Shaun Newman Podcast - #955 - David Gosselin

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

David Gosselin is a Montreal-based poet, translator, linguist, and cultural critic best known for championing a return to classical aesthetics in contemporary art and literature. He is the founder and editor of The Chained Muse (an online journal of traditional poetry), New Lyre Magazine (a print quarterly featuring original classical-style verse and translations), and the New Lyre Podcast. Through his Substack Age of Muses, he publishes original poetry, essays on imagination and metaphor, translations of Romantic poets such as Friedrich Schiller, and in-depth cultural commentary that often critiques modernism, the 1960s counterculture, and the decline of genuine artistic standards. We discuss predictive programming, the entertainment industrial complex, and automatic vs reflective thinking. Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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Share with a friend. All right. Let's get on a tale of the tape. Today's guest is a Montreal-based poet, translator, linguist, and cultural critic. I'm talking about David Gosselin. So buckle up. Here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today, I'm joined by David Gosselin. David, thanks for hopping on. Thanks for having you. Sean, greetings from Montreal. Yes, from our enemy to the east, as they tell us, a fellow from Quebec. Home of the Golden Mile, I believe in Montreal.

Montreal, which at one time was the sort of financial capital for the British Empire in North America, right? It was pretty back in the day, back in the good old days. Well, David, first time you're on the podcast, tell the audience a bit about yourself. Okay, my name's David Gosselin. I mean, we're both, we're mutual friends with Matt Eric, Sean, and so I've been working with Matt for years since your audience may be familiar with him. So I have a arts and culture background. I publish stuff over at Age of Muses, which is our substack, where we do everything now from films to a print journal of arts and letters. And in recent years, you know, especially since the world got especially crazy in the pandemic age, I've been

doing a lot of research on how behavior is, is changed and engineered, applying insights from neurolinguistic programming and also behavioral science in general, but what they call nudging, that was the big thing that was used during the pandemic. And the governments continued to use that. We were just talking before in the interview that the community. that the Canadian government is looking to, is employing nudging in behavioral signs to shape policy.

And that's targeting everybody in ways that is very subtle. So that's where I cut my teeth. That was during the pandemic age, so it's been a while. And I've continued to apply these insights into the realm of culture as well, right? How does culture, how does film, how does entertainment shape the images inside our heads? how we think about the world,

and how does that shape how people behave, right, for better or worse? So that's in short. Well, I'm curious then to get your thoughts. I was telling you before we started, JCCF, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms in Canada, they released a new report titled Manufacturing Consent, Government Behavioral Engineering of Canadians. The report warns that the federal government has embedded behavioral science tactics in its operations in order to shape Canadians' belief, emotions, and behaviors

without transparency, debate, or consent. As a guy who sounds like he's delved deep into that topic, it doesn't, I guess, surprise me on this end. You know, we heard of the different nudge units happening not only here in Canada, but elsewhere. But now you've got an official report coming out about it. Your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, this is like, this,

This is a kind of 100-year plan in the making, actually. You know, we can really go back in history where this was the, this is kind of the brainchild of the real, higher-level social engineers like Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells. People may know H.G. Wells as like a sci-fi writer. But these guys were part of social circles and basically within the upper echelons of the oligarchy that were talking about. Ultimately, Bergen-Russle has the famous quote where he says, how do we get people to believe that snow is black?

And how much less would it cost to get them to believe that snow is gray? Right? And how do we perfect this science of engineering perception to a point where it can be deployed in every institution, every school, every governing body? And there's only going to be a small social engineering class, which actually knows, you know, how that magic works. So here we are, right?

This was really, it wasn't a pilot program. I think the pilot programs had been run for decades, whether it's with war propaganda and, you know, all sorts of different things. But with the pandemic, that's when it was really mainlined, and it was pretty effective, right? As I think a lot of people have seen in terms of the change in belief structure,

and worldview was just so radical that people were like, how is this, how is this possible, right? Like, my aunt wants me, like, in jail now and not at Christmas dinner because that's not my story, but that people have stories like that, right? So, yeah, now they're trying to apply to other things, basically, right? So the pandemic was a good, not test run, but it was a good experiment. And so how do you apply that to now getting people to accept deteriorating economic conditions, right?

We've heard it from Mark Carney, right? They're just saying, like, hey, the standard of living is going down, and that's just something that people are going to have to accept. Even the way they say it, right? Like, you'd think people would freak out a bit more, like, what does that even mean? Why? Why don't we change it?

So there's a lot of subtle nudging. And as they, as you described there in that little brief summary, it's about there's automatic systems and there's reflective systems for human decision making and nudging is all about targeting the automatic decision making processes without people needing to consent their reflective processes. So to give some examples here, which are quite interesting, there's one, for example, framing. So how you frame a problem has a, big effect on how people are going to react. So one of the Behavioral Insights team reports

gave the example of how many deaths will result from a policy versus how many lives will we save. And when officials were presented a problem or a policy in terms of how many lives it would save, there wasn't really much of a response. It doesn't have the same kind of visceral impact. When you're like, okay, we're going to save 10 boughs, in lives. It's like, sure, okay. But when you frame things in terms of death, how many people

are going to die, it becomes very visceral and it has a lot more impact because there's a fight or flight response. There's no fight or flight when you're thinking about how many lives are we going to save? That doesn't send people into a panic. So it's all about how you frame things, leveraging things like authority, right? Authority is technically a mental shortcut. Why do you go to the doctor if your stomach's really hurting for a long period of time? You haven't studied medicine for 10 years, right? You don't know all the ins and out. So if the doctor says, hey, you should try this or do that. It's a mental you're going to believe the doctor, right? So how do you leverage authority? How do you frame

things properly. There's a whole list of them. Losses loom larger than gains is a big one. So, I mean, again, if something bad could happen soon versus something better over the long term, you're going to emphasize the immediate dangers versus the kind of long-term trends. When you talk about automatic versus, sorry, reflective? Was that the two you mentioned? Yeah, that's how they frame it. Can you walk me through the automatic, just what you mean by that?

And then the same for reflective? Well, there are things that you're just going to do without thinking. Like, we have reflexes. If you're driving and a car suddenly just crazily, you know, merges into your lane and you have to swerve, your reflective systems are not kicking in. You're just swerve, right? Like your body, your muscle memory knows what to do.

And so what's interesting, once we get into that science, if you will, is that it's true that a lot of our lives are actually, we have unconscious systems that are working in the background that are doing a lot of the work. And I just think about, like, you know, we've got a lot of bike lanes here. I ride my bike all the time here in Montreal just to get from point A to point B. half the time you know you leave your house and you're halfway through your trip and you're like oh like how did i get here you know like you weren't paying attention the whole time to every meter and you know every kilometer that you were traveling you're just kind of in your travel mode so that's a form of trance uh you know people go into trances weather when they're they're working out right you're not thinking about everything you're just doing the thing so you can elicit these

automatic systems and these trans states, there's a whole science to it, right? You can scare people. If you start playing out climate disaster scenarios and people, especially from a young age, start to associate, you know, every time there's a forest fire, even though it was like some arson that started it, but the media blasts these pictures of forest fires. And people are like, wow like the world is really burning like humanity is is burning the planet that becomes visceral so these are not reflective systems that are at play here so would the automatic be really then influenced at a young age i i think of some of the things i as i get older that i have to wrestle with myself as new information comes in from interviews like my don't why does that bother me so much

Is that because the automatic is influenced a lot at a younger stage in life where you're told, you know, like take the climate for one, you know, like growing up, especially on the farm. I just don't remember, you know, were there things going on in the climate world? As I look back, they're like, oh, yeah, we're in freezing. It was this. It was that. Certainly there probably was some things in the media, but not like today. like today every second thing is about greenness the world is burning that we're in this stage we're in that stage we're going to die in five years if we don't correct our problems and if you're a young

person that would start to impact your automatic system am i right in thinking that yeah sure i there's also just general conditioning there like automatic systems are are things that you know happen like yes technically because they're just wired for it, so they're not thinking about it, but it's also can just be used for more kind of immediate and sudden changes that actually go against a person's beliefs as well, like that they just, they don't realize, you know, there's a lot of freedom loving, you know, uh, let's, for the pandemic, liberal people that believe in like liberal values, but then they, there was this sudden psychological spiritual shift, right? Because things were framed in a certain

way, right, protecting the weak and the innocent, right? That was one of the ideas for why you had to enforce totalitarian policies was to protect the elderly, right, to protect the helpless. So that triggered something in people's brains where it's like they're having to look out for the safety of, you know, the less able. But obvious, that's pretty nefarious, right? because we know that, I mean, old people, again, being locked up in the homes and stuff, that, and there's a lot of problems. We won't get into all of it, but just to say that you can switch people's thinking quite suddenly, you know, if you're framed.

Maybe I'm thinking of conditioning equating to the automatic system because, like, today's kids are being told an awful lot about how we're colonizers, how we've taken everything away from, and we're bad people. And as, you know, where I sat in my mid-30s when I first started hearing that statement over and over again, I really had to wrestle with that. I'm like, what is this, right? I didn't have a, I assume that's when you talked to reflective. I went and reflected on that an awful lot. I'm like, what? You know what? Sure.

Sorry, let me qualify that. Children don't have reflective systems. I guess that's what we're, that sort of solves the problem, right? Really? nature so they only have children are kind of in a hypnotic state 24-7 which is normal they're in a trend they're just receiving things right they're learning we're supposed to as children right where the whole idea is you expose them to good environments and good habits and these are things that they're just assimilating without discriminating right in terms of their using their discerning

faculties so that they just have these things built in so that as they grow up, you've already, you have good habits, right? You've already learned these things. There's an economy of learning, if you will. So, yeah, the problem is if people are exposed to imagery and the kind of things that impact young minds or impact us when we're learning and developing, then it means your reflective systems then later on in life

are going to have to go back and revisit all these things that came into you before you even had that capacity technically. So that's the problem. In your mind, then, when does reflective systems start to kick in? Like, how old do you have to be to where you can start to reflect on some of the things you inherently are being taught or seen or the images you're being shown, et cetera? well i mean i i'd say that the the real answer is it kind of depends right because we're all born with emotions and instincts right these things are built in for survival mechanisms as well

the reason right the discerning faculty and the reflective systems that's like that depends right increasingly in school they're they're still not really uh triggered you know people are are made to reproduce something on the test right they're made to reproduce what they've heard what is deemed good information based on like authoritative sources so these things don't really trigger your reflective systems and that's kind of the problem but i'd say i mean reflective systems i as of high school i think people should already be you know we should we can young people can really get into whether it's Shakespeare or science or, you know, Plato and Socrates and all the big ideas. Like young people are actually open to big ideas, but the approach

stifles that natural- How many kids are learning about Socrates, Aristotle, Shakespeare, any of those names that you just rattle off? How much of that is actually being taught in a school? I'm not saying it isn't. No, I know. But I can safely say I didn't learn about it. Aristotle and Socrates until I was well into college. Like I'd never, I'd never even heard, well, maybe never heard of those names is maybe a long shot, but certainly just in conversation passing. Like I don't think I ever learned anything about Socrates or Aristotle in particular. Shakespeare, sure, different people like Mark Twain and names like that. I can remember instances in high school being, having to read some

of that. Shakespeare, I would say, would be the one that I remember the most. But Aristotle and Socrates, I don't think those are even in a conversation today in school, are they? No, no, not really. And I was kind of referring to high school, because they do get brought in, let's say, in college or university, but in all the wrong ways. Like, for all the wrong, you, like, I mean, it's brainwashing. Like, people are not getting, they're not being exposed to these things or being made to go to the original sources and really kind of digest and reflect on the meaning they're being given like excerpts and you got a teacher who's in a system like there are a lot of degrees of conditioning and complexity that have gone into creating these spaces

and these institutions so yeah the distance between an authentic experience of the ideas and all the kind of narratives and explications that have been you know stuck in there it's a far cry from a classical education where people read original sources and try and really

figure out what's being said on their own yeah you know we're told like kids don't have the attention span for that anymore but it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy so yeah that's a problem reflective systems

are, these things have to be turned on, like, as human beings that have the capacity for reason. Capacity, I think, potential being an operative word here. Like, people can live their whole lives and never really turn these things on, right? And that doesn't mean there's anything, like, there's nothing wrong with these people per se, right? Like, we're not, we're not being exposed to important and big ideas. The ideas that, gave birth to Western civilization it's they're not really presented in any meaningful way today so people are just you know if you you have a job you got take care of your family right we all have responsibilities it's it's not

obvious wait with everything going on the world that or you turn on your reflective systems and you know what a couple years down the road you're you go down some rabbit hole and you're in like a Q&on or Scientology cult. So you can't actually blame some people, I would say for, you know, there's people who are like scared of conspiracy theories because obviously there are crazy conspiracy theories or there's people that think everything is a conspiracy. And then there's people who go to the opposite extreme and believe like there are no conspiracies. Like the world is just kind of this surface. What you see is what you get, right? world is really what we're told it is both are our extremes but then how do you discern what are

the real conspiracies from what are not right what are the fake ones that requires discernment that requires like there's a lot of work that's going to have to be done yeah effort is the word that comes to mind when when you say that david you know i'm thinking about my own journey and I wonder when you know you talk about this reflective system and for me and I think a lot of people certainly listen to the show there will be some that it probably had it on a long time before I ever did but the COVID the COVID time really kicked in I would assume you know to use the term reflective it really kicked it in on me because I had to wrestle with a lot of different things when you started interviewing people they were like this doesn't make any sense and then you had to sit

go stew on that. It's like, oh, man, is the world that bad? You know, and that was a very challenging time. I've talked about this a lot, you know, that here I am. I'm interviewing all these professors, doctors, lawyers, all pointing out how bad of a situation we're in. And then I go home and I go, is it really that bad? Can't be that bad. Right. And I had to wrestle with myself and it culminated i think in in a conversation where you know it's like what are you doing right well if i'm not going to listen to all these people that are coming in and and giving me new information what the heck is the podcast about if i'm not going to take some of what they're saying certainly you got to use the sermon but like if you're not going to take some of what they're saying

and what's going on and playing out in society then what are we doing miles just go back into the automatic. Go up to work, do your thing, come home, watch a hockey game, drink a beer. Now, you know, be involved in your community a little bit and just play out life like that. But for a lot of people, it was like, no, there is some, there is some difficult conversations going on right now because if we follow this track any further, we're all going to be locked into like, you know, the 15 minute city where if you don't have a certain injection, you're not going to be allowed to participate in society and on and on and on and on it goes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good.

point to it's important for people to play out like yeah some of these things are uncomfortable to get into but yeah just play that out like what does life actually look like in a 15-minute city where you can only sort of belong or really live if you have the right injections and like wearables or whatever it gets crazy right and when people start to think about that it's like well no like let me at least let me try and see what's going on but i think that's actually like collectively right in in our societies now that's where we encounter another problem where like you said the first reaction is for people is like is it really that bad and it's like do i really want to go down that rabbit hole because number one right i have responsibilities i have a family

take care, I have a job, and da-da-da, like, how immersed in this thing do I want to get? And I think that's where, like, it's important to, yeah, there's a pacing that's required. There's, we're in an information war. So it's easy, even if you are curious and you have all the right intentions, it's easy to start running into, there are all sorts of misinformation operations on all sides, right? on the right, on the left, like in the alt media scene, you know, it's probably 80% bought, right? They're bought people and their disinformation agents, most of the big ones.

And it's, you wouldn't think so at first or I didn't think so for many of them because they're saying 90% of what they say, or let's say 80% is true. Fine. But it's that 20% right, that limited hangout. that then sends you down ultimately the wrong direction, just with like an extra little fact that they've thrown in there or that something has been left out, right, whether about it's who they work with

or right, what they're associated with, what their background is, why they're saying what they're saying. So, yeah, we do have to have our thinking caps on. But I also, just to say, one of the key points in, psychological warfare is demoralization. Like, morale is key.

And that was one of the big factors at the Tavistock Institute, which pioneered a lot of the brainwashing mind control programs from out of Britain, and then Tavistocans came to the United States, and they're in Canada as well. John Rawlings-Rees,

he was a colonel, I believe, he made the point that winning wars is not about killing it's about destroying the enemy's morale while maintaining one's own now that's a big thing because if you think in terms of numbers the amount of people that know something is wrong in the world and like all agree on the basic problems that need to be changed it's overwhelming right compared to the people creating the problems but there's a morale question right like It's a big system and it's entrenched. So even though you have a lot of people

that are hungry for solutions and da-da-da, even if you give good information or ideas, if people are demoralized, they're like, yeah, sure, okay, but it's probably not going to work, right? People are corrupt, da-da-da-da-da. People are too dumb. And they just go into self-preservation mode, which is what the system really wants, right?

the more impoverished or scared people are for their future and their families, the more they'll just go into self-preservation. And they can do, right? The system can do very overt things, and people will, even though they know it's bad, they're going to tolerate it. So morale is important, and how people learn about the things we're talking about is also important because it could just get people, it'll get a lot of people to shut down, right? It'll get some, it'll get a lot of people to wake up, but then once they're woken up, what do they do?

Right? Do they just spiral because there's so much overwhelming information and it just leads to another kind of disassociation where at a certain point you don't know what's true? You know there's these bad things in the world, but you're consuming so much information that it's causing its own kind of confusion. So I think at the end of the day we got to talk about solutions You know as the proverb goes Where there is no vision The people perish

You know I was talking with Matt And like Alberta's had great Economic success There's a lot of optimism there Which I think you can see Is tied to the fact that people think Like there is progress Right there's an idea of progress

If you come here In Quebec Where there's a lot of lot more of the kind of environmentalism and this kind of feudal mentality and a bureaucratic system, there isn't that sense of progress or optimism. So it's a lot harder to talk about a vision and changing things. But basically, I think what Canada could have like 17 Alberta's right now. Like the amount of resources and economic potential in Canada is crazy. And this is where that's where we can kind of situate what the real imperial policies are,

which is the degrowth, Malthusian stuff, like only allow a little bit of growth. You know, maybe now they're talking about having like a high-speed rail in Canada, maybe building one or two more nuclear power plants, right? But you could technically have like a plan for, you know, 25 reactors, like three new, frontier cities, the amount of resource wealth that could be unlocked in the north, the amount of, you just build an entire new cities around these vast economic developments. So that's what's being left out, right? There's no vision and people get hit with all this overwhelming information, and it's a lot.

Your comment on morale, that seems to be sticking in my brain right now, because that's something I think a lot of people have been wrestling with. Forgive me. Could you say the quote of the general again on morale? Winning wars is not about killing. It's about destroying the enemy's morale while maintaining one's own. I'm reading, I'm going to bring this up a lot, I guess, but I've been reading a book by Jack White, a book series by I'm sorry, about the Romans and uh in britain specifically at the fall of of the roman empire and they get invaded and uh by like you know a crazy large force 100 000 and you know there's like in the one camp there's like i forget what the number is 1,200 romans and one of the things the uh the general or the leader of

that 1,200 force does it while they're being attacked is they destroy the morale of the the picks so they leave him along it's he's just like we're going to destroy their morale so they just go this isn't worth the fight and they're going to move on and i find it interesting you bring up morale because uh one of the things that i think Alberta specifically and probably the west you know I sit right on the border of Alberta Saskatchewan I think the west has but Alberta has it in spades is they have a lot of these discussions and they have seen in the past you know five years you know Premier Kenny wasn't doing what they wanted. Premier Smith, if she's not talking the right way,

they start harassing her and then force her to speak more boldly on things they want to see happen. And they see, I think, some progress, as you alluded to the difference between Alberta and Quebec. And, you know, if I tie that into a conversation I had with Karen Katowski, her talking about freedom isn't gained by the most downtrodden, the most totalitarian states it's gained by the freest states first i think uh morale is is something that's stuck in there because if you have the ability to talk to one another and and once again i'll

tie in your reflective uh systems use your reflective systems go do we want this like is this what we really want i think that allows you to build out a vision to see where you actually want to go uh and and the canadian government in particular seems to be doing everything opposite of that to try and pull that morale away. I don't know if you agree with that thought. Yeah, no, this is built in. I mean, the morale thing is big, and it's often, you know, it's a question of what important information is left out.

So that, let's just use the Canadian trucker example. I mean, that's probably the perfect example because it had such a huge effect on morale. At the end of the day, that was the scariest thing for the establishment, right, and the institutions. And even if, like, Canada was supposed to be, you know, we're all well-behaved, we're all nice, polite people. And, you know, Canada's never actually had a revolution, right? It didn't win its freedoms from the British Empire. They were granted to it. And they were granted as a means of keeping Canada within the sort of Commonwealth system and away from the kind of American revolutionary.

impulse. So Canada was given all sorts of goodies in order to kind of be comfy. You know, we got a railway, we got economic development. So just to say that the Canadian trucker thing, the fear was that, well, if that model starts getting reproduced, you know, in the United States, and they subverted it right, the United States, right, the FBI just infiltrates with like a bunch of plants, right? There's like, there's no way we're going to let that. happened there. So there was a fear. If it just, if one kind of thing, one kind of resistance, even if one battle is won and

people get a taste, right, that they can win, that they can actually be effective if they adopt a certain kind of outlook and approach, right? And the fact that like there was no violence, it was like, it was really peaceful mama bears and papa bears, you know, I had, we had gone to visit in Ottawa. like it was a love fest truly like everybody was just happy uh it's just the amount of like joy it was was ecstatic so that scared them because it it caught them off guard right like Ottawa they all of Ottawa was shut down it was pretty crazy to be on the ground just to see how the trucks were positioned like you know it would there was some real military kind of logistical

planning that went into it it was not it was done by people who knew what they were doing in terms of the plan. So that was that's an example I think where it's like oh so Canada can actually fight back right and like other countries saw that and are like hey we can we should resist too. That's what gets dangerous for for the empire and then what's important though is that when people start thinking in those terms you got to like be aware of what you know the intelligence agencies and stuff are capable of doing, right, to subvert these things. They have a lot of tools as well. So, like, it requires serious, like, that one caught them off by surprise, but, you know, are they going to get caught by surprise a second time? Probably not.

So, like, it's kind of, it should be an invitation for people to want to know how our system really works. How do the five eyes, right? Like, it's not the Canadian intelligence, security establishment is part of like a much bigger at the most powerful intelligence octopus in history right the five eyes I'm not sure if your your audience must have heard the name but the five eyes oh yeah for for sure the five eyes I'm not going to sit here and say I'm a wealth knowledge on it but I definitely know enough about it and you can explain it more if you if you'd like yeah I I think it'd be a benefit to the audience.

Well, that's the global, that's the global, intelligent sharing nexus that has, it's basically Commonwealth countries, so it's Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Netanyahu had recently made some, you know, remark that, you know, he said, you've heard the five eyes, right? He said, well, we are the sixth eye. So these eyes, just to say, that's the real, like, center of power, if you will, in terms of intelligence. It's not just the U.S. or the CIA or the FBI. And so Canada is one arm of that.

And the intelligence sharing for that, it's a, it's to, it serves as a global web, right? That's why, like, what's New Zealand? Like, who cares about New Zealand? They fill war to the reins. Okay, cool. Let's go look at the forests or something, the enchanted forests. But no, it's that they're just in all parts of the world, and it really is a kind of global web. So that's what people are facing off against, right?

Maybe it's better that they don't. Maybe it's better that the Canadian trucker movement didn't know exactly what it is, because it's truly, it's huge, right? It's massive. so but the recent successes or past successes should be an invitation to be like let's learn more about these things like what is Canada really because it's not the image that most of us have of this kind of fluffy nice whatever proud it's it's like it's way it's a weird system it's a Byzantine like the Privy Council and how Parliament works it's like it's a weird labyrinthine system and the intelligence institutions that sit atop of it,

it's super weird. It's crazy stuff. But that's what people are up against. You talked about solutions. You know, in your travels, your research, you're digging into these different things, did you stumble upon any solutions? Oh, for sure. I mean, solutions was the first thing that got me interested into these, all these matters years ago. I'm 34, going to be 35 in January. I got into this when I was 17, you know. So I don't really know anything else. I'm pretty weird that way.

It's like I didn't, I guess I was fortunate to not really go through the indoctrination system, which has its own, like, there are all sorts of drawbacks as well and like dangers when you kind of take this path that doesn't really have. have much guidance or anything. But just to say, so solutions were the first thing that I was kind of more interested in when I knew that things were not what we were told. You know, the world as it appears and as it is, like Plato's cave, is very different. You know, that was the jump-off point.

But truly, I mean, that's why I use the example of Alberta, when people have a sense of progress, there is economic development, you feel like your future can be better, right? That for the next generations, you know that you can give your children a future that is promising and that this thing can continue, right? That we're not in an entropic or closed system where things will just get worse,

which if you look around in the world or in a lot of other, even parts of Canada or in the United States, the assumption is things are just about they're just going to keep getting worse right and so when you have that people can't think about solutions and i say that because the solutions are simple when you have economic progress when you have development you have new discoveries being made right you have great art being made people are optimistic they are getting in touch with that deeper humanity right they're being acquainted with it and

that they have like living examples of it right we see like new uh you know whether it's a new bridge whether it's a new sort of power plant whether the new like the bearing straight tunnel right there's talks about connecting alaska and russia which would go down from alaska down to bc to the united states uh the there were plans for science cities in in canada in the in the 50s and 60s i believe it's forbisher bay or something there were the idea of like like frontier science cities that mimic basically the kind of terrain that you have on other planets, right? Whether it's Mars or the moon.

So it's like a jump-off point to developing a space economy, truly, right? And so what kind of power sources are you going to have to have, you know, how much energy are you going to need? We could easily, Canada actually has know-how when it comes to nuclear power. nuclear power cleanest, truly, of the power sources. And it's what we need if we're going to have a world with like 8 billion, 10 billion, 50 billion people. That's natural. If we're doing things right, that's what's going to happen. So that would totally change the game. You know, if energy prices, you know, are reduced tenfold because we've invested in higher energy density

sources and we're you know we have crash programs for fusion and stuff it's all exciting right and then you can actually just enjoy life because you have a sense that the work you're doing the sacrifices you're making are leading to something good right they're going to be worth it because the worst feeling is that you're working hard or making sacrifices that will amount to nothing because you live in a bubble and the system is imploding, right? Well, I think for a lot of people, myself included, it's hard not to stare at some of the things going on in this country and go, where are we heading?

You know, like the Couch and Tribe, the Fee Simple title out in BC, the MADE program across the country, the government budget that continues to erode the value of our dollar, the fact they're going to put 300,000 public servants, we can all chuckle about it going into the military, but what does that lead to? They're talking about a more finish-based model where we all men 18, you know, 60, 65,

now have mandatory minimum service. You know, you start going down these roads, and it's all the dark things that I'm not really interested in, right? And the things you're talking about are about building and trying to make society more prosperous. and what I see play out in our media and I think you mentioned movies is all the dystopian ways

we can have society in the next 50 years and it's like well I don't want that I don't know many human beings in Canada that do want that yeah and well I think that's what that's kind of a testament to the fact that there is a good and a potential regardless of

how bad or dark things seem, that people have this natural yearning and so much work. I mean, that's pretty much, that's the empire and the system's main job. That's what the entertainment industrial complex is all about, is to sort of silence that kind of yearning for something better and deeper. And just give people this kind of brave new world system where, yeah, you can have, like, you know, as many different flavors of whatever, jelly beans or whatnot, or, you know, 10,000 dystopian sci-fi zombie apocalypse things. And, you know, maybe you and your friends will have, like, some mock zombie apocalypse, you know, simulations. And you guys will have fun

pretending. But as long as you don't think about the future and, like, building up these things that will literally, that will change, how people think about the future, how they think about themselves. As long as you don't get people excited about that, where they're actually willing to, like, fight for it, get more educated, right? Like, people start like, hey, I really need to know how the world works and stuff. And they start encountering, you know, good sources of information and stuff. And, you know, they're getting more and more, they're sharing. You know, communities are kind of people are getting back together they're not just isolated and they're talking about real ideas that scares like i don't think people realize especially when it's in-person

stuff you know there there are all sorts of pockets of resistance when people get together it's a different dynamic than the online culture so these things are important right i think like that's when we're talking solutions having get-togethers yeah a solution is um keeping the morale high if you go back once again your generals uh that that thought is an important thought in order to win uh uh you know an information more the goal isn't to demoralize the audience then it's to actually um keep the morale high so that you can you know have a positive outlook on the life or on future and and i mean i don't know if there is there a weight demoralize the government or the five eyes or whatever level you want to go like is there an

actual way to demoralize them to where you can win oh that's actually that's a great question actually and actually there is and i i think people well this is where perception comes in people tend to think i did i allude to the system is kind of entrenched and big and powerful but at the same time that power rests on very shaky foundations, right? You can have like a giant castle, right? Just some giant crazy medieval Gothic castle

that looks huge and monumental. But, you know, if it's on just like a little you know, very frail peak that could collapse, if the foundations are not strong, that whole castle is going to fall into the sea, right?

If it's, you know, picture kind of gothic Edgar Allan Poe seen there where Castle falls into the sea. That's kind of what we do have, in a sense, the system. So yeah, it's old and it employs a lot of very established methods of control and governance. But I think a lot of the blackpilling, right, that's kind of the operative word here, that a lot of alternative media, whether intentionally or inadvertently, and I think there's both, people are getting blackpill you know all the time about how powerful the enemy is but you know there there's a saying the devil always overplays his hand and i do think we're seeing plenty of examples of that which again i mean we can

have a whole show on all the different strategies they've used what's failed what's worked but the truth is they try a lot of stuff that doesn't work but uh they're relentless so they're gonna they keep trying other things. And when they take an L, it's not really advertised. You know, the government took an L with the Canadian trucker protests, truly. But people haven't, I think some people saw it, but there's other, it's kind of been muted, right? And then obviously, well, the main, the mainstream muted it. Yeah. But if you were a Canadian citizen and had your head just even partially on your shoulders you watched society change in less than a month because of that group of people and what that group of people got you know chris and tamara in particular but others i hate to to not talk about all

the others that have faced the machine what they got for that was you know uh the longest trial mischief trial in canadian history they got 18 months of house arrest they got the book thrown at them they had legal bills coming out the wazoo on on and on. They want to take Chris's truck, right? Because, you know, it's a symbol. And you go, if you're a Canadian citizen, you watch that play out and you're like, that's what happens when you get organized. And they don't want you to get organized. And they want you to understand the cost of being organized is the people at the top of that will face the machine. And that could be, you know, they were, they were threatening eight years in prison. They had solitary

confinement. They had, you know, their name ran through the mud. But a Canadian citizen looks at Chris Barber and Tamara Leach. And once again, is it all Canadian citizens? No, I'm sure there's people out there that have been brainwashed that these people were insurrectionists and whatever other word they want to throw at him. But for most people that were on either side of COVID, when they started watching that, they're like, holy crap, this is, wow, almost proud to be a Canadian again. I think I am proud to be a Canadian. This is amazing. Oh, my goodness.

The government's going to change for us? Well, that was just people getting united. And all of a sudden, saying no more. Now, the cost of doing that, Chris and Tamara have paid that and then some. Yeah, and I think the follow through, though, should be that that was, that should only be the beginning, right? Like, from there, it's a question of just leveling up, right? It's not like trying to reproduce the same formula, or it's like it's to get more and more of a handle of, you know, how the enemy thinks. right what what the system really is it's just totally normal most canadians don't know how the

canadian system works it's a very shadowy system but more people but more people are learning yes exactly and i think the last report i i read was like um i forget what age group it was was it 18 to 35 forgive me folks uh most people are getting their information from not only shows like this but just they called it online influencers they're starting to get nobody's watching the mainstream anymore and i shouldn't say nobody because that that is a lie there's a lot of people that are still tuning in but that is a dying industry right well i mean and and there's probably some younger people as well but majority of people are starting to turn to other alternatives to try and figure out what the heck is going on you couldn't live through covid even if you went and got

everything and just like went along with everything then they just come out one day and it's all off and everybody can just walk around again eventually you just got to go wait a second that doesn't make any sense right that it doesn't make any sense now whether you follow through on that thought is a different story because that is an uncomfortable thought to go through and and on and on but there's a ton more Canadians trying to understand how the system works and the more conversations like this had happened they're going to go oh man you know like you've you've been involved in making documentaries correct yeah the the you mentioned the i forget how you put it the movie industry industrial complex or something like the entertainment industrial

complex thank you um you know i've been watching because i thought it was good wholesome entertainment i guess is the way my brain i went back and watched with my kids some of the movies i watched as a kid. I'm like, I chuckle about it because, I mean, I guess I don't chuckle. I'm surprised how every kid show that I bring up with them, almost all of them. I'm trying to think of one that I've watched where they have a happily married couple where a man and a woman with a child and the story plays out. And I'm sure there are. But of the ones I've shown my kids, it's almost always a divorce, almost always. Right. Or like, it's, like, it's. It's like, can we have a story with a happily married couple and they go out and do something?

No, it's always got to have this divorce in it and the conversations that go around that. I'm like, huh. So here I thought this was all like good, wholesome family entertainment. And for the most part it is. But they also have to interject the idea of divorce and the weird conversations that go on in those movies because of that. Yeah, I mean, you could go a lot further for sure. I mean, think of whether it's shows like Friends or Seinfeld. I mean, this is just one example, but yeah, the power of cinema and the silver screen.

Why do you bring up Friends in Seinfeld? Well, they're both. They're all single, right? They all, in Friends, like, they're just, it's kind of weird if you think, like, in real life, who's like that they're all just single people living in some apartment complex and they're all, like, nobody has a family nobody's married and they just all go in adventures and like sleep together at different times and that's like a big you know thing or in Seinfeld as well right it's so just I'm just saying it there's there you're right there is a lot of these kind of uh shows so I guess

I've never you know it's funny the reason I I question friends in Seinfeld is I think you know I'm you're turning 35 I guess next year I turn 40 well that's weird to say um uh haven't really given that much thought, but regardless, Friends and Seinfeld were the two big hits growing up, I think, right? Friends had an insane following, but Seinfeld was, you know, if you weren't a friend's guy, you were a Seinfeld guy, and if you weren't a Seinfeld guy, you were a friend's guy, essentially, right? Those were the two post-culture. I was a Seinfeld guy. I know, and that's why we're getting along, because I also was a Seinfeld guy. But when you think about it, you're not wrong, right they in Seinfeld in particular none of them i mean george gets kind of married doesn't he

and then that all falls through he kills his wife he portions her because he's cheap so right i mean like doesn't end well it doesn't it doesn't man Seinfeld had some great shows though i mean but when you think about it you know and you're trying to build out a healthy look of what society should be that involves a man and a woman getting married and having children yeah no yeah and so we can have like there are so many different examples and contexts for the the entertainment industrial complex in a world where this is where it's interesting because you know entertainment and culture is kind of the thing that it's like the middle world you know you have economics you have like

like, you know, how your society actually functions. But I don't know if you listen to Tim Dillon, but Tim Dillon was making the point that you used to have good culture, like good entertainment. It doesn't mean it was good for your soul or like it was educating people in a meaningful way. But like, you know, top gun, sure, good movie, like, well made. Yeah, is it nothing like what either what a military, what life in the military is really like right it's just this glorified stuff but there are good movies

people had things that they could be entertained by and you know we were there was economic prosperity right so you could be distracted and you could you didn't really need to think about the fact that free trade was this big scheme right that was gutting the whole physical economy and the industrial and productive base of nations and looting third world country You don't really need to think about that, right? Things were good, you had good entertainment, you were distracted, but now the difference is that, well, economically, people have a sense that things are getting increasingly dire, and the entertainment sucks, right? And the only really interesting entertainment is kind of the dark stuff, right? If you look at the darker shows and sci-fi, they're much more, they're complex.

there's more depth actually when you talk to the darker shows in sci-fi which ones are you I'm curious you know as an entertainment junkie on this side I guess I'm starting to realize how many movies and shows and novels and everything else that I've consumed over my lifetime when you're talking dark sci-fi shows

do you have a specific one you're thinking of well the one example I'd give that like I actually went and bought the book after because I wanted to know more because there was two more parts. It's called Annihilation. So it's part of the, it's called the Southern Trilogy. And it's a recently new, it was a recently new book.

And Annihilation is about basically, I mean, it's a crazy story. It's fascinating. But there's basically this, this region that, like, there's a radius that keeps expanding where everything within that radius is, like, everything,

everything is morphing, that life is like cross-breeding, and it's kind of like an alien, it's an alien kind of vibe, like what's, how is this all changing? Anybody who goes in, all the teams that try to explore, like, what's the source of this thing that's changing the biosphere? And it's just, it's mimicking, the plants are mimicking, the alligators are cross-breeding with the deer or whatnot. like everything is it's weird uh and so they're trying to figure out like what is this thing and it keeps growing so it's just expanding and expanding uh and all the teams that go in never come back and so this is like the 13th team and obviously you have profiles of like the different people like why would they even do this and you know there's a whole reveal with that but basically it's it's an alien it's like a dark alien force that has learned to mimic everything

including humans. So it's able to perfectly mimic and reproduce you. But it has to like, I don't want to give too much away. But it all starts with spores. And once it like it's spores get inside you, you're talking that the, I haven't read the book, but then the film annihilation is Natalie Portman, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that that one's a fascinating one. Matt and Cynthia had been recommending a few interesting ones. I like trance. That was a cool film. It's got like hypnosis, false memories and like kind of a lot of MK Ultra themes.

That was like a 2014 movie. And it's about stealing a Rembrandt and like how the people are brought into this heist thing. And yeah, it's quite interesting. So just to say that a lot of the entertainment, right, like entertainment back and the day in, and I mean ancient Greece, classical Greek theater, tragedy, that was a nation-building institution. That's where people could see played out on the stage the loftiest themes, right? And tragedy was all about, you want to see what stupid looks like. You want to see what, you know, do you really want to be that guy on the stage when you see everything that he's kind of going through

and how he thinks and the terrible outcomes, right? If you, with Greek tragedy, the idea is rather than people play these things out in real life, they see it played out on the stage. And they want nothing to do with it. Exactly. And comedy, good comedy, which was the flip side, was the mirror image of tragedy for the ancient Greeks, was kind of the opposite where you laugh at the folly, right, instead of, you know, committing it yourself right you see you're like oh yeah i'm stupid like i kind of think like that too

but then you don't actually do the thing like you laughed instead so these things are very powerful and you don't have that really today like it's like to find a good tragedy today is is the rarest thing it's usually just existential and dark what was the best if if you don't mind uh crossing into movies and tv shows and everything what would you say was the best movie you've watched in I don't know since 2020 in the last five years do you have one where you're like actually this was pretty good well the funny thing is I was never actually really a big movie guy and I've just gotten more into it as I was thinking more about making films like as somebody who was into poetry and literature poetry is the primordial image making poetry the word comes from

the Greek poesis which is making so the poets of ancient Greece were the divine image makers, they were, they were the Hollywood of that day. And so much of the Greek psyche and world outlook was shaped by the images that the poets made, that those were the images inside the heads of everyone about the gods, the genealogies, the histories. So just to say I approached film from kind of that standpoint, or like, that's how I got into it pretty fast. I just watched. Actually, Matt, Cynthia and I, we had watched Jacob's Ladder for the first time. You ever seen that one from the 90s? Oh, that's a good one. One of the things I've been doing is, because I, I, you know, like, I didn't realize how much I enjoy a good movie. I enjoy a good

movie. And now where I said, I have a different set of eyes on when I walk into a movie. I'm like, oh, man, like that is just garbage, right? So one of the things I've done is, you know, on IMDB, they have the 100 greatest movies of all time, right, voted by people. I'm like, interesting. And so, you know, one of the ones that I found over the, you know, course of the last year was a godfather. And I'd watched it as a younger man. I thought it was boring, you know, just like, man alive. It takes three hours to get to, you know, in my mind back that I assume was the entertainment.

And then I went and watched it again. I'm like, I should watch that again. Like, chances are, as an older guy, I'm going to see different things. And it's a three-hour movie that I feel like has its foot on the gas from start to stop is one of the most well-written. The characters developed and are just well done. And I think it really takes some themes, you know, of proverbs of all things and puts it into a movie. Now, it plays out in a mob style show where they,

they do a lot of different things that most of us would probably be like, you're never going to do that. But the character development, the writing, the dialogue, just a whole bunch of it had me engaged from start to finish. And, you know, there's a reason why it's in the top 10 as voted by the public as one of the greatest films all the time. It makes complete sense to me. You watch it and you're like, the character development, the writing,

what they do, when they do it, how they do it, how human beings interact. I mean, it's, it's a phenomenal piece of work, and it was done in the 70s. Yeah, yeah, and I mean, yeah, the real good ones actually sort of present the real depth and complexity, right? And it's not so black and white, right? Like, just like real life. So, yeah, that's always edifying. And obviously there's so much potential, though. Like, there's certain kinds of good entertainment that were allowed, you could say.

But again, that Hollywood is, is. a concentrated and small industry in terms of like the power structures right it's it's you know at the top it's it's a very small crowd so you know they could always sanction films that they didn't like or that they thought were a bit too uh revealing for for certain issues right like i remember oliver stone talking about henry kissinger was on like the board of mgm sort of like uh stepping in to like block a few things or at least some decisions on like how the movie you know what it was going to portray like the pentagon has liaisons right for the entertainment industry that they give notes there's there's actually there's a whole book on

this uh so they have ways right the military also lends out uh or whether it's advisors for for films or equipment facilities so if you don't listen if you don't you don't you know take into consideration their notes, you're just cut off, and you might have all sorts of other problems. So, yeah, films, there are mechanisms for making sure certain things didn't get into films. If you're a really good artist or filmmaker and you were clever enough, right, Oliver Stone, like, you're able to sneak some things in and whisper through art, if you will, give people hints. So that's always interesting, right, to look for the hints. But again, it's few and far between in terms of what it could be. So that's what I'm kind of... With, sorry, with the... I just want to make sure my

battery doesn't keep talking. Well, we're good. Yeah. I was going to say the whispers are interesting because I see them more and more. The more I start to look at film with, I guess, where I sit today, I see the whispers more and more, where they're just sliding things in, just sliding things in. And one of the things I'm going to be very curious is, you know, like they're talking about AI being able to recreate movies, you know, is it in the next 10 years? I don't know. But if that is true, that would mean there will be a new set of powers that be that

monitor that but there should be more holes in the game to put out things that don't have the oversight of what you're talking about where no no you're not going to put that in that film you're not going to say those things in that in that film and there might be ways to do things that normally would go through Hollywood that won't have to yeah no i i'm optimistic hey that's why i started now i'm like really uh going hard into the filmmaking stuff and it's like obviously a full-fledged film that's kind of one of the like the barrier to entry is so high that's one of the industries that like to do it independently it's still one of the hardest things right because you just need so much funding for a film right where you're

renting out so that's like but you can make documentaries you can make a lot of cool things but yes with AI increasingly it's like well hey i've been i've been using the tools in our films in terms of just having good footage of things that you need that would be hard to get or you're going to have to pay like whatever, $1,000 for one image from Getty, right? Because it's just, it's so expensive, right, to just get good content and good footage unless you own it yourself and you've gone out and captured it all. It's such a headache. So with AI, you can make really good stuff.

Like, it's not making any creative decisions for me. like I already have the vision. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. So, yeah, I do think that in that way, more and more there is potential for, you know, you can have very deep and well done films that don't require. $20 million. Yeah, like, you don't require to burn $300 million for the Joker or whatever. And it's like a tap dancing psychopath. And that's, there's no plot, right?

Like, it's just that. It's just a mentally ill person. If I look at what this realm is now, right? From where podcasts began, you know, was it 2005, 2006? Was it, you know, like, do they have their origin in long form radio, wherever you want to start that, folks, to 2025, podcasts or live shows like this have jumped in the six years I've been doing. it to crazy heights and I go what's another five years of this what's the technology

going to look like it's going to be it's going to be pretty crazy and when you look at the film industry I would say and the reason I bring a podcast is what was the barrier entry back in the 80s you need to have a radio station I don't know you know you need to have a signal to put out and as time goes on you know they're going to try and make the barrier to get in harder and harder right canada the government with all these different bills uh trying to maybe censor the internet right is going to be interesting to watch but the barrier to entry now is so level so low like to anyone want to start a podcast literally you could do it tomorrow and it probably cost you 50 bucks i don't even know if it costs that much and yet the to create a film the the barrier entry is way higher

and i see that barrier to entry falling year over year it's going to get less and less and less and I don't know if it ever gets to where it's like this but at the same time it'll be closer to this than to having to spend $300 million to have a tapping tap dancing Joker yeah no and there's uh I mean there's a lot of interesting stuff out there in terms they're talking about independent Hollywood and Hollywood is kind of dead by the way right like that's the other thing

the traditional Hollywood is not the movies that they put out or like most of it is junk and a lot of the awards are being run by the streaming services, whether it's like Amazon or Apple or Netflix, but even just distribution, because I was doing some extra work, you know, you're just on film sets and whatnot background. I was like on the Jackie Chan film, the karate kit, so I saw Jackie Chan and all that was pretty funny. But just to say, like now you, one of the kids that I was talking to, you meet interesting you know they're film students they're into like their creatives and stuff uh he's saying also it's about the distribution of films is now changing like you want to see more of like whatever a 34

studio movies or more of this film and they're like it's things are being are spreading in different ways it's not just like oh is is like Nicole kidman in it or not like people are more as well going to films he was remarking because they want to learn something right so it's increasingly like you want it you want to educate yourself and films documentaries are seen as a way to do that so it's not just about passive entertainment anymore so there are interesting shifts and people are more interested they were saying in aesthetics in terms of like what is the style of your film how is it done it's not just is it like realistic, you know, realism was like a big thing. Like, is that how I would talk to my wife or da-da-da? But if you look at like, uh, Dune, these kind of like epic, kind of more surreal and

fantasy, that gives you a lot of space to introduce all sorts of interesting and epic or lofty ideas and the aesthetics of it becomes very important. Like how, you know, I didn't even see the news, Dune, but I saw like clips and stuff. And like, you know, They create their own soundscapes and, like, music, because these are, like, foreign worlds and stuff. So there's a lot of creativity. All that stuff is very interesting. And so, yeah, I'm an optimist. That's kind of, I'm perennial optimist in terms of there's a lot of potential for creativity, for art, for culture.

But a lot of it is decentralized now. And versus, and it's the other extreme. You know, we have so much stuff out there, right? There are so many podcasts, and that's why I think it's important to do something different with our films and our documentaries, right? I just made one with Matt and Cynthia's Rising Tide Foundation on Edgar Allan Poe. That's a true crime, which is something that people are true crime podcasts. I mean, people just go, some of the biggest podcasts. So we made a true crime film about the untold double murder of Edgar Allen Poe, first and

body then spirit and yeah so that I think that's a good example of you know people are interested they could find that that film on any of our substacks Matt Cynthia's eyes rising Thai foundation we can do a lot of stuff we just have to have a vision right where there is no vision the people perish yeah David appreciate you

give me some time day and hop it on if people you mentioned the film but if they were trying to find some of your work where can you point them to? So just go to age of muses dot substack.com so that's my main thing

and that's where people can find I have books, I have magazines now we have the films, articles, I do translations. So yeah, age of muses on substack and from there you can go down a couple of rabbit holes. Appreciate you hopping on

David in doing this. Very nice meeting you. But thanks again. Great to meet you, man. Thanks.