1/21/20 - Mobsters (2013)

This isn't being presented as an elegantly polished piece of Pulitzer-worthy prose. (Gaudy alliteration intended for sarcastic effect!) Instead, this theme--intellectual conformity and our tendency toward tribalism and the groupmind--is part of a near-future podcast and an example of some old writing that has not only stood the test of time (2013), but enhanced itself over 7-years. What's changed: gaining a better understanding of the evolutionary and social psychology leading to it. And its exploitation.

Still wondering why my comments are off? This might help. The pickup LeBon!

1/15/20 - Snakes, Survival, & Sabotage: The Need to Feel Alive

Todd discusses collective human boredom in relation to the need for a sense of purpose, struggle, and the addictive rush of just feeling alive. How a dormant survival instinct comes alive during a crisis and how, absent that, we'll manufacture one just to have something to endure, battle, and survive. Also, some some predictions for the 20's. Book those children's parties now!

Also:

• An evening with Pablo Escobar's "chemist"
• A naked man kills a fer-de-lance
• Men, middle age, and the power plant
• Healthy anxiety vs. fear
• This election won't matter
• The tyrant is in the eye of the beholder
• The Titan Tragedy
• Podcasters: they're spammy and slimy.
• ^They call that foreshadowing

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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
* Fuck Twitter

1/13/20: Apocalypto and The Red Star of Moscow

Happy 2020! Are we ready? After a 2-month hiatus spent illegally hunting rhinoceros and snipe in the primitive wilds of the West Michigan wilderness, Todd welcomes the 20's with a quick episode discussing apocalyptic thinking, the coming electoral season, where to find balanced news coverage, and the rarely-used technique of actually listening to "opposition" media simply to understand where they're coming from. Eureka!

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* Also check out www.christophermedia.net
* F**k Twitter and Facebook

10/30/19: Disinformation '16, Weaponized Truth, Hillary The Halloween Zombie

This episode focusses mostly on disinformation and interference in the 2016 election and includes selected clips from the Your Undivided Attention podcast episode "From Russia With Likes" (#1) featuring disinformation expert Renée DiResta. Her expertise connects incredibly well to my Propaganda series. Topics include: the seemingly innocent methods used by the Russians exploiting personal identity to create online communities that can be manipulated via agitative identity politics later on, The Call to Action: The Manchurian Propagandist, more on the propaganda dopamine connection: validation, attacking trust in political institutions and the media, anger and apathy, exploiting freedom of speech, and the silliness of the "Global Public Square.

Listen to Your Undivided Attention here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/



ALSO:

• Hillary: probably right about Tulsi Gabbard
• Hillary: definitely right about Jill Stein
• Hillary: absolutely a Trump asset
• Hillary: continue your role as a public servant. Retire. Quietly. 
• Americans subsidize European entitlements
• Trump's "foreign policy" could lead to universal education 
• Media and Information Education: stat!
• Be sure you're subscribed to "Escaping The Cave"

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

10/24/19: Presidential Anarchy, Goebbels' Ad Company, and a Prayer

Trump's not actually retarded, is he? Pray with me, won't you?

Also:

• Quitting smoking: it sucks
• No, seriously. I prayed.
• Nicholas Carr and the "influencer"
• Joseph Goebbels and Edward Bernays
• My poor little podcast is attacked by a zombie
• Happy Halloween?
• Fu*k Twitter

*Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

10/09/19: Pinching The Impeachment Loaf

Are you stuck trying to build a well-reasoned, impartial, and detached impeachment snowman from competing piles of steaming cable news shit? Yeah. Me too. The only lens that works: the wide-angle agitation propaganda lens. First, a virtual colon cleanse in the form of a micro-pod.



ALSO: 

• Fuck Twitter
• Twice
• Hard

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

10/01/19: Agitational Dysfunction & Revolutionary Hatred

An introduction to LeBon, his ideas on mobs, and The Psychology of Revolution--specifically hatred. The forthcoming electoral reality show, 2020's prepared script, how the spinoffs will be cast, and what happens when our Matrix Avatar Superheroes stumble into the Desert of the Real.



ALSO:

• Unrealistic expectations in the steaming pile of Twitter
• Was it your childhood dream to be Saul Goodman?
• More on pseudo-environments and internal narratives
• Fcuk Twitter

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9/27/19: Propaganda Blindspots & The Constituent Mob

Institutions fail and democracy descends into mob rule when representative are paralyzed and terrorized by fear of their voters. Trump, Ukraine, and 2020's year-long electoral reality show disguised as an idealistic impeachment. Informational sectarianism and how it's easy to see "their" propaganda. Yours? Never! Their demagogue is your savior. There may be a way for a detaching informational unicorn treat that. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper; when everything is spin and propaganda, who's a political infidel supposed to believe?



Also:

• Alternate Informational Universes 
• Half-assed media sophistication: not enough
• Why can't we watch the opposition's media without going nuts?
• Our dueling scandals aren't automatically mutually exclusive
• More on the the Current Events Man 
• Media isn't free. You are the product being sold. 

 

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

 

9/26/19: The Internal Narrative Trojan Horse

"The fiction is taken as truth because the fiction is badly needed." A quick introduction to Walter Lippmann and the commonality between him, Ellul, Bernays, Haidt, and Harari. People can't personally perceive the world beyond their own sliver of firsthand experience. Therefore, the Current Events Man is beholden, dependent upon, and therefore exploited by the propagandist and his digital distortions. Tech and data overload confusion has made this exponentially worse. If democracy is demands an "enlightened citizenry", it's maybe doomed from the start. Paradoxically, there's a stab at some hope in here too. Weird.



ALSO:

• Te Nosce, bitches 
• Competing Scandals; Competing Networks; Competing Narratives 
• Smoking, Facebook, and associative dopamine addiction.    
• The Matrix and the Internet
• The responsibility and danger of exposing "their" delusion
• All Cats Meow
• Why we believe the ridiculous
• Finding hope in human imperfection
• More on likability and art
• The Hobgoblin  
• Where the hell is Jill Stein? #NeverForget

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

9/18/19: Newton's Third Law of Totalitarian Messiahs

Agitation propaganda doing its work, speechcrime taking root in the form of virtual media mobs enforcing cancel culture and point-of-view authoritarianism, the Wokeflake Messiah will arrive soon, Newton's Third Law of Extremism, the slave's spirituals and frightened children scrambling to the ideological church to be soothed by visions of a future Heaven on Earth.



ALSO: 

• Toxic Compromise
• The Election Won't Matter
• At all.
• Wokeflakes Becoming Trump
• We The Authoritarian People

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8/29/19: Propaganda: Agitating The Inner Ape

Agitation and Integration: two often closely related but very different types of propagandas: one used to provoke internal conflict the other to shape members of a population into a mold. Agitation: The propaganda of insurgency and revolution. Includes how internal enemies are used as scapegoats to manufacture then exploit hatreds as means to an insurgent's end, Mao's view on "the enemy residing in every man" and fitting him into the "Socialist Mold", Hitler's internal agitation, spontaneous volunteer propagandists, and how facts and "truth" are irrelevant to the person burning with primal hatred.

ALSO: 

• Agitation propaganda during the American Revolution 
• Triggering revolution by provoking hate? It's easy!
• Exploiting hatred and the path to genocide
• Hatred: small investment, high return
• Agitation and Integration can be used simultaneously
• Utopia is totalitarian
• Intellectuals: More susceptible to integration propaganda than dolts
• Intellectuals and self-bigotry
• "Can I hate you?"
• Justification, rationalization and stampeding enraged elephants
• Agitation to Integration: extremely difficult
• Successful Agitation + Failed Integration = Mob Rule
• Winter Is Here
• Yep. It's a doozy. 

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

8/22/19: Propaganda: Contradictions, Agitation Media, Typhoid Zuck

Propaganda's ambiguity and contradictions including: creating tensions while relieving others, an introduction to the companion propagandas: agitation and integration and how they overlap; self-justification and imposed guilt; attachment and ostracizing oneself to join the "enemy; politicization and privatization; "Why die for Danzig?' and how political orphans benefit extremists and authoritarians.



ALSO:

• Andrew Sullivan on the boomerang
• Post-Truth hatred and division: a bigger threat than climate change
• Don't blame the bartender for getting you drunk
• Twitter, Facebook, and Typhoid Mary
• Atomic Ping Pong
• Our personal broadcast stations
• The Russia investigation saved the Democrats
• Setting up your triage tent
• Forget the mob; save yourself
• Information or Propaganda? Can you tell? Does it even matter?
• The Matrix & Propaganda

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

8/10/19: Wanted: Wokeflake Demagogue, Dignity And The Useful Idiot, Tyrannizing The Vanquished

Todd, Chris and Rich discuss the Dayton shooter's leftist leanings being swept aside, poking the Crackerbear and how a real conflict between Woke Island and Trumptown might resemble an episode of "Lambs to the Wolves", Los Tíos Tom Blancos and their own dignity, informational chum agitating swarming ideological sharks, how suppressing a defeated ideological Holy War enemy might look in the 21st century, and we revisit "reparations" just to, you know, lighten things up. (Send the bill to Boris!) The Propaganda opus continues next time.



ALSO:

• Chris & Rich educate Todd on "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo"
• The PMRC and the new Left
• Corey Booker's "community"
• The Dragon, Kraken, and your own self-interest
• The absurdity of expecting a Matriarchal Utopia

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*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

8/8/19: The Internet's Ethic: Informational Anarchy & Deadly Insignificance

After more shooting's, Chris & Rich rejoin the show to discuss our "news" (propaganda) consumption, and the predictably tribal response. We're malleable psychological adolescents and clearly unprepared for this informational responsibility. Also, the same recycled arguments with a few new propaganda twists, did you know the Dayton killer was a self-proclaimed Leftist? Is it coincidence that most "news" coverage is in El Paso? Remote rhetorical assaults and the historical usefulness of "physical accountability": smacking bullies in the snout.



ALSO: 

• "Can I believe this" vs "Must I believe this"
• Snorting pacifists: lambs to the wolves
• Arya Stark: she was fiction. 
• "Educated Intellectuals" aren't immune to propaganda; maybe more vulnerable  

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*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

8/6/19: Propaganda: Autonomy Lost, Fake Tensions, Exiling Sectarians

How propaganda acts as an informational virus to destroy critical thought and alienate the person from himself. More on data overload, the uninformed Current Events Man knowing a little about everything and a lot about nothing, mistaking feelings for thought, having to accept or reject an entire doctrine in total, losing intellectual autonomy, and how artificial tensions are often accompanied by dubious solutions.



ALSO:

• Artificial solutions to real needs
• Real solutions to artificial needs
• "Influencers", their product, and their Patreon
• The Tribal Dance of Rhetorical Fuckery
• We're a species of sleazy lawyers and pathological liars
• Self-stereotyping caricatures
• It's fine to generalize then exile sectarian fabricants

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


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*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

8/2/19: Propaganda: Slogans, Rationalizations, The Religious Mind

The conclusion of Ellul's psychological crystallization segment featuring the makeup of its slogans & how they're used to replace thought, collective belief and obsessions, self-justification/rationalizations and how they spawn the self-righteous Puritan, the closing of the crystallized mind, propaganda's religious personality, and a bizarre 21st century media phenomenon: monetizing mind rape.




ALSO:

- Marianne Williamson: The New Trump?
- Introducing the father of American propaganda: Edward Bernays
- They know you better than you know yourself
- Propaganda's side-effects and how they mirror the '60's definition of "neurosis"

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


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*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

8/1/19: Propaganda: Inseminating Zealots & Vicarious Atonement

Begins with a takedown of "white privilege", self-flagellation vs. self-interest, and the asinine/futile demands of our Social Vengeance Warriors; beware the boomerang, Moonbeam. From there, I move on to Ellul's dissection of how propaganda hijacks the political cultist's mind. The first of two parts, this episode focusses on the distinction between doctrine and critical thought, unnaturally homogenous thought, codifying social, political, and moral standards, exploiting latent pre-existing prejudices, and the power of implanted stereotypes & symbols used as triggering mechanisms. The elephant is strong in this one!



Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


*Like the pod? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. You are my marketing team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

7/30/19: Propaganda: Manufacturing Proselytes & Militants

Propaganda isn't what you may think. Ellul's ideas on pre-propaganda, propaganda's conditioned reflexes, myths, and "orthopraxy". Including the triggering of active and passive action (activists, influencers, collaborators), widespread participation by "committed" zealots, the separation between thought and action, exploiting the abyss between what we say and what we do, mobilizing men for action counter to their own values, and being unable to reverse ourselves once "action" has begun.



ALSO:

• Exiling naked sectarians
• Agitation and organization
• How the Internet rejuvenates and revives conditioned reflexes
• Technology indoctrinates us much faster than before
• Presuppositions, stereotypes, and political education disguised as universities
• Mind-hacking thru a broken firewall
• Seizing your intellectual autonomy
• Excommunication is painful. But Necessary.

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


*Like the pod? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. You are my marketing team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

7/28/19: Propaganda's Mindcrime, Partitioning, The Verbal Universe

More on agitation propaganda and the psychological effects of propaganda including: loss of individuality, the suppression of critical thought, creation of the mob and how critical thought is literally impossible as part of a group, the creation of a fanatically self-righteous social conscious leading to the demonization of the out-group, and more on the sphere of the sacred. Then, how propaganda partitions society (identity politics) via verbal fiction creating sects of victims who only speak "to themselves."


Also: 

• Propaganda's only heard by its choir creating alternate factual universes
• Manchurian activists primed for provoked outrage and action
• The creation of an abstract verbal universe: fake news
• Sacrificing self-dignity to "the cause"
• The danger of surrendering to "something bigger than yourself"
• Stereophonic propaganda
• Reclaiming individuality by removing your dog from the fight

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda":
https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

READ IT!


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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com

7/25/19: Spinning Mueller & The Sacred Cows

Congressional grandstanding for the cameras, Mueller's testimony: viewed and spun in parallel universes, deciding whether to read the report, voting your own self-interest (Yes! Do it!), the Current Events Man, asking the right questions, when boutique news becomes fatal, and the sacred Golden Calves.



Also: 

• Leaving the mob
• Evolution lurks
• Mythology and the Devil within

*Like it? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com