The New Age of Media Manipulation | Renée DiResta

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1:04Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

1:56Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Obviously, you are listening to a podcast here, but it's funny. I was just texting with Rich Roll and we were sort of lamenting some people we know whose minds have kind of been broken. They've become sort of politically radicalized. They tweet and say weird shit. And I was like, you know what, man? I was like, I'm starting to think podcasts might not be good for your brain. like just having hours and hours of audio jammed into your brain might not be good for you and then I was thinking of that David Foster Wallace essay he wrote this like essay on like talk radio hosts and and how the process of being a talk radio host like sort of inherently puffs up your ego and makes you a crazy person because you're just like spitting opinions out like even even doing this couple minute intro like it's the opposite of the muscles that I use as a writer and I don't necessarily think positive.

2:53Like, I mean, I love podcasts. I love listening to them, but all things in moderation. And I've been really bullish on podcasts as a medium, but I'm also starting to be more aware of the downsides. And I'm thinking a lot about this with what Daily Stoic is and how we do it. Anyways, that's why I wanted to have today's guest on. You might've listened to my part one episode with Renee DiResta. Her book, Invisible Rulers, is all about how information spreads online and how niche propagandists can like sort of shape public opinion, which is a lot of what I talk about in Trust Me, I'm Lying. It's what Upton Sinclair was talking about over a hundred years ago in The Brass Check, which is one of my all-time favorite books about media.

3:30It's what Daniel Boorson was talking about in The Image, all-time classic. It's what Neil Postman was talking about in Amusing Ourselves to Death. The way these forces which act upon the information or the the way information spreads or what information we see or don't see, or just the mechanical process of transmitting that information, the way it shapes public opinion and human beings, as well as the people making this stuff. It's just all that shapes public opinion. And then we live in the world that that public opinion creates. And so one of the things Renee and I talk about in this episode is the influences of podcasts, what's healthy and not healthy, what are some of the driving forces of misinformation and then we talked really practically because she found herself when she sort of became politically engaged with some of this stuff in her home state of california um like just became this sort of like uh target for harassment and you know attacks which i've experienced also myself and and we talked about some really sort of stoic ideas for for dealing with that she's a technical researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

4:36She's briefed world leaders, advised Congress, the State Department, and many, many other organizations. And I think her book is super important, Invisible Rulers, The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality. She was featured in the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, which everyone raves about, which came out in 2020. You can follow her on Twitter, at NoUpside. I would say I don't recommend doing that. Not following her, just spend literally no time on Twitter. It's not good for your brain. and I'm not even going to call it X. I just call it Twitter and you can check out her website, Renee DiResta, but definitely check out Invisible Rulers, the people who turn lies into reality.

5:11I'll link to that. And her work was fascinating. And also this interview was recorded quite a bit ago, but I was talking to her right before I left for Australia and she gave us and our family some wonderful travel tips, which made our trip richer. So thank you to her for that also, and enjoy this episode.

5:34I would be curious your thoughts on podcasting as a medium, because I had such high hopes for it as a medium. And when I was writing the updated version of Trust Me In Lying, I was talking about podcasting as a positive medium in that it's subscriber based. Like instead of just like random viral things, like audio is not super viral or it wasn't then. It's long form. So it's not like Twitter then being like 140 characters where it's trying to like shorten and strip things of nuance. I think it's wonderful for people to have a two-hour conversation. And then also from an advertising medium, it's sort of sponsorships up front, not this kind of real-time, like however many pages you get, you monetize that many ads.

6:13I thought it was going to be somewhat immune from the consequences or the toxic incentives that have kind of ruined those first generation of media things. And now I'm more and more convinced that, like, as you said, you look at the 2016 election, you think content farms, you think Facebook advertising and targeting, and then bots being the sort of source of the disinformation that kind of broke the country's brain in this pivotal moment. When I look at 2020 through now, I'm actually thinking podcasts are the root of it in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated. I think it's different, I guess, would be my answer, which maybe is not satisfying.

6:56But it's the same thing as the argument you're making is the same argument for newsletters. This is the argument that the Substack guys have made. And I really like them. I think they're - Yeah, there's always some invention that's going to improve it. Right. Well, because the question is, what is the bad thing? And I think people really want there to be one bad thing. And so for a long time, you talk about... And I did this too in 2017. Oh, my rather simplistic diagnosis of the world then was like, oh, it's the advertising-based business model. It's the targetability. Now, the targetability on a centralized platform is, like it does have the impact of pushing people into silos.

7:30It just does. And that's because everything is curated and your attention is finite and the platform wants you there and not on another platform. And this is the dynamic that determines the curation in your feed, right? And so you do see Substack and other folks being like, okay, well, now we're going to move to subscription models. But I do think that then you have a very different type of audience capture, right? Where you know that the audience is there, like this, you know, becomes your livelihood for a lot of people, right? And podcasting is, I think, the same thing. You have your audience, you want to keep your audience there.

8:05And so telling your audience what they don't want to hear is not necessarily the, you know, the best path to maintaining that audience and to good, you know, to continuing good business. I think you may have an audience like you, I think probably do, right? That prizes sort of reflectivity and nuance and things like that. But that's also because that's the community that you've curated, right? So ultimately, I think what it does come down to is the, I'm trying to remember who said it, like the phrase, like the problem with social media is people. It is in fact that, right? It's the human nature of like, we might like to hear more of what we want to hear and whether that's an advertising-based, you know, kind of model that leads to particular curation mechanisms and, you know, structuring of a feed, but when people are then kind of committing their capital, right, like subscribing to or patronizing a person, unless that person is really prioritizing not telling them what they want to hear, you do see that audience capture phenomenon beginning to start.

8:59And it's very siloed. That's the other thing I'll say, which is podcasts, sometimes it's just, it's hard to know what has been said, right? So there's, on social media, everything's largely out there in the open unless it's happening in some closed group. More and more things do happen in closed groups because people don't want the visibility of having public conversations now. They know the internet might come for them and that's scary. Podcasts, I think, you know, I'm like with like a finite number of hours in the day sometimes. I'm like, can I find a transcript of this? I'd like to read that conversation where I can digest it in, you know, five minutes as opposed to two hours or sub stack where it's actually paywalled, right?

9:34Where I'm like, okay, what happens below the fold? I don't know. You know, it's a different form of engaging the intersection between attention, monetization, and human nature. So I don't know that I say it's like better or worse. I think that, again, the idea that it eliminates the bad side of tribalism or the other ideas that, you know, very idealistic people put forth. I don't think that's true. I think it just manifests differently. Yeah. The problem with media is people. It's like, if there is no fake news, we're the fake news basically. But what I think is interesting with podcasts, and I guess this is true for all the mediums and what I was trying to say in my book, and I think you'd say it well and yours is like the problem is also wherever there are people, there are going to be bad actors that try to shape or direct those people.

10:19Right. And I think what you find is that the kooks or the ideologues or the people with an agenda figure out the tools first. Yeah. Fastest and most effectively. So it's like I thought podcasts would be this awesome thing and they are this awesome thing. But then you're watching, oh, OK, people who can have access to legacy media that I'm talking like politicians, leaders, companies, they're fine. The system's working for them. And so it's the people who have the crazy ideas that have to go towards the new medium with the least resistance. And so like, for instance, I got invited to this thing that Robert F.

10:53Kennedy Jr. was doing, where it was like, what I deduced is he's clearly flying around the country and having podcasting dinners, where he has like a dinner, and then he invites the podcasters who live in that town to come. You have to pay. So he's raising money. And then what he's doing is he's seeding ideas to these people who are going to then go back to their audience. And then some percentage of them will also have him on. And I'm like, it was just fascinating to me. Okay, yeah, here's this person who he's finding the media outlets that are being neglected by the bigger candidates or the people who have public platforms in some way are not thinking, hey, how do I get out and talk on every single platform to get these ideas out there.

11:37And so you end up seeding the field, and then these people dominate those spaces. He's a master influence. He's probably - He's very, very good. He's very good at what he does. He made like$8 million last year as an influence grifter. I think it's fascinating. We dealt with him in 2015 during that law and wanted to get passed in California. And we had very particular ways of dealing with it just as activist moms, which was like, we're going to mock the shit out of this actually. And it was kind of fascinating to watch, media generally will write like debunking articles. I was actually reading one on my way over here.

12:10They sort of dredge up some controversy from the past or something. But what I think they don't necessarily understand is like they're speaking to the choir at that point, right? The people who are reading The Daily Beast are going to nod along and be like, yes, totally. But it's not actually reaching the base. It's not showing up there in that conversation. So it's different conversations happening in completely different places. What you said about the people who, you know, uncover things first. So I study what we call adversarial abuse online, right? And the adversary varies. But inevitably, the first people to pull in and use new and novel technology are spammers and scammers.

12:44A hundred percent of the time, when people are talking about generative AI and being very afraid of like the political implications, I'm like, you know, it's actually the spammers and scammers who have been on it, right? That's what you see all over Facebook. Like it's documented. These are people who are like, I can take my cost to operate down. I can improve my margins. I can reach new people. I can do things where the rules haven't been written yet. And so you see it there first. And then, you know, you do see the thing that was interesting, and you're absolutely correct about this, people who don't have access to major media spaces have also always been early adopters of social media because it is so user created, right?

13:19We all have the power to say whatever we want at this point. And you see this reflected also in how institutions react, which is, like I said, dealing with RFK Jr. in 2015 and this vaccine law in California we wanted to pass, he continued to build a social media following over the years. Platforms struggled to figure out what to do about that, right? Where you actually see him starting to raise hackles is during the Samoa measles outbreak of 2019. So it's actually pre-COVID where about 85 kids died in that outbreak. And this is where you see the platforms begin to realize that Children's Health Defense and some of the other organizations, Children's Health Defense was absolutely instrumental in the propaganda around measles vaccines in Samoa because there was a terrible accident in which nurses had mixed a vial of a vaccine, not with water, but with some sort of muscle relaxant and two kids died from a vaccine in Samoa, leading to the government halting the program as they tried to figure out what had happened.

14:19They didn't realize that this was a nurse accident at the time. And Children's Health Defense is beating the drum about the measles vaccine killing kids and goes on and on and on. And as the result of the finding becomes apparent, they never communicate to their audience that this is what actually happened, that this was a horrible medical accident. And instead, they just continue to propagate that type of fear and suspicion. And so you see the role that they play in these moments, like, again, having the sort of real world impact as all of a sudden there's a measles outbreak in Samoa about a year after the program's halted.

14:51And they institute a mandatory vaccine campaign because literally 85 children have died or are dying at the time. And these are kids under five, right? And so you see the government trying to, you know, to emergency vaccinate little kids. And the same audiences are out there attacking the government of Samoa on its Facebook page saying, no, it's the vaccine that caused the outbreak. No, it's the vaccine that's killing the kids. And again, this is long prior to COVID. Then you see Facebook trying to figure out, OK, what do we do about this now? Right. And you start to see them trying to react. But it is that you don't see.

15:24So they have really dominated the social media ecosystem. They are the best at getting their message out. And then you see the government kind of putting out its statements and quotes in the media on television. They don't have that networked infrastructure. Nothing that they say is going viral. So it's a completely different playing field. And you see this happen over and over and over again where the institution thinks like, oh, well, we're just going to get our message out in the Washington Post. and then people are going to believe us and everything is going to go back to normal. And they don't realize that that sort of like people get invested when they participate is the other thing, right?

15:57And that's why when people are participating, as much as we might joke around about it being slacktivism, we're not actually having an impact. For them, it's having an impact, right? It's giving them the satisfaction. Yeah. Like it is a thing that they feel that they are able to do. They may not have any power to make a change in the real world, but here online, They can. And so it provides them with that desire to feel like they're doing something. And this dynamic that's happening over here on the Internet versus like the occasional pronouncements from on high in the media are two completely different ways of communicating.

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18:00Stoic at checkout. That's human with two N's dot com slash stoic for an extra 15 % off with code stoic at checkout. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? Right. That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a bestselling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

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19:40And that influence that they accumulate online becomes its own sort of currency or form of power, right? So I think I've been fascinated with friends of mine who will platform some of these people. And I know they don't actually think this or are not outright crazy. Maybe they're flirting with it, but they go, this person has a big audience, right? And so there's this kind of like when everyone's kind of an influencer and they're not thinking, hey, what's true or not, or what do I believe or not, or what are my responsibilities or not? They're thinking, will this do well? Will this generate a reaction?

20:14So everyone's kind of this like weird professional wrestler, not doing professional wrestling, but like real, real consequences are a result of this. And it's hard to figure out the best way to communicate to people like this is real and it matters and it has consequences. Yeah. And also, you know, for a while, I spent a lot of time actually trying to talk to conservative podcasters. And I like them. I like arguing. I think it's fun. You know, I have no problem doing it. What was always funny to me about it was like, you would get shit from like, the liberals who followed you that you had gone on there to even do it.

20:52Right. why and and it just turned into like you know you had to stay within the bounds of of who your kind of core group found acceptable and if you deviated from that if you did you know left went on far left you know i sort of identify a center left roughly you would you know you would go on far left and then you would get like you would get shit or you would go on right and you would get shit you know and and so you just found yourself in this position of like okay but there's this very narrow space where I can talk and we're going to nod along with each other and we're not going to, you know, we're not going to get anywhere.

21:25But what is the value of going and doing those other things? Like, I feel like it's actually quite high. It just becomes a question of, you know, you see these like these little network graphs sometimes being made of so-and-so talk to so-and-so who talk to so-and-so and then through the transit of property, like you naturally absorb all of their opinions or something, you know? And it's kind of exhausting, actually. I don't know what you do to break out of that sort of just saying like, well, okay, I'm just going to keep doing it, but... Isn't that a big part of it, right? So part of the act that they're so good at is they say absolutely crazy things or absolutely dangerous things.

22:03They'll say something, and then you or me or someone knows this person that you go, hey, I want to go talk to that on it. So you go on the podcast. And then while you're there, they seem reasonable and they seem nice and you want to be polite, right? And so there is also this, I think one of the insidious parts about it is these people become sort of very radicalized, have absolutely abhorrent ideas that are directly responsible, not just for like the collapse of, you know, sort of trust in institutions or certain policies, but like kids die because of what you're talking about, right? And then you know the person who's saying these things, right?

22:43You know them where you're, they're friendly, they're personable. And then, so there's this kind of reluctance to like call a spade a spade in person directly. And I've felt it myself, but the result is it kind of normalized it. Part of what they're doing is using personal relationships and the appearance of reasonability to shield the significance of what they're saying, or they're advocating for what they're doing and normalizing. They're exploiting the personal connection to not be ostracized, which is what they should be. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I think that question of how do you engage?

23:22The other piece of it though is how do you engage if you want to try to maybe pull someone back in a sense, right? I was going to ask you about this. And I don't know. I really don't. I mean, you're obviously, you've been in the public eye and visible for a very, very long time. And you write books teaching people how to think about that from a philosophical standpoint. I don't. I mean, I feel like a lot of what I do is I like chronicle the decline of the Republic without necessarily having as much of a sense of how do you fix it? You mentioned early on, like when you become the character, right?

23:56And for me, that was like a wild experience of, all right, can I use this in a way almost to maybe it was like my next book, right? Right. How do you respond? What are the ways in which, to what extent can you pull people back? I remember there was a person who I've known for a very long time and we're actually in a DM group all through COVID. And as the weird conspiracy theories about my work started, he wrote this article and he included the sentence like, who is Renee DiResta? And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? What are you talking about? We've been in a DM group for three years. You know exactly who I am.

24:32In fact, we were in a DM group all through the 2020 election, all through COVID. Like I have, you know, the idea that like this, this like who is nonsense, like I, that actually I felt was like, that was the most outraged I've been throughout half of this because I felt like, okay, you know, when it's some, some right wing rando doing it, I get it, right? It's wrestling. We're all in it. It's a contact sport. You're going to send me some stupid media request. I'm going to front run it. We're going to get our, you know, this is how we're going to play the game. Like, fine. I understand. I'm not naive.

25:05But when it comes from somebody who actually knows you, that was where I was like, okay, this is absolutely inexcusable. And I actually really didn't know how the hell do I respond to that one? Yeah. How did you respond? I sent an outraged message into the group chat first. I was like, I'm not even going to pretend this doesn't bother me. Like this actually bothers me a lot because it felt like a betrayal in a sense. Right. And it and it felt like a betrayal for the most like meaningless Internet points. Like, what are you going to get? You're getting a momentary boost from this. Right. Rather than saying, like, I know her, I'll have her on.

25:45Let's ask her questions or something along those lines. It just turned into like, I'm going to pretend that we don't even have a relationship and mind this moment for content. And I just found it just so disappointing also on a, okay, I guess you're really not who I thought you were. Like what a disappointment this is. And this was actually at a time when I was trying to deal with my institution, not wanting me to say anything. Right. And this is where your point about, like, you think that there are adults in the room. Right. And so I'm like, okay, well, the comms people, like, surely they know what they're doing.

26:20And this is like the, um, that sort of thing that happens where even though you've watched failure happen a million times in a million different ways with institutional comms, you feel like maybe this time it's different and it's not. Um, but you still kind of delude yourself momentarily into thinking it will be. And so I was, so I really said nothing for a very long time, actually. And so as this was happening, I was like, am I going to get in trouble for, for calling attention to it? Right. Am I going to have to deal with, um, somebody being mad at me for raising it. And then what do I get by raising it?

26:52Like, do I get like my side outraged at him? Does that serve me really? And I just felt sort of paralyzed, I guess, is the word by the question of like, what do you do in that moment? Because again, when it's regular media, the game is clear. We all know what's going to happen. We all know how we're going to play, the rules of engagement are very clear. But when it's that sort of thing, I thought like, do I want to be in this back and forth? Like, yeah, I can get some internet support, I can get a couple thousand likes on this dunk, you know, that sort of thing. But like, what does that actually get me?

27:28I don't know. I don't know that it gets me anything. And so I think I made some like kind of, you know, half-hearted post on Blue Sky or something at the time and then really just like, you know, raged about it in a DM group with friends for an hour. And that was the end of it. What do you do? What do you do when someone, you know, sends you something that's like, obviously nuts or weird, or like, I go back and forth on that. Sometimes I ignore it. Sometimes I try to point by point, explain it. Sometimes I, you know, I respond in frustration, but what you do about it systemically or globally, it's probably nothing because we may just be fucked.

28:14One-on-one, I think it works. But what works best? How do you extinguish crazy? I don't know if you extinguish it necessarily, but I've done it both directions. Sometimes it's sent to me, like, what do you think of this? What do you think of this? Sometimes, and this happened actually quite a bit during COVID. again like we were all in the i know if you guys are like this too but really we're all in the dms right everybody had like whatsapp groups at this point clubhouse groups that kind of thing and i had one person where you know we sort of maybe ideologically agreed like 25 of the time as a baseline but again these were like very ideologically diverse friend groups there was it was never an issue but what what he would periodically send was things where he'd be absolutely like mad with outrage about something like how do you not speak out against this don't you think this is crazy Don't you think this is terrible?

29:02And sometimes it was like, you know, maybe on DEI or race or trans or like pick your pick your culture war topic, abortion sometimes. And I would say like, you have to understand, like, I don't even see this. Like, this is so squarely in like your little bubble that the only that you are the first person who has even shown me that this is a moment of outrage on the internet. Yeah. Like it's only to you. Exactly. And so I would try to point out, you know, I can send you 30 things that you've probably never seen that, you know, the center left is extremely upset about right now today. And, you know, and you'll see then maybe that that we're not we're not even having a conversation at this point.

29:39Like you think that I should be speaking out against this thing that I do not even see. And then other times it would be like actually engaging on the merits, right? Which is, OK, let's have a conversation about this, like good faith conversation on the merits. Here's why I think this is ridiculous. Here's why I think this sourcing is wrong. Here's how. Sometimes what I do is I've actually found that sometimes pointing out the weasel words is actually a more effective way of responding. So I'm not going to debunk and fact check every point in this 4 ,000 word article. What I am going to say is look how often the word they is used.

30:16Look how often the word linked to or the phrase linked to appears. What is linked to? Yeah, maybe. Again, for me, this was sort of like a personal experience when I would watch how people would write around the thing that they wanted to say about me, right? I remember getting one media inquiry that was literally like, I was moderating a panel for the Obama Foundation's, some Obama Foundation conference. Moderating. I didn't pick my panelists. They were assigned to me. I was just asked to go there and ask them questions and have a dialogue. And Nicole Hannah-Jones was one of the people on the panel at the 1619 Project.

30:49You know, I am not particularly ideologically aligned with everything Nicole Hannah-Jones says, but it's not my job as a moderator to be. It's to have a conversation, right? This is why I'm there. And right-wing media reaches out with this inquiry that's like, we're going to write that we're writing that you're moderating this panel. And again, you start to see the article comes out, you know, we need a comment on that you're moderating the panel. And I was like, what do you want me to comment on? Like, do you want me to explain what a panel is or what moderating is? Like, what is the thing I'm being asked to comment on here?

31:16And then, of course, you know, it turns into like is linked to right. Duresta, who is linked to. And then, you know, it's just this transitive property of bad people. They just want to get a constellation of people that are boogeymen in that media ecosystem. And of course, Nicole Hannah-Jones is a million also. And so it's this article about literally like the panel hadn't even happened yet. There was not even anything to write that was objectionable related to the conversation or anything she or I said. It was merely the fact that two people that they did not like were going to be on stage at the same time at an event put on by a president that they do not like.

31:49And so this was like catnip. And I just thought like it's incredible to me that this is going to be a news article. And when you see these stories happen, when you see the like when you know what is real versus you see these weasel words that are, you know, linked to, connected with. you know literally like you're on a podcast with another person you're linked to them then at that point and this is how the sausage is made and i kind of like what you describe in your book actually is i've been more on a kick of like can i explain how the sausage is made right can i so i'll screenshot the email here's the inquiry i got yes here's what i sent back here's the article that came out let's talk about what just happened here right i'm not going to bother refuting the points in the article it's a waste of my time it's a waste of your time to read that because this is a The entire point is that this is a spectacle.

32:38And let me explain to you how the construct of the spectacle actually works. So that's how I've chosen to respond a lot of the time. Only one-on-one will I get into conversations about the merits at this point. And that's because a lot of the time it is, you know, some of it is facts, but some of it is values. What is the, how do I weight this piece of information? Like the information might be the same, but how we choose to weight it, what we choose to prioritize is different. And that's where I feel like those conversations are better in small groups. Yeah, I've been struggling with like, as I know a lot of these people, because they weren't crazy not that long ago.

33:16And some cases I've done business with them. In some cases we're friends. They've been to my house. I've been to their house. And then this tension of like, okay, well, what I think they're doing is abhorrent. I think they've like, not just lost the thread. I think like something's wrong, you know, like something's happened in their brain. and the tension between ignoring, as we said, we don't have to have an opinion. They're not me. I don't control what they do. And one's obligation when no one, you know, like that story about the emperor having no clothes. I think a lot of the misinformation we have is a result of people who are not well in some cases, just sort of being not well publicly on the internet.

33:56And then other people not wanting to pick on that person, Other people not wanting to call that person out. Other people not wanting the hassle of their crazy fans being on them. I think that's actually a big part of it. Yeah. And so there's, you just kind of, you're just like, so we're just going to sit here and watch this person like spin off into delusions and insanity, even though we know that some people are not recognizing, like some members of the audience are not recognizing what's happening and making real consequential decisions based on this information. I go back and forth as to like what the proper response to that is.

34:30I think it is actually that concern or like the question of, is it worth dealing with the crazy crowd? Yeah. Is a huge, huge part of it. And that's where as much as you can talk about bridging divides in real life, and there are a lot of great groups that are doing this, Better Angels is one of them. There's a few of them that are trying to say like, how can you reduce the belief that your political opposition is like actually an enemy and like we must vanquish them kind of sense of the word. When it happens online, like you are really committing to a day at minimum of being barraged by people.

35:09And that does become, it has a significant chilling effect actually. Yes. And that's where I think the question of, you know, we talk about counter speech. I mean, And I do in the book too, right? How do you have effective counter speech? The cost of counter speaking is real. And they make it higher on purpose. Yes, exactly. And that is where I don't know what the answer is. I think this is where, as I think about, you know, I went into academia in 2019. Like I don't have a PhD. It's not a, you know, it was something I kind of found myself in a bit accidentally. But when I think about, you know, what kind of research needs to be done, it is that question of what can you do to create that counter speech?

35:52Because otherwise, nobody wants to have that debate. Nobody wants to challenge that idea. I mean, I'm barely on Twitter. I used to be on Twitter 24-7. That was like my platform, right? And then after dealing with lunatics, I was just like, I'm just going to lock it down. And I can say what I want to say on these seven other platforms. But I also know that I am, to an extent, kind of like preaching to the choir when I do that. It's like there's good sense in saying, hey, I'm not going to talk about this thing. I'm not going to wade into this discussion because I don't want the hassle of these lunatics.

36:26And it's probably not going to make a big difference. And then there's also something that's like, that's like cowardly is the wrong word, but it's this tension between like sanity and good sense and sort of obligation and responsibility and justice. And I don't always know how to make that balance. And I think your point of just like, hey, I'm just going to say what I think is true. And maybe that's actually the way to do it is like, instead of thinking as it's sort of speech, counter speech, like someone over here is wrong on the internet, so I must let them know that they're wrong on the internet.

37:04Maybe the proper response is, hey, let's get better at being right on the internet and more effective at communicating what's right on the internet. You could argue that maybe it was always a lost cause for, say, the CDC in the pandemic to convince anti-vaxxers that they were nonsense. But you know what they could have done? They could have more effectively communicated the pro-vaccine message or any of the safety protocols during the COVID. And they did a horrendously bad job of the thing that was entirely in their control. Do you know what I mean? You can focus on how do I beat these people at their own game?

37:40And you're probably never going to reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. But you can reason the people who are asking for the information into the right position. And so maybe that's just the methodology. It's like, how do you just get more effective at communicating truth as you understand it and not see it as a contentious sort of discussion? Because you probably shouldn't be talking to these people at all. You're liable to get infected by talking to them. I think it's, you know, this was actually our view on it during the vaccine law fight where we had, you know, it was like a bunch of mom and, you know, some dad volunteers.

38:15And we were like, we're not going to convince the true believers to believe something different. We're here to reach the people who are on the fence or who have never heard of this bill that we want to pass or who have never thought about this idea. And we're going to do everything that we can to reach them. And that translated into like, you know, we would not get into debates in the comments section of our Facebook page. It was not worth the time. There was a finite amount of energy and we were going to just continue to post our message. And this was like very small scale activism, but I think it is the right instinct, I think, in a way.

38:48And I've been I really want to meet more comms people who think who do this professionally where I'm like, what is it? You know, I'm fascinated by the field of like crisis comms and things at this point where I'm like, how do you think about that? Like, what is it? What is it you do now? It's going to sound what are best practices? It's going to sound mean, but one of the realities that I have figured out the hard way is if you were good at comms, you probably wouldn't have a comms job. Right. I think you say this in the book, too. You would have your own comms agency. And so there is something.

39:17It's fundamentally unfair, right, because you're having basically employed bureaucrats fighting against entrepreneurs. Even if these entrepreneurs over here are nuts, the economics are fundamentally different. One has potentially can make millions of dollars. One, whether they do a good job or a bad job is only going to make their salary. And so it's sort of a mismatched fight. But yeah, I don't know. Just being able to effectively communicate is a skill that not enough people have. And crazy people care so much that they accidentally get good at it.

39:56Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

40:41We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

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41:53Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

42:03I think it's also, you probably see this, I feel like it's the rhetoric piece. I started going back and literally reading like rhetoric textbooks and propaganda textbooks and just being like, this is very old art, you know. Very old, sure. Yeah, you start with Bernays. Like Bernays figured this stuff out. Right, in the 1920s. And even before that, you know, hundreds of years before you have, you know, you have people in ancient... Demagogues are not new. Right. Demagogues are not new. So this question of, you know, reading old rhetoric books and things like this and just looking at what is the, what are the ways in which the communication works?

42:36And in the age of the internet, it is what is the thing that is going to make this go viral? Yes. Right. And I spend a lot of time looking at that, even in my own feed, right, where I'm like, why did this post, not even written by me, just more like, why did this post? Why did it do well? Why did it do well? Yeah. And it's either sometimes it's just pure positivity, right? I do think that people are really like, oh my God, you know, this is why people love cats, right? It is just that like, here is like a heartwarming, wholesome story. And it's fantastic that I'm seeing this on the internet because I never see this.

43:05I always see like hate and rage. So there's the pure positivity or there's the like, I am going to explain a thing that I have some sort of deep expertise in. I'm going to break it down and you're going to get like three tweets. And then I think there's like a feeling of like, okay, I've just learned something. Like there's an appreciation there. But then the last part is really like, here is my moral outrage. And you see this a lot. It's indignation. I think indignation really, really works. It's a powerful high valence emotion. Yeah. Well, I've seen this with what I do, right? So I'm not academically trained in ancient philosophy in any way.

43:38And I've written these books. I'm now associated with this thing. And so sometimes people will go, well, he's not as smart as so-and-so, or he's not as qualified as so-and-so, this person writes about it better. And there, I think sometimes there can be some resentment from academics that like my books are more popular than someone who's studied this thing for 50 years. And I sort of go, I mean, have at it, right? Like, go for it. Like, I would love for you to be more popular. But in my case, writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy, it's not easy. And making it interesting to people who are not interested in that thing is hard.

44:11And sometimes people just think being right about something or caring about something is sufficient to reach a mass audience for it. And there's a skill and a science to it and an understanding to it. And there has to be an openness to using different tools and different mediums. And if those people are not going to do it, whether we're talking about stoicism or talking about public health, what you're effectively doing is ceding the field to someone else. And you're not always going to like how those people do it. And so what I was trying to say, and trust me, I'm lying, is like, hey, look, I'm using this stuff to sell like T-shirts or books, low stakes items.

44:47Somebody else is going to figure – somebody else who is much more motivated than me or my clients is going to do it for things that are much worse. And if you don't figure out how to either close these loopholes or figure out how to – in the army, they talk about control the battle space. If you don't figure out how to control the battle space, you are ceding it to someone else and you are not going to like what they do with that space. Yeah, that's exactly right. One thing that I have liked about your work is you tell stories. And that's what my team at Stanford, we were never, the motivating factor was never to put out academic papers, right?

45:21We did that. We kind of had to, you know, kind of have to like check the box. But it was how do you explain to people in this moment when it matters why they see a thing that they see or how a thing works or how a scam works or how to think about some, you know, new and like how to think about generative AI, for example. How do we explain this using compelling stories? And it's a very different style of writing. It's a very different style of thinking. You want people to hear the story and to go with it. And I remember, again, the vaccine law in California, nothing we did was to put out stats and fact checks.

45:59And here is why measles vaccines are very important. We're going to argue with you about the science of how it works. We're not going to do that. Here's a kid with leukemia who can't go to school right now. Yes. Right? And that's where I have found that even during COVID, the thing that we saw most often, the thing that went most viral was human stories. Yes. And the people who tried to put out counter-human stories, right, the public health folks, were the frontline doctors, not the institutions. They were out there with the stats and the you know, droplets traveling X number of feet at this velocity or whatever.

46:33And then you've got the doctors who are like, here's the morgue truck parked outside my hospital. Right. You know, and one thing that we kept trying to think about is like, how do you elevate those people? How do you, how do you make those people your communicators? When I remember, again, the story I was telling about like measles and Samoa and stuff like that. So Facebook then decides, okay, well, we have some problems here. What do we do about this? And holding aside the specifics of the, that particular crisis. They then have to ask questions like, when people are searching for information, what do I show them?

47:04And I remember having a conversation with somebody at the platform who was like, we can up level, we can return a carousel of CDC content up at the top of the page and no one will read it and no one will share it. It's not interesting. And you can't, you're fighting, you're bringing facts to a knife fight over here. And the question of what do you surface? Who is both authoritative enough and also interesting enough? And there were huge gaps there. And that, I think, positioned us, it put us in the absolute worst possible place. And I'm not sure that that lesson was really internalized, unfortunately.

47:43I don't think that that's really been, that that was the takeaway for people. So you got to explain how the system works and then why this is a preferable outcome or process than this one. And yeah, I've politically we're doing a horrible job of that. I was thinking of one more Marx realist quote we were talking about preaching to the converted people or not converted people. He has this quote, he says like, okay, so you meet a shameless person or a frustrating or annoying person. And he goes, ask yourself, is a world without such people possible? Is there a world without shameless or annoying or incorrect people possible?

48:16And you go, no, of course not. And then, so he's like, okay, so this is one of them. Like they're a percentage of a whole. You have to accept that and move on. And I thought about this during the vaccine stuff. I thought about during COVID. I think about it during politics. It's like, look, you were never going to get to 100%. That doesn't exist. You're never going to get to 100%. So 5%, 10%, 20%, there's some number of people who are just off the table for you. The sooner you accept that and stop arguing with those people, then you can reach the 80%, the 85%, the 90 % or whatever. And we just, I find from a communication standpoint, people just spend all their time arguing with the people that are the percentage that was always going to exist and have always existed.

48:58There's always been crazy people. There's always been people who are wrong. There's always just been mercenary people and bad actors. And it's our outrage that that exists that bogs us down. And then what we're doing is ignoring what's actually a pretty sizable majority that is persuadable or is convincible, is interested. And not only are we ignoring them, but we're actually drawing more attention to these people, the bad people, who are then exposing themselves to the larger group. And so it's this super ineffective, like naive sense of the world that I think is at the root of why we can't seem to get ourselves on some of these messes.

49:35How do you think about in the work that you did or do that? Where is the role for positive influence, if you will? Like, how do you think about that? But, you know, conscripting people into it maybe or like making people feel that, you know, that they have a maybe the same sort of perhaps idealistic but kind of ethical underpinnings that journalism did eventually evolve into. You know, is there a mechanism for convincing influencers that that is actually like not a bad framework to operate under? Yeah, it's funny. I think one of the big things that helped turn journalism around from the yellow journalism was the invention of like journalism awards.

50:14There was clubs. They articulated like a code of conduct or like created a sort of set of cultural assumptions about what it meant. And all these things were limiting, I'm sure, in many ways and frustrating in other ways and elitist in some ways. But it had the effect of acting on as a governor against some of the either naked self-interest or sort of worst human impulses. And so, yeah, I try I think about this is obviously what my new book is about. But like, what is the what is the code of conduct or bylaws for your profession? You can't enforce it on other people, but you can you can set them for yourself.

50:55And then I think by communicating about them and talking about them, you can create a positive culture where people are aspiring to be like those things. And look, we've seen positive examples of these and positive feedback loops in history. Like Whole Foods has created obviously a whole bunch of incentives. Some of it's nonsense and some of it is like sort of corporate greenwashing. But where people are now competing to be more ethical as opposed to cheaper or have higher standards instead of lower standards. And I think the best way to do that is not sort of mandated from on high, but by creating a powerful example that is working and successful, and then people want to be more like that thing.

51:37And so we can't just dismiss the role of good people doing good things, talking about why they do it their way, and hopefully that becomes contagious also. And there's a handful of accounts out there and people out there who go like, I really like that person. I really like the standards they set. If more people were like this, it would be better. And that sort of example, I think, is important. And yeah, the government didn't come in and say, hey, this is how journalism has to be. The profession policed itself, but it did some nasty stuff along the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was a fascinating history, I think.

52:11I spend a bunch of time in the book trying to connect the dots back to those periods. I do think that there's this sense of like these, you know, kind of halcyon days of Dan Rather or whomever being this sort of moral authority and kind of shedding a light on like that. It wasn't, you know, we have a kind of rosy view of that period, not necessarily accurate. But what is the future of a lot of these things? You know, you're seeing influencers, you know, you're seeing the FTC start to come in in some ways like, hey, from, you know, moving beyond ethics to consumer protection. You know, you're starting to see the FEC has largely punted, right?

52:45It doesn't want to have to weigh in. I think some lawsuits, some of the defamation lawsuits and stuff will kind of set some absolute bottom lines. Like you can't do this. But ultimately, it's like, look, a court can come in and say, look, Alex Jones, you can't say this. And here are the consequences for having said this. And that's obviously powerful. But I think what actually has to happen is, and I can't understand why this isn't happening, is people need to stop fucking having him on. Like, I just don't understand what that is. I think we're in the, you know, in this arc of contrarianism is the highest good kind of model, right?

53:26Which is a, you know, like the reflexive contrarianism. It's not a thoughtful contrarianism. These people hate this person. I like them. Yeah, exactly. And so especially as. That's a good way to be real stupid and get yourself – Narratives around – right, exactly. It's just the – this is like what they don't want you to hear. And so we're going to have this person on because it is – but it does galvanize attention, right? I mean media – I remember when like – it was like Rogan or something had him back on at some point and just kind of let him talk, right? And that's the other piece where every now and then I'm like, come on, like just maybe make a counterpoint somewhere in that monologue.

54:05That's been the problem with podcasting is that it's very vulnerable as a medium if you, the host or person, don't insist on there being some sort of truth. It becomes this kind of both sides-ism or just like you don't realize you're platforming the idea. And some percentage of people are hearing it for the first time and liking it. Yeah. And I think you have a responsibility to not do that. There was like a whole media cycle about that, about Rogan having him on, right? Again, this notion of like the sort of the weird spectacle, the image, if you will, where like man has man on podcast and then there's an entire media cycle about the ethics of that, which is fine.

54:40It's a reasonable question. But then it turns into like the media doesn't want you to hear him. And so it drives more attention to it in a way. And so this question of like, how do you handle the sort of multi-tiered dynamics that are going to come in as one group is outraged and another group doubles down and so on and so forth. And it just becomes like, well, we're sticking it to those guys over there. And that's really kind of what drives our politics at this point. I think so. You want to go check out some books? Yeah, let's do it.

55:09If you want to come see me talk, if you want to see me get over some of my own stage fright and you want to ask questions and hang out a bit, I would love to see you. I'm doing events in London, Rotterdam, and Dublin in early November. And then after that, Vancouver and Toronto. This is all basically the 12th through the 20th. So it's going to be a busy November for me. So grab tickets, ryanholiday.net slash tour. Both the events in Australia sold out. So these will sell out also. So grab your tickets. I'll see you all soon. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show.

55:45We appreciate it. and I'll see you next episode.

56:17That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad free, no interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

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