The Blindboy Podcast - Dumb Blubber Pandy

Episode Date: December 12, 2018

A look at Edward Bernays, the originator of propaganda and advertising Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, and welcome to the Blind Buy podcast. You gorgeous, delicious boys and girls. I'd like to start today's podcast with a short piece of prose that was written by Hollywood actor Vincent Kartheiser. My favourite breakfast is a single peach, with a generous helping of Philadelphia cream cheese. I like the way it looks like a round-faced man who has a long white beard. I often leave it lie dormant on my plate for up to an hour,

staring at the bearded peach man on my breakfast saucer. I tell him my secrets about myself. I tell him about the hit and run. Then I devour him. Sometimes, if there's no Philadelphia cream cheese, I rub moisturizer on the peach because it looks like cream cheese.

I pinch my nose, eat it, and imagine the taste. It makes me feel unwell for the rest of the day. That was a short piece of prose called My Breakfast by Vincent Kartheiser. Who you might know from Mad Men. He played the role of Pete Campbell in Mad Men. And yeah, what's interesting about Vincent Kartheiser

Pete Campbell the character if you know Mad Men is a total prick but Vincent Kartheiser himself is he's a minimalist or is that the word he doesn't own any possessions I think he lives in a box and refuses to own any possessions I think he lives in a box and refuses to own any possessions

so thanks very much to Vincent Kartheiser for sending in that piece of poetry about his morning ritual with peaches and cheese I don't know if you can notice a slight difference in sound I'm not in my studio

I'm in the west end of London, in a fancy hotel, because I'm over here with the BBC, making my TV show, so I'm writing all week, haven't started filming yet, so yeah, I'm in a hotel, which is a little bit, I should be in an apartment, but there's not really any appropriate apartments around London at Christmas because the place is fucking packed. So I'm going a little bit Howard Hughes here in the hotel. Like, staying in a hotel for a prolonged period of time is... It robs you of autonomy.

Do you know? I can't cook any food. I can make cups of tea out of the kettle thank God there was no fridge in the room so I had to I asked them for a fridge they wouldn't give it to me

so then I had to pretend that my vape fluid do you know the fluid that I put into my vape for smoking I had to go to the concierge and pretend that my vape fluid, you know, the fluid that I put into my vape for smoking, I had to go to the concierge and pretend that my vape fluid was medicine and that this medicine needed to be refrigerated.

So they provided me with a fridge then. They knew I was talking out of my arse. But, I don't know, the challenge of holding clearly a bottle that says vape fluid into a man's face and presenting it to him as medicine. It was such a strange move that I don't think he wanted to argue with me. And he just said, OK, I'll have a mini fridge arranged to be sent up to the room.

Because they have to do that, you see. If there's no fridge in the room and you've got medicine that needs to be refrigerated they have to give you a fucking mini fridge that's what i've learned from years of touring so blind by one london hotel nil so yeah it's driving me a bit mad sound isn't too bad though. It's well carpeted. Although is there a slight echo? I probably shouldn't have gone quiet while listening for the fucking echo. Because it does require some. It requires an input in order to jump back.

So that was quite pointless. I don't have a proper mic stand. I brought my good mic over with me to London and I'm holding it in my hand and resting it on a pillow that's on my lap so there's a good chance that you are a new listener because I was on Russell Brand's

Under the Skin podcast this week. Russell Brand had me on as a guest, and I plugged the fuck out of this podcast on Russell Brand's podcast. So if you are a new listener to this podcast, alright, if you're a yank, if you're one of those yanks that follows Russell Brand, or a Brit, do yourself a favor don't listen to this episode go back to the very start start from the beginning okay because i don't know what the quality of this episode is going to be like because i'm recording it in a

hotel uh with my mini fridge full of vape fluid well no I have milk in there that's why I needed the mini fridge the one when you're staying in a hotel you need to try and ground yourself in some way within your regular routine so as I've mentioned before in this podcast I have a rather large mug that is uh I keep dirty full of tannin brown tannin on the inside because it enhances the flavour of my tea. So I have my limerick mug with me and I need to be able to make cups of tea. In order for that to occur properly I need access to fresh milk. I've had situations before where I've stayed in hotels for a prolonged period of time. Yeah, at the time of Horse Outside in 2010 I lived in one hotel room for three weeks up in dublin and it was very surreal and one of the issues i had was that i needed to

be drinking tea because i'm a fan a fan a fan of tea but there was no fridge in the room and when you have bottles of milk without a fridge they'll go off in a fucking in half a day they'll start to curdle you know so what i was what was the name of the hotel it was the O'Callaghan hotel in Dublin so there was no fridge and i didn't know the medicine strike so i was getting the bottles of milk and tying bits of twine to them and then i was i was hanging them out of the window of the hotel so i had all these bottles of milk just like hanging off the window and then I was hanging them out of the window of the hotel. So I had all these bottles of milk just like hanging off the window and then the management got a load of complaints about my milk bottle hanging which nearly resulted in me being kicked out

of the hotel. I was also washing my jocks in the sink and drying them out in the hallway on a radiator. So that's why I have the mini fridge so i don't have to incur the embarrassment of hanging milk bottles out the window of a fucking fancy hotel in the west end i'm rambling so anyway yeah if you came here from russell brown's podcast go back to the start you shower of cunts um So anyway, yeah, if you came here from Russell Brand's podcast, go back to the start. You shout of cans. What else? Yes. I made a series, well, myself and Mr. Crone made a series of documentaries for RTE about a year ago.

We made the Rubber Bandit's Guide to 1916, which is an hour-long documentary about the 1916 Rising. And we made four other documentaries. And we were kind of, we made them for RTE, you know. And I'm always complaining about RTE. But we put our heart and soul into these documentaries.

I'm very, very happy with them. RTE put them out at shit times. into these documentaries I'm very very happy with them RTE put them out at shit times so nobody actually saw them you know so like the 1916 documentary do you know when they played that at 11 p.m on New Year's Eve who the fuck is watching television at 11 p.m on New Year's Eve so they deliberately put the 1916 documentary out at a very strange time because they were afraid that it was too risky it's not risky

at all it's a fairly solid documentary on 1916 it's just a bit silly and then when we made the four documentaries, we made four documentaries one about sex one about economics uh one about the internet and one about reality they put those out at a time as well so nobody saw them i think like something like 6 000 people saw it which is nothing considering there's a million listeners to this podcast. So anyway, the good news is,

I managed to shame RTE into uploading all of the documentaries onto the brand new RTE player. They're after relaunching and rebranding their player, because the first one was awful. The fucking, it was scripted in a home. But the new player is out, and it's not too bad. It's got kind of a Netflix interface so if you want to see

the documentaries that we made go to the new RTE player you'll either have it as an app on your smart television or get it on the fucking laptop or on your phone on the app and type in Rubber Bandits Guides

and if that doesn't work because I'm over in England and I was trying to get it over in England but obviously I can't because you can't see the fucking RTE player in England

but when I typed in rubber bandits guide into the new player it didn't come up what I had to do instead was go into the comedy section and then when I was in the comedy section

I found the rubber bandits guides but give them a squint um if you enjoy this podcast you will absolutely love those documentaries because they're full of hot takes like all the hot takes that I do for this podcast with the documentaries it's like I'd have the same hot takes but i'd have the resources and the budget and the time to turn those hot takes into like fucking scripted comedy into proper ideas um i'm happy with all of them there's none of them that i'm not happy with but my favorite one is the rubber bandits guide to reality that's not only my favorite one if i had to like say what what is what piece of television have i ever made that i myself am most happy with

and most proud of it would be the guide to reality it's now we called it reality because what it is is basically it's a guide to philosophy it's like a mini history of philosophy a little bit we had to call it reality because RTE wanted a title that was more accessible they felt that I think we had to pitch it to them as being about

reality television that was it and only then would they commission it so by telling them it was about reality TV, they were like, oh, brilliant, people will like that. But it's actually about philosophy. But, yeah, I just, I'm really, really happy with that episode because it's got some of the maddest, most bizarre ideas,

kind of plot lines in it that I'm very happy with and just it's just talking about philosophy you know there's stuff in there about philosophy

I'm very very happy with that episode I'd have loved if it was an hour long it's one of those things you'd have to watch it two or three times because we'd have to

cram so much information into it but that's my that's my favourite one but give him a crack, give him a look I'm the RTE player was there any other pertinent information I had to tell you before I get on to the the subject of this podcast

I think I'm talking in a a slightly more gentle fashion this week. It's because I'm in a hotel and it's late at night and I'm just a little bit conscious of waking people up around me. Although, this is a, yeah, it's a fancy hotel. It's one of those London hotels where businessmen get escorts because above my bed is this gigantic mirror and then as well the table that's in here is also a mirror so that's just for uh

business executives from Hull so they can get themselves a Russian escort and then do cocaine off the table while watching themselves. Sweat. And have sex with an escort who doesn't want to have sex with them. So it's one of those hotels. So I'm guessing the. The walls are probably pretty thick. If that's the type of carry on that happens in here.

But nonetheless. I'm more comfortable with a. A gentle whisper. Rather than a. A shout. I'm recording this whole thing. with a gentle whisper rather than a shout. I'm recording this whole thing on a new laptop, new software, so I'm a little bit anxious about that. I'm monitoring the screen closely

in case it gives me any fucking surprises or God forbid doesn't actually record when I think it does you know but I got a new Mac a new MacBook because the one I was using was from like 2012 and it was dying it dying on its last legs and like I normally record the podcast on my studio computer at home which is a pc and it's nice and powerful but because i'm on the road i've got the mac with me and there's no fucking way i'm going through the hell of trying to record a podcast on the old mac because it was too slow it would have crashed

it would have gotten hot it would have been would have made a lot of noise would have been so loud that you'd have heard it so i've got a brand new Mac Macbook Pro thank you to the lads inside Comp UB and Limerick actually who were very helpful in helping me pick one out and I'm using FL Studio now that's

FL Studio is a piece of software that I've been using since about 2004 when it used to be called Fruity Loops and that's what i produce all my music on some people don't like the software they think it's like a tie it's not serious music software but that's just harsh shit the best music software for a producer is whatever works for you do you know there's no such thing as one software being better than the other, it's the person's ear at the end of the day. But I'm using the first version of FL Studio that is available for the Mac computer and it's slightly different so I'm shitting my

pants slightly that that's going to bite me in the bollocks. So far so good. so last week's podcast was about ethics I suppose it was about the ethics of capitalism and consumerism and about how the resources of the first world

are kind of stolen from the second and third world if we are to use those terms so this week I've got a bit of a hot take this week it's going to be a hot take podcast and what I want to talk about is bananas I want to talk about how

the bananas are possibly the most evil fruit to ever to ever exist right that's a bit of a roaster of a take that's a very strong statement but I'm going to qualify it

I think I've spoken I've spoken briefly about bananas before I've definitely mentioned something about him. But it's more than Bananas that I'm talking about this week. I want to start off with a fella called Edward Bernays. And Edward Bernays, he the born about 1901 I think I'm probably off but about that time

and Edward Bernays invented we'll say what we would call modern advertising okay lots of stuff he's he's a genius he's not only a genius he's one of the most influential people of the 20th century,

okay, in terms of what has shaped contemporary culture and contemporary consumerism, Edward Bernays is one of the most important people, that doesn't necessarily mean he's a good person, one of the most important people. That doesn't necessarily mean he's a good person. You can be important without, you know, having created objectively bad things. And that's kind of what he's done because Edward Bernays created the modern culture of advertising

and consumer capitalism. How he kind of did it is first off you can't mention Edward Bernays without mentioning his uncle Edward Bernays' uncle was Sigmund Freud

who I've mentioned many times Sigmund Freud quote unquote is the father of modern psychology now as I've mentioned many times Sigmund Freud quote on quote is the father of modern psychology now as I've said before you know 99% no 98% of what

Sigmund Freud brought to psychology is now considered harsh shit you know most of his work is not helpful, it's kind of sexist. People don't take Freud very seriously, 98% of his work. But 2% of Freud's work is probably the most, it's the cornerstone of modern psychology. And the main thing that Freud did that was so groundbreaking, he wasn't the first, but he was the first one to properly posit

that human behavior is controlled by what we call the unconscious mind. Human behaviour is controlled by what we call the unconscious mind. That we as humans, we have our conscious mind, which is the shit that we're aware of right now. But our behaviour and our lives are controlled by this deep well in our minds called the unconscious, which we are not aware of. It is deeply hidden from our conscious awareness and it's influenced by our childhood and all our fears are in there all our desires are in there the unconscious is a very irrational violent sexual place and you know when this irrational sexual violence bubbles up it's kind of the job of our conscious to hammer it into a socially acceptable format so that's what Sigmund Freud achieved in the earlier podcasts I go into Freud in depth and I go into the model of the unconscious mind and the subconscious and I mix it in with

young I do that in depth so I won't go into that again but Freud's nephew like Freud was an Austrian I believe his nephew Edward Bernays was a yank and Edward Bernays started off in advertising and PR at the start of the century and what he brought to advertising were his uncle Freud's ideas, but whereas Freud was using psychology as a way to help people, to help people's mental health issues, depression, anxiety, Bernays in the highly capitalist early America, saw Freud's work as an opportunity to control and exploit. And this is what he did. Bernays realised that in order to, like, think of it this way, at the end of the industrial revolution okay late victorian right we're getting into the start of the 20th century society and consumerism reached a point where more stuff was

more products were being created than we could actually consume so when you went to the shop in 1901 or 1902 and you wanted to buy something like soap you were overwhelmed with choice there was no longer just one type of soap there was seven or eight now this sense of kind of multiple choice when it comes to products creates in the consumer a sense of anxiety a sense of anxiety that we're not aware of of which one will i get and bernays figured out that the successful product is the one that can alleviate and kind of relieve this sense of consumer anxiety this new sense of consumer anxiety, this new sense of consumer anxiety. So what Bernays figured was

the only way to sell people products in a hugely oversaturated market was to stop selling people the actual product and instead sell them something differently. Right? So in 1860, primitive advertising for soap And instead sell them something differently. Right. So. In 1860. Primitive advertising for soap.

Would simply tell you. How clean it got you. Look at this bar of soap. It'll get you mad clean. Buy it. That was fine. But all of a sudden now there's. You know 20 different types of soaps.

They all do the same thing. They all get you clean. They can change the smell or whatever. So Bernays figured. By exploiting Freud's ideas of. You know the unconscious and self esteem. And all of this. The way to sell people shit. You don't sell them the product.

You instead. Try and sell them a better version of themselves. So now you had people going people being sold soap not because it got them clean but because of the ideas and values that the soap espoused this is still the case you know dove soap dove right now is all about body positivity you know dove originally marketed as a beauty soap if you look at Dove's campaigns it's about

the body positivity movement it's different female models of different shapes and sizes so what Dove is trying to do to set itself apart from other traditional beauty products which we now recognise as enforcing kind of toxic ideas about body image,

Dove is now going, we're the soap for everyone's body shape. If you buy this soap, it's no longer to appease your vanity, but rather, buying Dove soap will bring you closer to a sense of self-acceptance. In our saturated society of advertising, where every product is telling you to be skinny, if you buy Dove, you can achieve self-acceptance. That's where we are right now in 2018.

That all starts with Edward Bernays. To give an idea of what Bernays... The concept of eating... bacon and eggs for breakfast right Edward Bernays invented that the pork industry came to Bernays in like the 1920s

and were like we need to sell more pork Edward can you do this for us so Edward figured he wrote to something like 200 doctors and sent the doctors a question and the question was really simple do you think it's better for people to have a sparse breakfast or kind of a hearty breakfast and all the doctors wrote back we think people should have a hearty breakfast. So Edward Bernays pitched the idea of,

well, a hearty breakfast is bacon and eggs. And, of course, pork sales then go fucking up massive. People were all about their bacon and their rashers. Bernays invented that. He pulled it out of his hoop to convince people that this was the healthy, hearty choice as recommended by physicians and doctors that had never been done before

Bernays was employed by the tobacco industry in about 1912 might have been a bit later no possibly in the early 1920s the tobacco industry had an issue they couldn't sell cigarettes to women Trust me, in the early 1920s, the tobacco industry had an issue.

They couldn't sell cigarettes to women, because it was considered unladylike and socially inappropriate for a woman to smoke cigarettes, especially in public, in the 1920s in America, in the early 1920s. So Bernays was given the task of, can you sell fags to women? especially in public, in the 1920s in America, in the early 1920s. So Bernays was given the task of, can you sell fags to women? Because that's 50% of the market and they're not buying them. So Bernays would have had his wife as well. His wife was a prominent feminist.

So Bernays figured, by looking at the sexist ideas of his Uncle Freud's books, the way to sell cigarettes to women, there's two ways to do it. You associate the cigarettes with liberation, a sense of freedom. So what he did was, I think it was like the Macy's Day Parade or some shit. All these debutantes. I don't know what debutantes were, but they're the equivalent to like Kylie Jenner. Popular women, you know, society women of the 1920s. He got all these women to go into the Macy's Day Parade. I think that was the parade.

And he organised for photographers to take a photograph, a photographic opportunity for these women to all light up cigarettes and then it went into the paper next day and the cigarettes were referred to not as cigarettes but as freedom torches. So what Bernays had done, he had challenged the taboo of cigarettes being inappropriate for women to smoke and recontextualized cigarettes as an act of liberation from female oppression. Now what he also did is back to Freud and his sexism. His uncle Sigmund Freud used to say that cigars and cigarettes, that like a woman would like a cigarette because it gives her the illusion

of having a penis and having power. bernays figured that he could also sell women cigarettes because they have penis envy and that this cigarette in their hand would make them feel male power that they now have a penis and could be liberated and be as have access to all the privileges that men have through cigarettes. Very controversial, very problematic, but that's what Bernays did. So again, you know, the pattern is Bernays wasn't selling cigarettes, you know. He wasn't saying to, pitching to women,

this is the finest Virginia tobacco it tastes lovely it burns slowly it smells nice you know these qualities of the physical qualities of a cigarette it had nothing to do with that what he was selling

these women was a lifestyle, liberation, the ability to have power, these abstract concepts. And he wasn't doing it by saying it. He was appealing to the irrational forces of the unconscious mind, a form of subliminalism. And since then, that is how all advertising and branding works. Everything, like, even to take it back to last week's podcast, last week's podcast was about how deeply unethical the vast majority of brands and products are

in the developed world. All our tech products, our phones, our laptops, you know, that are controlled by massive brands, how these products are actually created with the blood of the developing world. You know, laptops requiring artisanal minds that have children working in them so that we can have cheap products but if you look at what is you know what's the corporate identity of a lot of brands today in 2018 going into 2019 well right now a lot of brands want to appear to be woke okay social justice

is very popular at the moment in the past five years so all these corporations and brands are scrambling to be the most woke so you have these huge corporations and you know trying to let everybody know how important diversity is to them in turn you know when they employ people they're very conscious of we have a diverse workforce or they strain to let us know that our brand supports feminism we support gender equality in our workforce but what these brands are doing is it's a performative sense of social justice you know we have to stop stop looking at corporations and brands as fighting for social justice and instead look at that as simply part of their advertising spend. Because these same corporations who are promoting gender equality,

adhering to social justice, trying to appear to be woke, these are the same corporations that are not paying tax in a lot of the countries that they're in, are directly contributing to inequality all around the world, and some of them directly engaging in vicious human rights abuses so that their products can be cheap.

So you've massive cognitive dissonance. And again, why does a corporation want to be woke because we want to be woke we as people we want to think that we are on the ball with social justice that we're about equality so a brand is going hey look at us we're the easy solution you don't actually have to care about gender gender issues you don't actually have to care about trans people you don't actually have to care about people of color just buy this laptop just drink this soft drink we're so woke that by you consuming

and engaging in the act of purchasing us and being close to our brand. You don't have to do that hard work of actually compassionately caring about your fellow human. Just buy our shit and you can get the feeling of being woke. So that's what's happening right now. Again, you can trace it all back to this lad, Edward Bernays. This podcast started,

I made a promise about bananas. I'm going to get to the bananas lads. So before we move on. I think we should have our little. Ocarina pause. Because it's the halfway point. I'm going to play my. South American clay whistle.

The ocarina. Because. You might hear an advertisement. You know, this is put out on Acast and Acast insert digital advertisements. Here's a bit of fun. You know, if an advertisement plays and you hear it, ask yourself, you know, is this advertisement, how is it trying to sell me a better version of myself in order to purchase their product are they actually telling me how effective their product is or are they telling me that it'll you know make me a make me a stronger man will it make me more influential and powerful you know this car that they're selling me?

Are they trying to sell me the notion of freedom and liberation from my stress? So give that a go if you do hear an advert. If not, you will simply hear the gentle, you know, the gentle tune of an ocarina, the innocent, the innocent melody that isn't trying to sell you a better version of yourself it's merely you know that's the beauty of the Ocarina Paws all it's doing is

is just like just chill out take a bit of time you are who you are you're grand you're not better than anyone else no one else is better than you you're listening to a podcast

you're enjoying your day. That's what the ocarina does. Okay. Now it's not going to be very loud. Because I'm in a hotel. And I don't want to wake up. The German businessman next door. Who's only.

Doing God knows. To an escort. Next door. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil.

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That was the gentle hotel ocarina pause. There might have been a bit of unwanted noise there as well because I was shuffling it around on the pillow. Where the fuck has my vape gone? Here we go. So, support for this podcast comes from you the listener um through the patreon page or patreon patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you would like to support this podcast i do this podcast every week. I do it for free. But if you'd like to support the podcast and become a financial patron so that I continue doing it every week, you can do that.

You can offer me the price of a pint, the price of a cup of coffee once a month via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast and you know it's a suggested donation you don't have to some people do some people don't um if you do contribute you know that pays for somebody who can't contribute because there are a lot of people who listen to this podcast and they're just like i don't have to i don't have the money to be giving you a fucking price of a pint once a month I don't have the money to be giving you a fucking price of a pint once a month. Or some people do for a while and then they don't. And it's grand.

It's a model of soundness. Everyone's happy. Everyone gets the same podcast. So, back to old Edward Bernays. So I mentioned, you know, he started off his career in advertising essentially using the the findings of his uncle Sigmund Freud and applying these things to not to help people but to manipulate people into purchasing goods they don't really need. That was only the first half of his career. As he got older, the idea of kind of manipulation and control, he kind of latched onto these things in an ideological fashion and started to believe that these things could truly be used to change society.

that these things could truly be used to change society. In fact he wrote a book in 1928 and the book was called Propaganda. He was one of the first people to really use the term propaganda. And when you hear propaganda now you kind of wince. It's a dirty word now you know. But that's propaganda didn't become a dirty word until after World War II because the Nazis made very effective use of propaganda and the Soviets did as well so propaganda is now a dirty word in 1928 it wasn't it was a word that Edward Bernays felt was so good that he could name a book Propaganda. And there's a quote from this book from Edward Bernays and the quote is

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed. Our minds are moulded. Our tastes formed.

Our ideas suggested. Largely by men we have never heard of. And he said that in 1928. And that is terrifying. That's scary. That's him basically saying in order for, you know, democracy to operate, you must have a hidden ideological force that is shaping how we think and feel. shaping how we think and feel. Quite honestly, that's what he's saying. That was his shtick. And it didn't go unnoticed. He was, of course, implied by the US government to do just that. How effective he was with advertising, the early US government said, we want this dude to do what he's doing

with advertising, but do it instead with politics. So he first started doing this with World War I. Now here's the thing. America got involved in World War I and it's quite strange because World War I was essentially a European conflict you know it was the simplest way to look at World War I is it's the end of the European empires getting really frustrated and just having a crack at each other. Do you know, that was World War I. And America didn't really have a stake in it, you know. And when World War I broke out, the American people wanted nothing to do with World War I.

They viewed this as a European problem. And the average American person on the street was just like, great, I'm here in America. I'm glad I'm not in Europe where they're at war. Because America in 1914 was a young country. A lot of its citizens would be first or second generation immigrants from Europe who were escaping, we'll say Napoleonic times, the end of Napoleonic times, they were escaping the conditions that would have led to World War I. And they were quite happy to be in this new utopia that is America,

to be free from colonial powers and old monarchies. So they were like, no, we don't want to get stuck into fucking in world war one at all that's why we're here um america was kind of isolationist do you know it wasn't really they were doing a few snaky things which i'm going to get onto but the attitude of the american people is that they were an isolationist country that had moved like a new colony if we started a new colony in Mars people wouldn't give a fuck about what was happening on Earth because they've got this new thing that was America in 1912 1913 but here we go Woodrow Wilson and the rest of the US government and the wealthy industrialists were like,

they wanted to get involved in World War I, even though it wasn't really America's fight. Now, why would America want to get stuck into World War I, a fight that has nothing to do with it? Money. The military-industrial complex, okay? the military industrial complex okay america was already making and selling a lot of weapons to the allied powers who were in the theater of world war one so what you had was woodrow wilson wanting to get involved in world war one so that the americans could make a huge amount of weapons and then sell these weapons to the European powers that needed them. They also wanted to reconstruct, and this is what happened with World War I in the US.

Europe was being blown to bits and the Americans wanted to come in and be the people with the money and the people with the credit to reconstruct Europe and also to be in a position to offer European countries like Britain and France, to offer them huge amounts of money in the form of loans. So Woodrow Wilson, he set up an organisation called, what the fuck was it called again? The Committee on Public Information, which is like,

almost like a CIA type of organisation, but before the CIA. And the specific goal of the US Committee on Public Information is, Woodrow Wilson said, the average American person wants nothing to do with World War I. How can we make them want war? How can we make the American people want to join World War I? So he contracted Eddie Bernays, the cleverest man in America,

the man who had figured out how to get women to smoke, the man who'd figured out how to get Americans eating bacon and eggs for breakfast. He brought Edward Bernays on board. So what Bernays did a lot of kind of clever little ideas came up with this idea of kind of a troupe of propagandists called the Four Minute Men.

Bernays through his experience in advertising had figured that the average human attention span is four minutes, that you can get four minutes of people's time to get your idea across. So these 75,000 of these highly trained people were recruited by this fucking committee on public information. And their job was to go to colleges, to go to society meetings, to get on the radio, to write in newspapers, to basically reach as many American citizens as possible and to pitch the idea as to why America needed to enter the war. And they had to do it in four minutes. four minutes and a lot of the case that was being made was um kind of the neoconservative idea that like wilson's thing and wilson said it when when they entered world war one he said like the world needs a war to end all wars so that we can fully establish the conditions for

proper global democracy okay democracy was a hot idea in america they viewed america europe as being unfree they viewed countries that had monarchies as being unfree and america they viewed was the true democracy they still believe this this americans still think that it's harsh but wilson that these four minute men were saying to people in four minutes look, we need to get stuck into this it's our duty as a country we can shape global democracy, you know, Europe can be

free, finally and as well pitching the idea to unskilled labourers to let them know lads, there's going to be jobs in munitions factories, if we enter this war, we're going to be building tanks we're going to be building guns, that's going to be jobs in munitions factories if we enter this war we're going to be building tanks going to be building guns that's a lot of jobs and that's what happened and bernays as well figured out that the way to do this was the four minute men would have to

specifically pitch to the different kind of ethnic groups that made up amer. Like, he managed to get the Irish Americans on board by using, there was a singer, a singer from Athlone called John McCormack. Now, John McCormack would have been Beyonce. You know, in like 1914, 1915, John McCormack was the biggest singer in the fucking world.

Massive. So, they got John McCormack was the biggest singer in the fucking world. Massive. So they got John McCormack to arrive at certain things and sing, and sing to Irish-Americans, and then a four-minute man would take the mic and pitch to the Irish-Americans about, we need to enter this war, we need people enrolling, there's going to be jobs. They also, they pitched to women by saying, if we enter World War I, the lads are going to be jobs they also they pitched to women by saying if we enter world war one the

lads are going to be at work look at all ye women that can now work in factories we can create jobs for ye which was like the freedom torches and the cigarettes selling to women the idea of personal liberation you can enter the fucking workforce if we go to world war one so it worked and america entered the world War I. And from America's entrance into World War I, it created this new middle class in America that didn't exist because of jobs in munitions. You know? So that was a...

It was a renowning success for Bernays and for America. A lot of people died, of course, but rich bastards made money so the bananas here's the mad thing about fucking bananas bananas are if you look at the shit that America has caused all around the world because of oil

the other thing it caused a similar amount of trouble with was the fucking banana. Bananas are weird, right? The demand for bananas was basically manufactured in America at the expense of South America. Now, why bananas? I think because bananas are the perfect novelty fruit. Okay? I'm talking, pitching this now. They started in about the 1890s,

but by the time 1930s, 1940s came about, there was a strong push for bananas to be the most popular fruit. It's because it's a novelty fruit. This is my personal hot take opinion, right? Bananas are, they're bright yellow, right? They really stand out as this big bright yellow fruit. The name is funny. Banana is a funny name. They look like willies. Monkeys eat them and look really funny. You can slip on a banana peel. That's hilarious.

From a functional point of view, you can carry a banana around with you quite easily. It has its own packaging. If you want to actually alleviate hunger compared to other fruits, a banana will actually fill you up for an hour, you know. And it's not actually a fruit, it's a herb. But bananas have a huge amount of carbohydrates compared to other things that are sold as fruit.

So the banana has a lot of things going for it, you know. But mainly I think it's its novelty factor. Bananas had a big novelty factor. So, huge fruit corporations were set up in America in the 18th century. The biggest one being the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita banana and the united fruit company were evil evil fuckers like here's the other thing about about the banana bananas are incredibly cheap to this day they are incredibly cheap okay it's one of the cheapest fruits you can get. A bunch of bananas is like 120. Bananas should not be cheap.

Much like when I spoke last week about our electronics, you know, our smartphones and our laptops, they shouldn't be as cheap as they are. They should probably be 10 times more expensive. But because of exploitation in the developed world, our electronics are cheap. Same thing with bananas, right? The banana is, it's a very heavy first of all it's a heavy fruit secondly you need a huge amount of land to grow they only grow in a certain part of the world in a tropical climate you need a lot of human labor to harvest them

so you've got this incredibly resource heavy fruit that that is a load of hassle to bring in ships around the fucking world yet it's dirt cheap that shouldn't be the case it goes against sensible economics and the fact of the matter is yes it fucking does the United Fruit Company which were an American corporation and a few other companies basically destroyed certain countries in South America namely

Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala really destroyed the countries now and it's where we get the term banana republic, if you where we get the term Banana Republic. If you've ever heard the term Banana Republic, a Banana Republic is,

it's a country, it's a politically unstable country that relies upon the production of one resource. And it's, the country itself is economically exploited by an external force. So the United Fruit Company and other corporations like it aggressively

lobbied the US government because they were so wealthy and so powerful lobbied the US government to destroy certain South American countries so that these countries basically just became one giant banana farm and the way they do it is

like all the human labor you'd have huge amounts of land only growing bananas to the point that there would be the people living in the country would have difficulty getting their own food because instead of growing rice where the rice field should be is a field full of bananas that's getting exported you know so they'd have a small kind of puppet government running the country who are corrupt and getting quite a lot of money into their own pockets and then they would viciously keep down the poor people to work for fuck all as indentured servants to the banana. And these fruit corporations did this, in particular the United Fruit Company. And they did it through lobbying the US government and through the force of the US military, starting in the mid-1800s but maturing into the 1930s, 1940s.

into the 1930s, 1940s. So what happens, of course, is United Fruit Company are greedy. They want Americans buying more bananas than they need. So who do they contact? Of course, only Eddie Bernays. So they have Edward Bernays as Mr. Banana Man. He's the one who goes to the papers, goes to the press, he tells people about how brilliant bananas are, how bananas are funny, he fucking makes sure that bananas are product placed in the films,

he makes sure that movie stars are seen eating bananas, influences cookbooks so that there's banana recipes, Bernays makes sure that Americans can't get enough of fucking bananas. And specifically, it's the country Guatemala. Now, the US had already fucked up Honduras because of bananas and installed a fucking puppet government there. So by the 1940s, Guatemala was truly a banana republic. It was a puppet state that bowed down to the United Fruit Company. These corporations,

you have to remember, they also controlled all of the infrastructure in Guatemala, in Costa Rica and Honduras. All the trains, all the ports, all the roads in Guatemala, in Costa Rica and Honduras. All the trains, all the ports, all the roads were there not for the people, but purely for the service of the banana. The people themselves were indentured servants who worked to create fucking bananas so they could be dirt cheap and that they could be sold all around the world to satisfy the emerging middle class that's happening all around the world, but mostly in the US.

Again, tying into the whole thing, how do you sell people shit they don't need? This is also last week's podcast where I spoke about how the resources of the developed world are stripped bare to service the needs of the developed... The resources of the developed world. Are stripped bare. To service the needs of the developed. The resources of the developing world. Are stripped bare to. Service the needs of the developed world.

These are the roots of it right here. With the banana and with the yanks. And with yankee capitalism. So Guatemala. By the 40s. Puppet state. What happens in. I think it's late 1940s. Or about 49. I'm probably wrong. by the 40s, puppet state. What happens in,

I think it's late 1940s, or about 49, I'm probably wrong, but I'm not too far off. A president is elected in Guatemala called Guzman, and Guzman is left-leaning. Okay? This scares the absolute fuck

out of the United Fruit Company. Because what had happened in Iran in the 1950s is that, now, of course, the Brits are at this shit as well, right? So in Iran, Iran had a fuck ton of oil, okay? But British Petroleum essentially controlled all of the oil in Iran in the way that the Yanks controlled the bananas in Guatemala. Okay? Now, something I've mentioned a couple of times in the podcast,

the Sykes-Picot Agreement. In 1916, Britain and France carved up the Middle East, created countries, created nation states that didn't exist, but did this not for the benefit of the people living there, but for the interest of French and British oil. Oil was this new, beautiful substance that no one was fully sure how great it was going to be. So in Iran, now Iran wasn't subject to the Sykes pick-up,

but it had been exploited by the Brits. So British Petroleum owned all of the oil in Iran and controlled it and none of the profits were going to the country of Iran. So in 1950 in Iran there was a bit of a revolution and the Iranians nationalised their oil which meant that the Iranians said hold on a second we've got all this oil. none of the profits are coming to our country they're going to british petroleum fuck that get the fuck out british petroleum this oil belongs to the country of iran and iran did that in the 1950s caused a ton of shit like no the us and the uk made sure that nobody was allowed to buy any Iranian oil in the 50s.

So there was an embargo. They managed to sell it to one company in Italy. That was it. But anyway, when the Iranians nationalised their oil, the United Fruit Company started freaking out and started saying, what if this new fella, Guzman, this new president who's left-leaning,

what if he nationalises the bananas? What if he decides that bananas, because they're grown in Guatemala, and because the labour is from the Guatemalan people, what if he decides bananas become the national product of Guatemala, and fuck the United Fruit Company? And what if Costa Rica do the same? And what if Honduras do the same that would destroy our beautiful exploitative

banana industry so they get Bernays to go what can we do we need to sort this shit out in step the CIA what else is happening in the 1950s it's the height of the Cold War.

Now, United Fruit Company have always been power, industrially powerful enough to be able to lobby the US government and get the US government to act militarily on the economic interests of this fruit company, right? But by 1950, there's a new threat. So when the threat of Guatemala nationalising its bananas it's now not only a threat to the United Fruit Company

it's a threat to US democracy because the Cold War is happening. If you've got a country like Guatemala with a huge proletariat of workers who are being exploited and a small elite, it is very, very easy for Soviets to sell communism to these people as an ideology. And that's where the very complicated relationship with South America all through the 20th century happens. century happens. South America was being so terribly exploited by the US that the Soviets recognised this and tried their best to influence left-wing socialist revolutions in all of these countries as part of the great ideological war that we call the Cold War, okay? So the

CIA now are interested in bananas. So the CIA say, fuck this, this Guzman fella, you know, with his nationalising of the banana talk, he cannot run this country. We got to do something. We got to get him the fuck out. So the CIA throughout the 20th century, they fucked over a lot of democratically elected governments in South America through coup d'etats,

which is the overthrowing of an elected government by a right-wing militia that are essentially just puppets for the US. So what happens is now the CIA and Edward Bernays are working together. And Bernays is informing the CIA on the type of techniques they need to be using to effectively overthrow the democratically elected left wing

Guatemalan president. Now back to Iran when I spoke about Iran nationalising their oil, the Brits didn't put up with that. British intelligence and the CIA effectively had a coup in Iran that ousted the democratically elected president and installed instead a pro-American and British oil puppet president in its place. So they did that in Iran, the

Brits and the Americans. Terrible carry on. Okay, disgraceful carry on. But that's what they did to Iran. So now they said, right, let's have a crack at Guatemala because of bananas. So Edward Bernays is now working alongside the CIA using propaganda. So what he starts doing is like spreading news all over South America and all over America about the dangers of this new communist red president in Guatemala you know the spread of communism this guy's gonna fucking poison the US he must be overthrown so the CIA start to put a plan in place to overthrow Guzman the president but this is where it's so clever that it's admirable. Bernays figures that in order to overthrow this president

you don't necessarily have to have a full-on violent military coup. Traditionally what they'd do is the CIA would identify or create right-wing rebels and then train and fund them so that those rebels would overthrow the government and the CIA acts as the hidden hand. Again, using Bernays' theories, as I said, Bernays' theory of manufacturing consent, do you know? The hidden hand sways the ideology so people don't know who's telling them. The CIA took all that from Bernays. So this is the idea that Bernays came up with.

You don't need to go in there with a huge amount of weapons and overthrow the Guatemalan president because there's a new thing called media. So a radio station. A few things happened. A radio station was set up in Florida, right? And what was the fucking name of the radio station? Voice of Liberation, okay?

And it started broadcasting on May 1st, 1954. The radio station said that it was happening from the jungles, deep in the jungles of Guatemala, you know. It was supposed to be from this huge rebel group, you know. These radio broadcasts would go out all over Guatemala saying, we are this rebel group, we're in the the jungles we've got thousands and thousands of members and we're getting ready to overthrow Guatemala for the people and they'd have these massive anti-communists you know read under the bed messages to scare the people going you better watch out because we're going to come and we're going to take this country back for the people

and we're supported by the Americans and then for the people. And we're supported by the Americans. And then what the Yanks did is they started, like, getting ships to appear off the coast of Guatemala, but not doing anything. But this radio station basically started transmitting and transmitting more and more. And they knew well that the president was listening. And effectively, they started lying. They started saying that, like, US troops have stormed the beach.

There's a massive force. The Air Force are on the way. The presidential palace is going to be bombed. This huge fucking force is coming. And the president of Guatemala completely believed it. Because radio was so new. So he just got the fuck out and the CIA and a few sparsely armed rebels just casually walked in took over very little bloodshed and successfully managed to implant a puppet president into the country who was sympathetic to the united fruit company effectively keeping the guatemalan people

completely fucked over so that the yanks and you and i could have cheap bananas and it didn't stop at that that activity it led to a 36 year civil war. Bloody brutal civil war in Guatemala where many people died because of fucking bananas. And the CIA did that to lots and lots of countries in South America. A lot of countries. And the heartbreaking thing as well today is like Trump, they did it in El Salvador as well, you know. They tried that shit in El Salvador,

they tried it in fucking Nicaragua. Like there's a whole other podcast I'm going to do on how the Yanks fucked up Nicaragua and with cocaine and shit like that. Even CIA bringing cocaine into America and creating the crack epidemic to fund rebels in Nicaragua. Dark shit.

But the Yanks made shit of South America. Never allowed a decent democracy to emerge in a lot of the countries. It's why so much of South America is still developing. And sadly, it's why this caravan that Trump talks about,

these massive migrant caravans, a huge amount of people in those caravans are from El Salvador, they're from Honduras, they're from Costa Rica, they're from Central America. They're very, very poor people whose poverty and destitution is as a result of years and years and years of utter abuse by capitalism and the actions of the CIA in order to bolster wealthy industrialists and fight the great ideological war against communism. wealthy industrialists and fight the great ideological war against communism

so that's why these poor people are at the door of Trump's fucking at the wall in Mexico trying to get in because of what the US has done in the past 100 years and Trump doesn't even know that because

last week on Twitter he didn't seem to be aware that World War II was essentially a conflict between European countries. Okay, I was going to take a few questions, but I'm wrecked, and I'm holding the microphone this week, which is quite...

It strains my arm, we'll say. I don't have my beautiful, my thing to hold it. So that was the hot take, that was the hot take this week. About bananas and about Sigmund Freud. And I tell you what, Bernays' grand-nephew, I believe, is the man who founded Netflix. So that's the dynasty of that family.

From Freud to Edward Bernays to the dude who founded Netflix. The CEO of Netflix is Edward Bernays' grand nephew, I believe. Can't think of his name. Bernays is in his name anyway. Alright, I'll leave you go. Have a charming

week, have a lovely time, be compassionate to yourself, be compassionate to other people, I'm going to be back next week with some more boiling hot takes, I hope the gentle tone that I'm delivering this podcast in doesn't affect your podcast hug, I'm just conscious of waking up the the German sex tourists in my hotel Yart Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the tor the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game,

and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.