, it's all of these Alex Jones ripoff accounts. And so the posting and reposting and reposting is like something that is hard for us to even conceptualize now in this. Obviously, they're still posting and reposting, but it was a very different version of that back then. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I sort of buried that memory, but there were, I know a couple of times a friend of mine was like, became friends with a celebrity on Facebook. And it was like, that's not a real account. Yeah. It is, it is like thinking of it as the Wild West. But when you think of the Wild West, you think of the distant past, not like a few years ago. Oh, thank God, the sheriffs have finally showed up, you know, it's

right, right. No, it's true. Like we still think of social media as a cesspool and obviously it is, but the amount that has changed between then and now is pretty remarkable. And then to your point about the kind of, you know, Alex Jones going on these other shows, I mean, this was something that I didn't really have time to get into in, you know, on the stand. But that's, that's a lot of what I look at, right, is how you get these different creators who kind of amplify each other and each other's ideas and create this like self-reinforcing feedback loop, right? It's like, someone will reference Alex Jones as like the authority and be like, well, that's why I can spread this idea. And then Alex Jones will point back to Wolfgang Halberg or whoever and be like,

oh yeah, he has his credentials. And so then you start to get these networks of people who are all going on each other's shows, who are all kind of amplifying each other's ideas and reinforcing them and seem like they're kind of citing genuine people because they have this whole network of people that are their quote unquote experts. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, it's like almost circular credibility, but it's a completely different shape. It's like it's, it's a million-sided shape of self-feeding credibility. Right. That's kind of what I was going to ask is, could you give us kind of like a visualization of how that disseminates? Like what I kind of see in my head is almost these, these giant circles that eventually touch. Well, actually, I can, let me, let me step in

here because actually, I wanted to bring this up. One of the first things that brought you into my sphere of awareness was the alternative influence network report that I believe was 2017, 2018. 2018. Yeah, yeah. 2018. And there is a visualization in there with a bunch of lines between. Oh, surprise. I haven't read the answer to my question. This exists as a visualization of things in 2018. Right. Right. And so I would imagine that would be, you know, the way we, you'd look at it now, but what's so fascinating is how different the landscape is. It is. Even just a couple years later. I mean, do you feel like there's differences that you have noticed specifically? Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I feel like, well, first of all, the thing about that,

that network that I made was, it was specifically looking at kind of like, it started with Dave Rubin as the seed account and then did like what we call snowfall sampling from there because the idea was to say like the most mainstream quote unquote mainstream person that I could think of who had influence and a lot of people on his show. And then go from there and see where it spun out. And the interesting thing is there's a ton of people from Alex Jones's world on that network web, right? That like PJW is on there and a bunch of people. But at a certain point, I realized I was going to start including Alex Jones in this, but the way I bounded it ended up having to leave him out because he was at the center of his own

alternative influence. Wow. That's fascinating. That's what I was thinking is that like if you added him, then it would sprawl like a completely wild direction, even though there's a ton of overlap in terms of people he's connected with on here. Like, well, I guess at the time, probably not Nick Fuentes, but he had Faith Goldie on his show, certainly Joe Rogan, Candace Owens, Gavin Cernovich. But yeah, that's that's that is interesting that he would be his own, the visualization of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone else gets like circles of influence in where they are. And Alex gets in a morphous blob of cancerous cells somewhere over there. Exactly. Yeah. That just infects some stuff everywhere.

So yeah, I was like, if I, if I include Alex Jones, I need to do an entire other report on Alex Jones. And that hasn't happened. But that's the first thing. But yeah, it's changed a lot since then. First of all, because YouTube has actually kicked a lot of these people off. Oh, that's true. Yeah, they're not in the algorithm as much. Exactly. So, you know, to to YouTube's credit, you know, like, I think, actually, Alex Jones's lawyer asked me about Stefan Malonew, which was wild. You could choose 100 different people that aren't avowed white nationalists. The guy who literally said, I am a white nationalist now, based on I wish I had made that even clearer to the jury that like, this is a man who has no qualms about

describing himself this way, you know, right? He became a white nationalist because people didn't yell at him in Poland for being a white nationalist. They were like, Oh, well, they're not mean to me about it. So I can finally just say it. Exactly. And like, the amount of first of all, like, he's someone I would have so many receipts on like at the ready. And then like, also, it's just someone who is it was a bad choice of someone to bring up. But is such a he was such a powerful radicalization point, right? Because he was someone that maintained enough, quote unquote, credibility for a while that he would get invited on like Jordan Peterson show, Rogan show, right? These Dave Rubin, these people that have kind of,

you know, mainstream, again, quote unquote, credibility. But then he would, you know, go on these other kind of more openly extremist shows and kind of speak his his mind much more openly. And he was just like known to be Robert Evans wrote about this too, and a lot of his you know, where people got redpilled, you know, people talked about I believe that he was one of the ones mentioned by name, although it's been a while since I've read that. So don't quote me on that. But yeah, so so the fact that he got kicked off, I think was a huge deal. The fact that like red ice and some of these other kind of openly white supremacist channels got kicked off was a big deal. So it really has changed. But you know what, actually, I wanted I wanted to

touch on red ice really quick because they've come up a couple times on our show in the past. But you know, looking at this, this 2018 report, Henrik and Lana are like way off in the side of this, this visualization of the network. But I was thinking about this as I was looking at it. That's right. Real quick, I just want to interrupt. So because we can't see you on the screen, Becca, you just need to know that Dan instantly brought up your article on his computer. The moment that I brought up how stupid I am. No, I refreshed myself on it. In anticipation of speaking. If you were to do an Alex visualization or a network, they would be much closer and much more connected. They are connected to so many people in Alex's

world. Yeah. Yeah. It's super interesting. That's right. And in my prep for the for the trial, I kept encountering them because it was, you know, what, were the Wolfgang who went on there? A couple of several of these. Roger Stone's been on there. Yeah. Oh my god. It's crazy. A man with Nixon on his back going on a white nationalist show. Wild. I would say this is a conservative estimate. 10 to 15 of Alex's crew or like roster of guests have appeared on Red Ice. Yeah. It was, it's a lot. This is the thing. It's like, and obviously it's not, it's not as germane to the case. So I, I get why it hasn't come up, but it just the amount of anti-Semitism and white supremacy that Alex Jones ends up baking into

his conspiracy theories. It's like it, the way that you come to see it is through the people that he's working with because he's good at couching them. That's a really good point. But then the people that he amplifies, if you go onto their shows, they're not couching it in any way. Right. He's crazy laundering, you know? Well, like, I mean, just case, case and point, he had Owen Benjamin hosting the fourth hour for a while. Oh my god. Yeah. Before he had gone full, I'm a Nazi, but yeah, after everyone had stopped talking to him and he was just hanging out drinking in his backyard. Right. So it was in that middle space. Yeah. I like, like, I mean, I don't know if you could say that's hired him, but he was hosting the fourth hour once a week. Right. For a bit,

like that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now he's, there's still like, Fuentes still has a channel on, on band.video and he posts some bad stuff. Can I ask you, Becca, do you feel like in your research, you've seen a lot of these people become more extreme or just stop laundering it so much? Do you know what I mean? Like, are they actually increasing the extremity of their language or are they just being like, fine, I can just say it now? Yeah. I think it's a combination of stuff. I mean, on the one, first of all, you do have this interesting dynamic where, understandably, I think there's been a lot of anxiety around YouTubers radicalizing YouTube viewers, which I, you know, that's part of what

I've written about. But then you also have this other feedback loop because viewers now can leave comments and like on live streams can, you know, comment in real time and all these things. You actually have audiences demanding more extremist content from creators. True. And so you get this weird feedback loop where it's like creators end up, you know, kind of responding to the wishes of their audience. Like I would say that Tim Poole is a really classic case of this where like I've done the, you know, I've done the knowledge fight treatment on Tim Poole where like I've seen all of his content up through like, you know, a certain amount of time. And it's so interesting to watch him inch bit by bit into the positions that he has now in part by seeing how,

when he delved into that stuff, that's where his audience really responded to it. Yeah. And I think maybe along the way, he kind of convinced himself of some of these ideas, you know, there's always the question of, you know, how much you become the mask you wear kind of thing. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But so there's that dynamic. And then there's also the fact that like the Republican Party itself and mainstream conservatism has been going further and further to the right. So the line between... No. We're recording this on, I believe, the day or the day after Victor Orban spoke. Yes, exactly. The day after the fascist dictator is like, hey, Republicans, we all love each other, right? Yes, you might have a point. You might have a

point. Weirdly, what happened in the YouTube space, and a lot of these spaces, is I think the people that were strategic enough to straddle the line and never openly say, you know, that they're a white nationalist or white supremacist, but who still use that rhetoric, they're still thriving and their rhetoric is getting more and more extreme, even as we're not like, you know, like, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people talk about figures as being fringe, like white supremacists being fringe, it's like, no, they are sitting there in some of the most powerful media positions. I mean, look at Tucker Carlson. Like, he's an incredibly powerful media figure. And if you just take... I've done this in certain presentations where I just take a quote of his about great replacement

theory, a quote of the Christ Church shooter, a quote of Charlie Kirk, and a quote of Jason Kessler, the organizer of Unite the Right. And therefore, four quotes about great replacement theory are indistinguishable. And if you don't have the names attached, and so, you know, of course, like Alex Jones' lawyer was asking people about confirmation bias and stuff. But to me, the interesting thing is, if you take away that certain biases that we have, and you just look at the data, that's the most damning thing possible. Yeah, that's something that I've long thought. And that is that, like, everybody says, like, Alex has taken out a context and stuff like this, but like, in context, all of this stuff that we're talking about ends up worse.

Right. Yes, totally. The other thing too, that I thought of when you're saying, like, you take these things, these statements are the same, with the names removed, like one of the most difficult episodes that we did was about the day of Anders Breviks' attack. Yeah. And I ended up over his manifesto. And one of the things that really stuck out to me was the, if you were to isolate just the words of this, it would sound very familiar to him for war's listeners. And it was just, that was kind of a revelatory moment for me of, like, how gross. And yeah, you're saying, like, it's not fringe. It is. It's the stuff that's in Anders Breviks' manifesto is broadcast on some places. And yeah, it is. It's terrifying. Exactly. I really like, there's a

really good scholar of extremism, who he defines extremism as an in-group that defines their success only by kind of punishing an out-group. Or you mean, like, owning the libs? Yeah, exactly. But the thing that I love about this definition is that he says it's a misunderstanding to say that extremism is defined by being outside of the mainstream. Because if you think of some of the most important extremist regimes in history, they wore the mainstream, right? Nazi Germany was the mainstream during World War II and the Holocaust, right? Oh, yeah. U.S. slavery, that was the mainstream system. And that is an extremist system.

And so I think that we still hang on to these myths that, like, these things somehow stand outside of the mainstream. And no, that's also why I like that one of the jury members asked me the question of, like, is Alex Jones the mainstream media? Which I thought was a great question. It really was, yeah. Because it puts the light of that, right? And you guys, like, call him on this all the time, that it's like, when it's advantageous to him, he says, oh, we're just an upstart, little, you know, we're the underdog. Mom and pop information store.

Yeah, yeah. No, that was a really interesting part of your testimony, especially when the question came from the jury, because that was almost the identical question Bill asked Owen in his deposition. Like to define the mainstream media. You say you're against the mainstream media, define it, and then see if you don't fit all of those definitions. Yeah. Totally. And he sure did.

Owen was basically walked into conceding that himself and most of the people he thinks are fringe are actually mainstream, according to his own definition. Yeah, right. Exactly. And Alex writes about that too. When it's advantageous for him, then they're the biggest, most powerful people on the air, you know? Of course. Yeah, like a million times the traffic of CNN, CNN is somehow the mainstream. Everybody watches CNN. We have more viewers and listeners and everything, but yeah.

I was just going to say that, Dan, you had a great line on a recent podcast that stuck with me and I'm going to use, which is that they, Alex Jones or one of these folks, want their cake and eat it too and to have a slice of pie. To me, just like in every respect, that defines Alex Jones, right? It's like, he'll answer completely opposite things and somehow try to hold them both in his mind and in his rhetoric in a way that lets him form out of anything. Yeah. And also throws a hat on it.

Yeah, well, thank you. That turn of phrase came out of my righteous indignation over the, I think it was the Greenwald A. I really tapped into something full of anger. That was deep. And powerful. It was strong. Because of Glenn Greenwald, I don't see why that would be. I will say, it's been a long time since I sat down in preparation for an episode and like

wrote a speech and a good one too. And a stumped speech. I don't know if you, have you had a chance to see Alex's documentary by chance? I have not yet. I listened to your podcast episode about it, but I haven't watched it yet. And I think I need to be like in the right heads to even tackle it. Good luck. Yeah, it'll probably make you pretty angry.

Headspace is that. I think I've poisoned the jury here though on it. Now, if you watch it, you'll be, you can't get the confirmation by yourself. I know, I know. Speaking of that, speaking of that, how did it feel to be cross-examined by the defense's lawyer? Because the moment he asked you after, well, one, he said two things that made me want to fight him before even, before even started asking you questions, he was trying to imply

that you were unqualified. Despite the fact that we heard a list of qualifications that can only be described as the most overqualified human being ever to sit in that chair. And then, and then later, when he asked you what confirmation, if you knew what confirmation bias was, I was ready to jump over the, over the walls and just be like, Yeah, it was, it was a wild experience. I mean, I'd be lying if it wasn't, it wasn't nerve wracking. And this was my first time like, you know, testifying.

And it was like, you know, Wow. You did great for your first time. Okay. I kind of, part of me, part of me wishes I had maybe been able to do like a lower profile case. But yeah, way to start at the bottom. You gotta do a couple open mics of testifying. I gotta get my type five down first.

But, you know, that, you know, the confirmation bias thing, that one didn't really faze me because, you know, particularly actually with this 2018 report that I released, that one caused like such a stir among the YouTubers that I was writing about, and they They did not take it well. They did not take it well, no. And they, they hurled that exact line of reasoning like at me. And so to, to me, that wasn't a new thing that I've heard. And of course, you know, it's not only directed at me.

Like you constantly hear that line being read, you know, about any, any piece. It's the, the irony of it is, is too much because of course they're using that line as a defense to not have to interrogate their own biases. Right. Yeah. Of course. They might as well literally say, I'm rubber in your glue. Like it is that Childish.

The meaner, meaner defense. Yeah, it is exactly. Exactly. So that, that one didn't faze me so much. Although, yeah, I, I, um, it's a little insulting though. Yeah. Of course. Of course.

Like I think that was my main thing throughout this whole thing is I'm a teacher. And so like talking to the jury to me, I could just kind of be in teacher mode. And that to me is really like natural and fulfilling. But as a, as an academic, I'm not used to having these interactions that are by their very structure adversarial. And so I, I would find myself, he would ask me questions and I, my immediate response was like, Oh, I just need to inform him. And then I was like, wait, that's not, that's not what I'm supposed to do.

If I get the chance, I can really explain to this guy how things work. Not really understanding that he doesn't give a fuck at all. Yeah. Exactly. I had to check myself a couple of times and be like, wait, no, no, no. This is not a teaching opportunity. Yeah, exactly. You're not going to blackpill the lawyer.

So it is, it's different in that context to be like, okay, what are the, and also because I, as an academic, you know, you get me rambling about these things and I can talk for hours. And it's like, no, I have to limit myself to what is applicable for this specific case. You know, what, what, that was the other thing to try to gauge, like, because he started really getting into the weeds on statistical stuff. And, and so I was trying to gauge, like, okay, how much do I prove that what he's asking is like absolute nonsense? Well, like, yeah, his questions were getting, they were getting towards like with his questions,

he was getting towards basically like prove to me, statistics exist. You know, like it was leaning towards like the bickering about sample sizes and what have you is like, yeah, is this a credible outlet? I mean, he literally asked you, he was like, Hey, this statistic, these are based on phone interviews, you don't even know if those people are real, do you? And you're like, I don't even know how to engage with a person who's like, if you call somebody on the phone, it doesn't count as another human being. Right, right, right, right.

And I'll, yeah, it was just some of those were easier to respond to, like when you start getting into why like, what is statistical significance? That was the part where I just decided not even to engage with it, because there's no way I'm going to be able to respond to that in like 30 seconds in a way that's satisfying to two jury members, you know. And so, but that's frustrating because to actually answer the questions he was asking me, like I couldn't really answer them without going into some of those details. We've, we'd like to introduce exhibit 64, and that is a six hour lecture by Becca Lewis on

how to deal with fucking statistics and media literacy. You have to watch it all around the time. You gotta play the whole thing, otherwise it's out of context. Exactly. And every 30 seconds, we know we'll jump in and say unresponsive. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Non-responsive, I asked a bad question. So I wanted to, I wanted to loop back to this, the, the, the alternative influence

network thing, because, you know, this, the report that you did in 2018, or, you know, like you said, a lot of, a lot of blowback from people included in it. Yeah, I'm not bad. It was the Mayak report of lying. You look at a lot of these people who are on here and we see where they've gone since, and I think their arguments are a little bit flawed, but I, I wanted to, I wanted to get your sense because, you know, you're somebody who still watches a lot of this stuff and you still are studying this space and maybe outside of YouTube.

But who do you think is like the big nodes now? Like who would you think are on, are on radars or should be more on radars? And secondarily, do you think that the people who are on here, did, did, did anybody ascend or, or anything? I'm not sure. The phrasing of that question isn't great, but I think you maybe get what I'm asking. I totally get it. Yeah, because there's certain nodes on there, like Andy Worsky was really big for like three

months in 2017. And so he takes up a big spot on there and he's not like relevant at all anymore. But, you know, what, what's interesting to me is, first of all, how much this network has, has continued to overlap more with kind of cable news networks, right? So like at this point, I don't know how I could talk about these figures without talking about Tucker Carlson as well. Sure. They're just being like Kellyanne Conway is a regular guest on MSNBC now.

Yeah, we're right, right, right, right. And, and like, you know, Tucker Carlson did entire segments, kind of like defending and, and hosting Martin Selner and his, his wife, who were people that, you know, the Christchurch shooter ended up, you know, visiting before, before, you know, his massacre. Great, yeah, great. And so I don't know how, how I could do that without talking about him. Oh, he also, whatever, he, he fully endorsed and amplified Lauren Southern's kind of

white supremacist conspiracy theory about farmers in South Africa. She's sorry now. She's brunette and therefore reformed. Yes, she went away for a little while and said she was retired and then she came back and now she's sorry. Yeah. And as we all know, an insincere apology will be reported as a 100% sincere apology. So everybody will believe it. Yeah.

She's sorry, but she's also still suspicious about immigration. Okay, all right, right, right. But the other thing is that, I mean, I really think that what happened is you kind of had YouTube taking action a bunch of people against a bunch of people. You also had some people just kind of shooting themselves in the foot and, and declining in popularity, but then there was a vacuum. And I do think it was people like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi who stepped into it. And so it's a little bit less on job opening.

Yeah, you know, precisely, precisely. I think it was a strategic, I mean, obviously, I don't know what their mindset was, but like, whatever they were doing was clearly strategic because it worked in terms of bringing them fame. And it felt like a very Dave Rubin-esque move, right? Why I left the left type of thing. And that's what Dave Rubin was doing in 2015, 2016. And now here they are doing it, you know, in more recent years. So it's a little bit less YouTube centric, but it's still about the network of kind of,

this loose network of influential people who I think are able to help each other out with networking, but also maintain some type of plausible deniability because they're like, you know, the lines like Glenn Greenwald was using about interviewing Alex were precisely the lines that Dave Rubin used about interviewing people like Stefan Molyneux five years ago, you know, and the lines that Greenwald has about the like, it's identical essentially to Rubin too with the like, I'm not on the right, but the left has gone too far kind of mentality. And that's exactly what feeds into, you know, right-wing audiences and further right-wing audiences to sort of anesthetize them to the idea that they're

further to the right than they think they are. Exactly. Yes, absolutely. And then I think the other big figure who has been so incredibly successful, but somehow has managed to stay so under the mainstream radar is Tim Pool. Yeah. Yeah. He's got billboards outside of Midway. Like it's nuts. And Times Square from what I saw on Twitter. No. I don't know if those were photoshopped, I assume. Yeah. I've seen the ones outside of Midway driving back just going like, what in God's name is that? I didn't believe it at first. Further evidence that that is not a real airport. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bus station. Yeah.

Tim Pool is somebody who like I've wanted to cover maybe and like people have asked us to, but he seems like somebody who is so into attention that like he would try to start a fight with me and I just don't want to do it. Yeah. It seems like it's more trouble than it's worth and other people are somewhat paying attention to him. Yeah. You see some critical coverage. Whereas when we started this podcast, I don't think there was really anything that was sort of pointed in the right direction with Alex. I always liked those why I left for, why I left the Democratic Party posts or why I left the left for the right. They never say millions of dollars. It's so weird. They suddenly get millions of dollars and they say it's a principled position. It's wired.

And a lot of payment attention. Yeah. There's nothing to do about it. It's so crazy. That's one of Alex's like sort of pieces of his own sort of mythology that I kind of believe. Yeah. Like with the, like I was offered all of this stuff and I turned it down. Like, I don't know if he turned it down or not, but like job offers at Fox and like the idea that like, oh, you'll have a book that you put out and will automatically make it a best seller just by buying tons of them. And you won't have to write it. Yeah. Those kinds of things are very enticing for people, I think. Totally, totally. And to me, that's, it's just so depressing and cynical. And in a weird way, even more depressing than like the true believers, because

with a true believer, you can work on de-radicalization and, I mean, not to be too flippant about it, but it's, it's like the Big Lebowski line, right? Like say what you will about national socialism, at least as an ethos. Like the nihilism behind just doing this stuff for profit and thinking you're above the politics of it is just so disgusting. And, and I think with the, with the true believers, those are the ones where I still hold out hope that you can somehow, you know, there are people that work on de-radicalization with them, but what do you do with someone that's just purely in it for the money? It's, it's hopeless. Yeah. I mean, I, I really tell the money runs out, I guess. I really do liken it to, to religious people in so far as

like, I respect people who believe it, you know, like who really believe all of it and try to do the stuff. Even if I think it's absurd, at the very least, I can see them processing this information, believing it and acting upon it. And it's the people who are manipulating them for, let's say, a trillion dollars in gold that they wear around their neck or whatever, you know, it's like you're the most monstrous thing I can think of. Totally. And that's something too with, with Alex Stone's viewers, these people, you know, it's, it's a little bit like thinking about cult members who go on to like recruit new cult members, right? This is, it's not to take away the responsibility of the Alex Jones viewers who went on to harass the Sandy Hook parents,

but it is to say that they are also being harmed by Alex Jones and his rhetoric because Alex is feeding them lies and, and they are trusting him to deliver the truth. And so they, they are also harmed by this, even as they are part of the, the problem. Yeah. Like leaving someone like, was that Lucy Richards and the folks who harassed the families aside, like let's leave them aside for a second. But like, in principle, I always have tried to look at things as like empathy towards the consumer of this bullshit and like really, real strong disdain to the producer. Right. Because yeah, they are being at least deserved. Sure. And in, in the, this case specifically, part of holding Alex accountable is that

the people who harassed the, the families, they are the, they're the bullets, you know, and Alex is the gun that fired them. And I don't like bullets any more than I like the person firing the gun. But if you try and like punish the bullets, the gun is going to keep firing, you know, it's, it's, it's absurd. It'll find more bullets. Yeah. There are more bullets out there. Nobody stopped making bullets. Totally, totally. And I'm, yesterday I taught my, my class about kind of the First Amendment and misconceptions around the First Amendment and how it relates to social media. And did they give you a standing ovation when you walked in the room? Holy shit! What? That was your first time testifying? What?

Although a lot of them were like, how was the trial? How did it go? But, um, uh, yeah, this is the thing that like, and there's, there are incredible scholars working on this, that historically thinking about the First Amendment, um, this idea that Alex Jones promotes, uh, about like the First Amendment and freedom of speech means that I personally, as an individual, should be able to say anything that I want to say. That's not been the way that the First Amendment has been understood, like throughout the history of the United States. And in fact, like many kind of top legal minds have, have said actually that, you know, you need to think about freedom of speech more in a communal sense and thinking about what will get the most

speech to flourish within a community. And also like what, part of freedom of speech is also the freedom to hear valuable information, you know? And so that, that is where kind of it's whatever, it's, sorry, I'm rambling now, but it just really, No, you're not. You're telling obvious and noble and real truth. Yes. Yeah, I, I think, I, I always find that so interesting, but in like a boring way, if that makes sense, the, the notions of the First Amendment that people like Alex have, it's interesting to me that it exists, but like it's so boring how much they bring it up in completely, like, unapplicable situations. As a, as a fan of baseball, the true American pastime is

misunderstanding the Bill of Rights. Well, it's like if somebody hits a, if someone hits a foul ball out of the park and they invoke the infield fire rule. Yeah, they just keep running. What is happening? Yeah. But that's the thing. I think it's not only, it's not just Alex Jones, but you know, like it's, it's the social media platforms have promoted this idea of free speech. And the reason that it's partly interesting to me is that that's the reason they promote that idea of free speeches, because that's the idea that's profitable to them, right? The, the more, Isn't that crazy to think about how it's not just the people who use Facebook who are advancing this concept. It is Facebook itself because they don't have to hold themselves

accountable. So they sell this idea of like, you should be allowed to say whatever you want, because no one will sue us then, you know, exactly, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's an interesting picture. Then, you know, it becomes more clear that there's a lot more responsibility to go around. The amount of responsibility to go around, I find absurdly high. Yes, pretty heavy. And in all of these cases, it's like, this is not to take away the responsibility from the other people. It's just that there's also more shitty actors involved in various ways. I mean, it goes, it goes all the way back to, you know, we discussed it a while back, le problématique, you know, like the, the idea that all of these things are interconnected,

they are not individual elements to are individual things, they're all part of a larger whole that we're not dealing with. See, see, Jordan's talking to an academic now, so he tries to sound smart. I pulled out the one thing I remember from our past. Can I actually say though, okay, I know Jordan, you like to say that you're like just a clown and all of this stuff, but I have to say that you're not, whatever you're about to say next, do not say it. He's gotten too much positive feedback over the last two weeks. I remain a clown and I shall stay one till the day I die. How dare you, madam? Okay, I'm just gonna make you angry for a second and say something, another nice thing, which is

as clownish as the delivery was, there you go, I couched it in, in an insult. There we go. Now I'm listening. Now I'm listening. All right. Your critiques of the media coverage of the Alex Jones trial, I think have been so necessary and spot on because this is actually even before I wrote the, my report on YouTube, my colleague Alice Marwick and I wrote a report about how much the mainstream media plays a role in the amplification of far right content and feeds directly into their, into their ideas. And I think that you've been hitting the nail on the head with all of that and the, the coverage, you know, there've been a few journalists who have been there like day in, day out,

who are doing incredible work, obviously, like Elizabeth being one of them. Sure. But then the people don't forget Murdoch, Sebastian was there. Yeah, absolutely. Incredible work. And then, you know, people that have less Twitter presence, but like there's an incredible court reporter from Reuters and Dan Solomon from Texas Monthly. Yep. Yep. Totally. But then you get all these other people parachuting in only when Alex, I mean, I'm just telling you what you've been tweeting, but yeah, it's, it really is. I have to, I have to push back a tiny bit on your compliment to Jordan because Oh, please. I think that you're totally right that the critiques that you are making and putting

forth were, were, uh, valid and very valuable somewhat. Um, but also let's not encourage the, I mean, it's, it's done. I said what I wanted to say. I mean, I said, I said the final thing. You don't need to tweet at Glenn Greenwald a thousand times. I don't need to tweet ever again. That is, that is done. That is the end of that. I'm finished with that. I'm just saying, make those critiques. Sure. Yeah, there is that. I just, I just feel like the last thing I said was, Send a thousand tweets at Ron Flipkowski. That's fine. That is fine. Yeah. I can't even fuck with Barnes anymore. He got, he got shit on real fast.

He blocked you? Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, no, I mean, I do think one of the big things that the media absolutely refuses to acknowledge is that part of the reason they like to amplify these voices is so they get to clown on them and then creating that owning the conservatives turns into another owning the libs and it just creates this feedback loop and they refuse to acknowledge their part in it. Well, I think that, um, a particular in the, in the case of like the Ron Flipkowski. Sure. Sure. Sure. Um, there, it's kind of the same criticism or at least tangential to it that I had of the documentary about Alex. Right.

And, and that is that like, you're not giving people context for this. Right. So you're showing this video of Alex saying something that he would probably stand behind. Yeah. And the implication is you're supposed to see this and already know it's nuts. Right. And already have some sort of a criticism for it, but instead it's just being broadcast to tons of people and it's just being amplified. I, I don't think it gets the effect that absolutely people who are putting it forth seem to think it would. I think it gets the effects that Philip Kowski wants. Yeah. And this is like, you know, Richard Spencer was a master of this because at any time the mainstream media wanted to, that's a great comparison. Yeah.

Wanted to talk to him. He was more than happy to chat with the mainstream media that he so hated, you know, wear a tie. Oh, yeah, yeah. New Yorker profile about him. Of course. Yeah. Listen, if nice Nazis, why are we mean to them? Exactly. And listen, if 99 out of 100 people read that and hate him, he doesn't care. It's that one person who listens to him and says, maybe he has a point that he's trying to reach out to. And the mainstream media, I mean, this is also why I think people like Alex, one of the reasons they can be affected is because the very first fraction of the first part of what they're saying is a valid critique of the mainstream media. And then they just take it from there and take it

in wildly inaccurate, awful directions, right? But to say that the mainstream media is sensationalist is true. Yep. Well, that's a problem with a lot of his critiques. I mean, there's a critique to be made of the government being ineffectual and not representing necessarily the will of the electorate. You know, there's things like that. And, you know, just to be totally clear, false flags do exist. Right. It is a thing that has happened. And so, yeah, those kernels of something, he gets too much mileage out. Well, I mean, there is the simplest critique that there is to make, honestly, is like the same thing that you could say for the Democrats. Like, what your real electability comes from isn't what you say. If you govern well, people will be like,

hell, yeah. The reason that people hate you is because you're also failing. Maybe you're doing some good. Maybe you're doing on the whole more good than bad. But at the same time, if you're not willing to engage with all the bad you're doing, then you're just going to keep doing it. Totally. And yeah, like, I just want to make clear, like those kernels, I think, though, they're dangerous because that becomes, it becomes a mechanism by which to kind of ensnare people in, in the world. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. So hold on. I didn't get, I don't think I got an answer to my question from earlier, except for Tim Poole. Yes. Who else should we be afraid of? Oh, I think the exact people that you're covering, I think Glenn Greenwald,

Matt Tyebe, Tucker Carlson, Tim Poole, I think it's a much more institutionally powerful. What all those white men have in common. But I think what's interesting is that for a while, it was this group of, you know, for lack of a better word, like internet weirdos, right? Like a lot of them didn't have institutional power. And now a lot of them do. And some of these people who are in this, you know, who are, you know, people you pointed out in 2018 are people who have ascended to more similar, like seeming institutional power, like Dave Rubin, you know, from, from having like, just a, like a YouTube thing to now he's on

Glenn Beck's network. Stephen Crowder has certainly, oh wait, he's on the blaze too. Yeah. But he's certainly elevated significantly since this point. Nick Fuentes, you know, back then was just sort of a Nazi who would go and argue with people on Twitch or YouTube. Now has his own cozy streaming platform. Certainly more centralized power. Milo Yiannopoulos, who fell, fell apart, but now I guess is working with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sure, why not? Yeah, that's another thing. Right. Because that's a great point with Marjorie Taylor Greene that like now you have enough literal members of Congress who are on board with these folks that that has significantly changed the landscape as well.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's also an argument that I keep coming back to of like, it is very easy to get caught up in this sort of recency bias while at the same time being like, well, you know, things were different back then. People were more in the middle and maybe there's just part of it is that because society was so geared towards white people, they didn't even have to say anything, you know, like, why would you be an extremist erring slavery? You own people. But you'd be like, oh, we need to come after the government. You're like, no, the government gives me people to do things for free. Of course. I think that's spot on. And even, you know, of course, my area of research is the internet. And I think it would be weird if I were studying

that and didn't think that the internet played an important role. But of course, of course, that being said, I think that there you get in my field way too much of people claiming that it's all the internet's fault. And I don't think that's true at all. It's like, you know, if you look at the radicalization of the Republican Party, that was starting in the in the 1960s, right? That was the tweet that Alex Jones, his lawyer, was trying to catch me up so funny, so funny. It was about the Southern strategy. And that prove the Southern strategy was racist. Oh, did they say it was racist? Oh, he got you good. But you know, even then the Southern strategy wouldn't have worked unless there was a demand for it. Yeah, exactly. Totally. Yes. Yes.

100%. And none of this other, you know, none of this content and the production of it that were discussed would either, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah, they're tapping into an audience. They're tapping into an audience. And they're feeling it and throwing it. But I know I know this. I mean, I'd be curious to hear how how you all are feeling after what has just been like a roller coaster couple of weeks because I've found it to be quite draining. Yeah, I found it to be less sleep than I've ever not had in the past. It was chaotic for sure. We should just be totally clear. We're recording this after the compensatory damages have been announced, but the they're still deliberating the punitive. So we don't know the full outcome of everything. But yeah, it was,

you know, it, the case itself and going to the trial was draining in many ways. Yeah, some parts of it pretty rewarding and I think affirming and like Scarlett's testimony in particular was something that I think will, you know, stay with many people for the rest of their lives. I won't forget it. But then also just the I don't know, maybe I'm in a unique position because I was there for the depositions of Daria and Alex. Yeah. So I had heard a lot of the content of the first few days. And so for me, it was kind of a there was a lot of a lot of some of that stuff was a little bit of a exhausting for me because I just didn't have anything new for my brain to attach to. Yeah, I think the one thing that I really noticed from the trial is that well, I'll say there's two

things like first off, that job opening concept that I really feel like Glenn and Matt just jumped in. I also feel like we just jumped into a job opening like there should be a media outlet that is that has us, you know, just two people who study one subject so thoroughly one. Yeah, one person. Oh, god damn it. Damn it. I got my ass beat on that one. Well, to be fair, I mean, the problem is that was a weird thing for you to say. It was a weird thing for me to say. But it was still a job opening. Maybe more newspapers need clouds. But the other thing is that when they were choosing a jury, the concept of you shouldn't know anything about Alex Jones or the Sandy Hook case to me is not a jury of your peers.

It just isn't like the only peers that Alex have are people who understand why Alex is never telling the truth or never lying. He just doesn't care. So whenever you get him caught out in a lie and you get caught out in a perjury situation, he doesn't even know. Yeah. And the other thing that was really exhausting I think about the trial too was the constant pretend game that the defense was playing where they pretended not to understand it was a damages hearing. Yeah. So infuriating. That to me was exhausting. Yeah. Here's why he's innocent. Yeah. And it was so I just felt also like a lot of emotional whiplash because it was this constant thing between like the clownishness and and constant chaos of Alex Jones world and the like

very real and present sense of tragedy that was there. And it was just back and forth between those two incredibly intense kind of emotional states for two week solid. Yeah. And that day that Tuesday where it was Neil and Scarlett in the morning and then Alex testifying after was just like that whiplash was too much to handle. Yeah. It was abusive. Like back and forth. I was like I can't I mean yeah we both we both went home and we're just done. You know. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's it's like it's like you know you all have been saying it's just the chaos and the clownishness. It's so easy to get wrapped up in it and I get wrapped up in it and then I find myself feeling awful because really at the end of the day it's about Scarlett

and Neil and just I don't know. Yeah. I feel I feel like that's such a great point and it's something that I feel privileged to have been able to like I did a few interviews with things and being able to like stress that has been really I think important like being able to have that voice. But the thing that kind of bums me out is when I have the reporters have seemed surprised a little bit. Yeah. You're the Alex Jones guy. Only talk about Alex Jones. Yeah. That kind of makes me a little bit sad. But I think a lot of a lot of forest for trees is going on. I won't name anybody's name. But we got an email from the from a t-shirt producer that was like I can see you're getting a lot of heat for this trial thing. Do you want to do a special on your shirts?

And I really just I just replied back like hey listen are you saying that we should profit off of the families of Sandy Hook. Is that what you're really trying to tell me right now because that's what you are telling me. I want to light you on fire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I've been grappling with that too because like like obviously I am I have absolutely you know I've seen a lot of the love that you know knowledge by listeners have been giving giving to me which is like so appreciated and really validating and affirming. But also it's like it's not it's not about me. It's not about you know any of the any of the people that you know are are surrounding this. It's about it's yeah it's about these parents and it's just so easy to forget that. Yeah it is. But I think

that one of the things that is great about our listeners is that I do think that they are appreciating you because of that. 100 percent. It is on behalf of the family. Yeah. Because it's it's you know you're a presence that is there helping highlight this this thing. Yep. No and I should be clear that's not a dig at your listeners at all. They've been incredible. This is about me and my discomfort with attention. Sure. You heard Jordan's response to a compliment earlier. Yeah. It's the same thing. So what about you like all in all what was your takeaway and experience of being there. And I apologize that we actually didn't even get a chance to meet in person due to schedules and obviously the whole thing was chaos. I also was specifically trying to lay low before I went on

the stand because yeah it was very funny. You didn't know this but actually at one point maybe you did know this but actually at one point I was sitting directly behind you while you were having a conversation with Mr. Zip about your upcoming testimony and I don't think either of you had any idea who I was. No. It's very funny. That's really funny to hear because I did know who you were. I thought you had no idea who I was. Oh no. You were also sitting behind her so easy to ignore someone behind you. No totally. I did. I did spot you guys a couple of times in the courtroom but like I think maybe on the first day were you there in person. Yeah. Yeah. Sweaty as hell. Sweaty as hell. Oh that's great. Yeah. Thank you for forgetting that. Thank you. That really

does make me good. I genuinely didn't see the sweat in person but I saw the memes about the sweat. Yes. Yes. Way better. Way better to hear it through the news. There was a part of me kind of felt like maybe you would be inappropriate to talk to you also because of like your status as a witness. I don't know the rules of those things. That's why I didn't speak to anybody. I tried to stay as snylin as possible. Technically as an expert witness I think it would have been fine but that was my approach too. It was just like I'm not going to go up and introduce myself to them until after I've testified but then we didn't get a chance to do that. But anyways yeah so that's funny that we all knew who all of us were. In terms of my reaction yeah it's like

it's really similar. Like I found it to be thrilling at times because it really does feel like this is the start of snowball of accountability hopefully. Yeah. And at times at other times I found myself feeling like it doesn't matter how much money ends up coming back to him because there's so much damage has already been done that can't be undone. And I don't know I just I find myself kind of yo-yo-ing between these like intense reactions. And then also I did find like you both have been commentating on that the dynamics of the the trial and the media around it and everything are fascinating in their own way. So there was like my direct emotional response to it and then there was also the like

academic response or in you know your case is the podcaster response of like what the fuck is going on? This is a phenomenon worthy of study and commentating on in itself right? Like the way that Alex Jones and his team are trying to abuse the justice system in the same way that they've abused the media system is fascinating. And succeeding and succeeding. I don't know if you had the same response that I kind of did but as I you know come home and I have a little bit more distance from it I realized that I felt a little bit of a dissonance and maybe even a little bit of a shame about the because I try to as much as possible despite my very impassioned speech at the beginning of the Greenwald episode I try to keep a sort of distance from the topics

that we cover in order to not just be you all like right and I don't mean that in a no no no I understand I understand. So it's it's it was really difficult to have this thing that I have a huge interest in having a sort of detached approach to whether you have this trial of the person that I've been studying and this is this is ridiculous but then at the same time the impossible to not have an emotional connection with experience of seeing Neil and Scarlett in the in the courtroom and testifying and and their therapist and yeah you know it's it that that conflict was was really difficult to live in. I'm not generally a fan of weeping in public but I mean I just there's no other way you know. Yeah and in fact I I completely agree and I struggle with that dissonance too

although I also don't think sometimes I think that the dissonance or pitting these things against each other they don't need to be pitted against each other that you can you can and this is maybe a little bit what I was trying to get across when I talked about confirmation bias that like to to be starting with the data and not having confirmation bias doesn't mean you can't have opinions or emotions about the things that you're studying it means that you start with the data and you let that inform your your thoughts and opinions but you still have those thoughts and opinions they're just informed by the data and and I also think that to study these issues in any kind of ethical way you need to approach it with humanity because otherwise you're just

going to get swept up in their propaganda you need to have that humanity there first and foremost and think about the people that are being harmed by this rhetoric and so no I think you should just write a lot about how the families want money and Alex Jones is very sorry for what he did and he admitted that he was wrong yeah I think that's a good way to do it. I say this also with someone who like in 2016 there was this wave of scholarship that started to come out about the alt right that just came from these people that were kind of like oh isn't it fascinating that 4chan has all these memes right and it wasn't really coming from it from a place of thinking about why does this matter and the minute that you start thinking about why does this matter

there's going to be emotions involved and so I think it's it's actually important to hold space for those and that doesn't have to be in contradiction to kind of approaching things from a from a fairer and and balanced and non-conformation bias perspective. Yeah I appreciate that point I think I think that's definitely right but it still it still can be difficult but I think you're totally right. I struggle with it all the time yeah. I think I think most people especially in America believe that expertise leads to bias you know like because you understand all this stuff you can't think about it objectively which is absurd. See that's interesting because I think that most people think that expertise leads you to be like sort of a cold dispassionate

like I mean in terms of like I don't know how many like professors in like classics or philosophy sure sure but a lot of them are pretty right. I mean I mean like the reaction to experts in well I mean like the reaction to Dr. Fauci you know like the reaction to these people Dr. Fausti? Yeah the evil Dr. Devil worshipping Fausti. Lock him up. But there is a bias against people who know things. Yeah yeah well I guess that's right right that's the thing you have like again when I was on the stand like oh you already like knew that Alex Jones was harmful when you got hired it's like yes that's how could I not? It is interesting that premise of like you had a position and then they hired you it's like do you want them to randomly hire somebody

who has no oh off the dome I'm gonna go and say uh Alex might be good or let's let's look at another unfortunate reality and that is that anybody who is probably sort of credentialed to be in the position you are in has a negative opinion of Alex. Exactly right right right exactly. There's a reason they didn't bring their own expert with a different opinion there were none. Nobody was like Alex Jones is really bringing the world to a better place. Except for maybe Steve Poccanic and there would be conflicts of interest there would be an issue there. Yeah I mean this is a this is a debate in social science too right you have people that try to say that you need to take this completely like you need to try to have this neutral approach that's a view from nowhere type

of thing and then you have people that are more like tend to be more ethnographers and and people doing qualitative research who say no like none of us can escape our own perspective it's about understanding how that perspective informs what you're doing and so it's like yes as as a woman a bi woman a bi Jewish woman like all of these things I'm very conscious of how that affects the way that I read hate speech online right and the way that I can't believe the far right really attacks you that's so crazy but on the flip side I'm a white woman right and so like I need to stay conscious of that when I'm reading anti-black racist content you know that like I'm not gonna fully understand the the pain that that brings to black people yeah of course and so I think

there are ways to understand like where we all are situated in the world that aren't it's not about confirmation bias it's about staying conscious to our own you know the the the very academic you word about it is positionality you know what's your position within the world and and how does that affect how you see things and I think you know yeah I'll stop going down that rabbit hole but yeah well I mean it is it is a little bit like the idea I saw a university of Chicago economic study about slavery that treated slavery as like purely an economic system and like was this a libertarian well I mean it's the University of Chicago economics department they tend to do stuff like yeah and it's like you can't I mean I feel like ethically that is just

a wrong thing to do the libertarian study on the economic impacts of feeding your child yeah absolutely it's like what are we talking about it turns out feeding your child is negatively beneficial the problem the problem is you care about your child and that's where this whole system has gone wrong because it's negative you have no positive obligations right your child what yeah I guess that's the the wrong side of it yeah well hey Becca we we should probably wrap this up before too long for a couple reasons first this has been a delight and I hope we can talk again soon but second I have the live stream up of the courtroom oh my god they're back there's movement in the corner the fuck out so the jury may have reached the punitive or they just have more questions

yeah that's possible that's possible too but uh I feel like we all have an interest in this yeah and uh we should probably thank you for that heads up absolutely thank you so much for having me on the show I can't stress enough how much of your podcast I listened to when I was prepping this case that's that's so uh great and uh a thrill to hear and and right back at you uh you know a lot of your your work and published pieces have been really important in terms of giving some context and and insights into a lot of this world so that is a compliment that we will take you listen to our show to apply Dan's life's work for good that's that's good stuff I'm glad that I can look at you as uh we can I feel like we can be peers yes exactly exactly um is there anything not a clown

college though I I dominate that space I wish I had a honk yes exactly is there is there anything you want to direct listeners to the place they can find you uh yeah sure you can go to uh if you're interested in reading my research you can go to my website which is beccalew.net um beccalew.net or you can go to my twitter which is beccalew and that's where I shitpost um and yeah awesome well thank you again for joining us thank you so much uh been just a treat and like I said I hope we can speak again soon and thank you for being a voice that centers the families too that's that's very very important yeah all right well we'll be back uh for another episode but until then Jordan uh we have a website we do have a website it's knowledgefight.com we're also on twitter we

are on twitter it's at knowledge underscore fight and uh uh oh Jordan's no okay well uh we'll be back but until then I'm neo I'm Leo I'm dzx Clark I hope you all have a wonderful dreamy creamy summer Andy and chanzas you're on the air thanks for holding so Alex I'm a first-time caller I'm a huge fan I love your work I love you