 Yes. Yes. Every time I go, who did the eagle? Um, I got it on Fiverr. I when I was running for Senate, I, uh, I was like, I need an image and moving image of me in armor, riding an eagle in flight, wearing armor. And I posted it on Fiverr and it was like, just to see what I would get. And that's what I was like, I'll spend 50 bucks on that. That's awesome. Yeah. You, that's the best $50 you ever spent. It literally is. It literally is. Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's edition of generally irritable. Uh, I am super excited and pleased to have my friend, Dan French joining me this evening. It was pointed out to me that the Vermont Secretary of Education is also named Daniel French. Yes. And I had people actually reach out to me and ask me how I was able to like, how'd you get him on the program? And I was like, who, what do you mean? He's an old friend of mine. You know, we go way back. He like named my business, all this stuff. And they're like, Oh, but wait, where, where is he? And I was like, Austin. And they were like, I thought he was the Secretary of Education. It was really funny. It was a very confusing conversation. The only other famous Daniel French, uh, the guy who, uh, the sculptor for the Abraham Lincoln Memorial sitting Daniel French shut up. Yeah. You're not named after said famous sculptor. Are you? Uh, no, no, my middle name is Granite though. Shut up. No, it's not. No, it's not. Don't make jokes like that, Dan. You know that I'm gullible. Uh, part of the fun. So I asked Dan here today, as you guys might be recognizing this is a little bit different than a lot of the other programs that I've had on that are focused on local politics and specifically legislation or things that are going on at Burlington City Council or in Montpelier. And I invited Dan on this evening because as part of what I try to do here, you know, the goal, the mission of generally irritable is to help facilitate and engaged and informed electorate. And one of the things that is so hard and what I found why people don't want to engage is because of the tenor of the conversations that we're having. So whether it's, you know, arguing with grandpa at the dinner table, whether it's, you know, I've had people reach out to me who've said, Oh, I would run for city council, but I'm afraid for my business or I would get involved, but I'm afraid because of X, Y or Z. I don't want to be attacked. I don't want to be harassed. You know, people have concerns. And I thought to myself, what better? Hold on. It looks like this broadcast was deleted on Facebook to string to Facebook, create a new broadcast or just remove this destination from the broadcast and re-add it. Hold on. Let me see. It's not coming on. Okay. Hold on. Dan, we're going to have to try this again. Okay. I don't know what happened, but is there, I can check it online. What's the, is it just your website? It's on YouTube and Facebook, so it's not on Facebook. Let's see if it's on YouTube. I wonder why. Because it's a problem. That's why. That's stupid. Just wants to be a problem. Yeah, it's gonna make us start over again, I think. All right. Are we on YouTube? Can you tell? What's your address on YouTube? Generally irritable. I'm trying to see if we can just get it to start again, but it doesn't look like it wants to do it. There's a picture of you pointing at me on YouTube. Just grab that action. It does say live. Let's see. Let's see if this is working. Hold on. Okay, now it's working. Okay, so we're live on YouTube. We just got it going on Facebook, so it's just being stupid. Well, you guys missed a really good introduction. Those of you watching on Facebook and those of you on YouTube, thank you for being patient while we figure out the technical issues. Look at that. Benjamin, if you're watching, did you see that? I figured out the technology all by myself. Did you? Did you, though? Didn't you just sort of look at it and wait for it to start? No, I had to go in and edit it and then remove Facebook and then add it back again, and it worked. Wow. Good for you. It's more than I could have done. I'm really impressed with myself right now. I'm not gonna lie. All right. So for the benefit of those who are just joining us, I will, okay, there we go. Watch live video. So let's see. So for those of you who are just joining us, I have Dan French as my guest. No, not the Vermont Education Secretary. Dan French, my friend and mentor from Austin, Texas. Actually, you're not. You're from Kentucky originally, aren't you? I'm from Louisville, Kentucky. That's right. Oh, my goodness. You're a sucker. That is not my, that is not my thing. Is Kentucky considered the South? The Secretary of State of North Carolina, Rufus Edmondson, once heckled me while I was doing standup and called me a Yankee when he heard I was from Kentucky, because Kentucky was neutral in the Civil War. Oh, so therefore, that's interesting. Okay, so you're not a Southerner? Well, it depends on who you ask. The state is half Southern, half Midwestern. I think that's where you're from. Midwestern? Yeah, because it's right on the border with Indiana and Ohio and Yeah, okay. That makes sense, I guess. Anyway, so the purpose and mission of generally irritable is to help facilitate and engaged and informed electorate. So this is the part that you guys missed why Dan is on the show today. So as I said, normally we've got, you know, local politicians or things like that. We're talking about local politics. And I at stand on today because of the engaged electorate part of that mission at facilitate and engaged and informed electorate. And there are so many people that I talked to who say that they would get involved in politics, that they would run for office, that they would do something if it weren't for the tenor of the conversation about politics, people are afraid for their business, people are afraid, you know, for their kids that are in school and things like that. And one of the things Dan is really, really good at, given that he does have a doctorate in rhetoric. Did you guys know that was a thing? Rhetoric. Yes, I didn't know that was a thing until I met Dan. But one of the things he focuses on and I'm taking his class. So he's got a rhetoric class rhetoric warriors. What's tell people where they can go find the class and more information. rhetoricwarriors.com. I have two courses up now. We just launched my second course, which is converting conservatives. You haven't been successful. I told somebody today that no one was it yesterday. I said, I said, Dan would continuously message me throughout the election season with like random bits. And I said, I think he was trying out his material on me. I think I was like a guinea pig. Maybe, you know, sometimes it's just fun to just send people things. Like I offered you, offered you a slushie, I think was first if you would vote for Joe Biden. Correct. And then I upped the game to slushie and a corn dog. Yes. And I do love, I do love Sonic. Those are good offers. Those are strong offers. You know, I would do a lot for a raspberry limeade slushie with nerds in it from Sonic. I'm just saying I would do a lot. Wow, you I didn't know that was yeah, I didn't know that was a thing. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I didn't know that was a thing either until somebody told me and it's changed my life. Okay, well, then that's my next offer. I'll convert conservatives with nerd filled slushies. So one of the things that I think is so important about what you do is helping teach people, you know, the fundamentals of what what the argument is and why they argue for it. And and what I'm trying to know my God now my brain is going to be, I'm going to have brain farts. So why don't you just start Dan by telling everybody, you know, what are the fundamentals of rhetoric? And why do you think that it's so important to study? Yeah, that's a good place. So I'll do it real quick. Rhetoric is just at its foundation is just the study of effective effectiveness and messaging. That's literally the definition that anytime you go to talk, if you're going to be rhetorical, you think about what you're going to say, you design it and construct it. And then you say it to maximize your chances for being successful. And it doesn't matter. A lot of people when they hear rhetoric, the only time rhetoric makes it into the public consciousness or the media when it's negative rhetoric, like it's empty rhetoric, or it's just political rhetoric, you know, you hear that kind of side of it. And that's a small part of rhetoric, that's negative rhetoric. But rhetoric itself is everything that you say, when you're trying to persuade or have effects on people. So it's, it's literally the study of the best ways that we can talk. And is that, I mean, that really depends a lot on who you're talking to, right? So it's you can't just use the same argument for or against something with the same people. Is that right? Yeah, I couldn't offer slushies to diabetics. That would be awful. No, that would be terrible. Don't do that. You have to adjust to your audience. That's one of the principles of rhetoric. It's that when, you know, when you talk to a toddler, you change the way you speak, like everybody naturally understands rhetoric, they naturally adjust to try to make themselves more successful. So when you talk to a little kid, you know, I've got to adjust my messaging, change my tone of voice, the way I stand, my facial expressions, all that stuff. But it's the same way when you talk to adults, you know, if you're going to be rhetorical, you adjust to the person that you're talking to. So what do you think then, Dan, about how, you know, I titled this program, can't we all just get along the persuasion war? And so when you look at the the way that people are messaging, and let's we don't even have to pick Donald Trump and Joe Biden in that election, we could pick just politics generally. The the the tenor of the conversation is really tuned up. And people are just automatically ready to get into an argument. How ineffective is it when we all just kind of walk around and start from this place of we're enemies? Well, opposition, you know, used to not exactly mean enemy, right? Opposition meant we had different perspectives, but there were some middle ground to get in there and talk. And, you know, American democracy, especially at the government level and national level is built on the concept of compromise. So we keep trading off power, you know, Democrats are in power, Republicans are in power. But when those trades happen, they're still middle ground where they do a bunch of work. You know, they they they use that sort of space to get the work of government done. And that's changed. It started. I mean, it's been always part a part of politics, but it became weaponized really strongly in the 80s, like when Clinton was president and then the neocons came in under Gingrich. And they started using policies, you know, and governmental policies and things like what was called principled obstruction. So they literally, you know, set the policy of we're not going to agree with anything that Clinton wants, no matter whether it's good for the country or not, will block this for a while. And then when we get somebody in power who has more of our values, then we'll allow things to go through. And so when that happens, when you get complete obstruction, people lose their minds. Like I don't know if you've ever been just told by power, no, you can't do that. Yep. But it makes you insane. Yep. You know, and America has always had a middle space where it's not about power, it's about persuasion and compromise. But that is just, it's closed. Well, and it's interesting because it's interesting that you mentioned the 80s, like Newt Gingrich. And I think of, you know, people like Mitch McConnell being in that sort of class, or I don't know what you would call that, but that like group of people, where there's definitely that theory of obstruction when you're in the minority. And that it's like, okay, but you guys are also really corrupt. So you're trying to, you're making it look on the outside if nobody's really paying attention, like you're doing something good. And I'm using these terms really loosely right now. So just sure, this is not me defending anybody just for the record. But it's like, you guys make it look like you're doing something good, right? Like we like that Mitch McConnell, as an example, was pushing through a lot of conservative judges as a conservative. I really like that. But then you dig into him to find out more. And you realize that, you know, he's been part of shipping American jobs overseas. And he gives lucrative business contracts to his buddies in China, and all this American money is going towards crap that I don't think we should be paying for. And so it's like, these guys, like they care and like, they're doing something. But in the background, they're screwing us all over actually. So what you're saying is politicians double deal. They don't just stay with one set of values. Correct. Yeah. It's amazing. And so it's like, how do we even trust anything that comes out of their mouth or what they're saying? Well, probably you got to like the cool thing about rhetoric is it gives you a lot of software for making, you know, some more sophisticated decisions about some of this, right? Nobody ever gets trained in sort of how to kind of think their way through these things, how to look at the different things that they're saying and give yourself some space for, you know, finding maybe a better way of thinking about it. And so like what you did there was like jumping to a full conclusion about, well, none of them are trustworthy. You know, they all they all, you know, at some point will disregard your values and they'll go against things and they'll lie to you in public. You say, OK, let's all agree that that's true about politics. Now, does that mean they're all corrupt and that you should lose all faith in politicians or does it mean you need to understand who they are and why they're that way and adjust? So what I one of the things I think I just heard you say was that it's not just important to learn how to persuade but also to be listening for the way that people persuade. Did I? Rhetoric is actually counter persuasion. OK. And it's even deep persuasion, which is the converting conservatives course that I teach. OK. How do you deep persuade somebody who's assumed conservative ideology and conservative rhetoric? And that's like with you. You know, we talked about this some of my podcast, you know, you went from somebody who was liberal, you know, at one point in your life and you converted over to conservatism and there are reasons why. And there's a pathway that took you over there. And to me, what's what I found very interesting is what are those pathways and if somebody like I'm not liberal or or or a conservative, you know, I don't do either one of them. I'm not libertarian. I don't do any of those labels. But if I want to bring somebody out of one of those camps, because I think they're doing either doing something dangerous to themselves or to the country or I just don't like what they think, then I need mechanisms for doing that ethically, you know, to give you and the things I push are ethical only persuasion techniques where I can tell you, here's why I think what you what you believe is flawed and I can do it in a way that doesn't just make you lose your mind so that we can have a conversation and you can understand my points. You said ethical persuasion. I heard you say ethical ethical only persuasion. That's the foundation of rhetoric warriors. So it's not about converting people so that you can take advantage of them or things like that. It's about how do we have a conversation to try to come to consensus or to move you off the line. I guess what is when you say it's only ethical. That's what I push for. It's not that's rhetoric. A good way to think of rhetoric is like Star Wars. There's the there's the force and then there's the dark side of the force. I don't know what's not the light side of the force and the dark side, but, you know, there's the white arts of rhetoric and then there's the dark arts of rhetoric and the dark arts. If somebody is using any of those, I won't vote for them and I consider them to be, you know, a flawed public figure. And so part of the goal of rhetoric war is to teach people to recognize the differences in those and then to go after the people who are doing unethical persuasion in public because it's dangerous. It's dangerous to democracy. It's dangerous to people. We lose faith in the way people talk. So like McConnell, kind of what you're talking about politicians when they they say half of what they believe. But you know, partialism of disclosure is an unethical persuasion technique. And if somebody's doing it, they should be sanctioned or censored or fined or disqualified something. What did you call that again? Which one? The you just partialism. So I give you I give you half the information or a certain percentage of the information I actually have. That's really interesting. So so we're OK. So I might be going a little bit all over the place and forgive me if I can try to under sort of like targeted. So given that, we know that politicians are probably many of them skilled. I'm going to be careful because all or nothing talking is one of those things that I have attended. I have a tendency to be hyperbolic and that's not good persuasion. But when we know that politicians maybe are not always truthful when they use this partial whatever the heck you just called it. How do we make sure as Americans, let's just say, to not buy into the nonsense that politicians are telling us? Because that's, you know, I say I'm a conservative, like I said, but I don't like politicians on either side equally. So this is not politicians. Period. I don't. I really don't. I think that they're I think I think there are many of them who get into the business thinking that they're going to do something good, but are very misguided and have a tendency to believe things that are not so. And so and then they go out and they tell people these same inaccuracies or things or they they convince people listen to them. And so how do we as constituents listen for those things that are, you know, hyperbolic or unethical types of persuasion, things that aren't good for coming to consensus and living in community with each other? Well, of course, you take courses in rhetoric. You go to rhetoricwarriors.com. Well, you know, you don't take courses from me, but you should, you know, it should be part of our arsenal, like the Greeks had rhetoric training in their first three trivia courses. You had to take rhetoric, logic and grammar. And until you pass those, you couldn't go on and do higher order courses because it's it's essentially, you know, logic teaches you how to find true information and then rhetoric teaches you how to communicate it. And so when people are speaking in unethical ways, you need to be able to identify those ways and counter those ways. And it's somewhat, you know, difficult. That's a sophisticated way of talking that they've developed over time. And we need more sophistication in order to, you know, call it out and counter it. So I do think it will be super helpful if people had more training in rhetoric. Do you think that that some of this has gotten worse over the years because we've taken things out of school that help teach critical thinking, logical thinking, creativity and stuff like that debate? Maybe. I mean, debates, the only kind of baby rhetoric that has survived in the curriculum, you know, and how many people actually do debate very few. I think, you know, they gutted the idea of what rhetoric and persuasion is like, you don't get talk communication in school, which is crazy because it's the core skill that gets you through life relationships, everything, jobs and we get no formal training in it. We we just assume everybody will pick it up informally by, you know, being alive. And formal classes and that stuff can be really helpful, but they have to be, you know, well done. Like I never took debate in high school or anything like that. It was boring to me. The lecturing chess. Yeah, we didn't have any. I grew up in Podon, Vermont. Like we didn't have any of those classes at all. None of that was an option. But fascinating when you get into it and you see just how, you know, you know, how sophisticated it really is in helping you through life. I mean, just being able to persuade, like take relationships again, be able to persuade your spouse. You have to do that all the time and you can either do it well or you can go to war with each other and do it horribly. Benjamin, what do you want? Literally says all of the time he says people will act out of outside of their own best interest or your own self interest all of the time. Like people don't stop to think, oh, I'm being emotional or I'm being angry and I'm going to alienate this person or, you know, I'm just I'm mad. So I'm going to blow up this thing that I'm trying to do because they're because of feelings, basically. Yeah. And, you know, men are, you know, famous for being rational persuaders, rational communicators. Like they'll come back to it all the time, like, you know, well, this and this and this and this and the logical flow of everything. It's like, great. That's awesome that you can do that. You know, that's about a third or a quarter of what we need here in order to actually, you know, do anything and really good rhetoric isn't just logic. It has to be designed as emotional and the conversion course that I teach is basically I have a three-step process and it works. It doesn't necessarily it's not about conservatives. It's about learning how to convert somebody when it's important to you. And so like you do discovery with people. This is a normal interpersonal relationship structure. You learn about them, you listen and then, you know, you create a relationship with them that they get to where they start to trust you. You validate them. They understand you understand each other some and then they might let you try to persuade them. But everybody jumps right to persuasion and nobody wants to hear that from people they don't know. Well, that's what that's what I so that's what I was listening to you describe that. And I'm like, OK, well, that's something I can do with, you know, people I'm in relationship with or that I know. But when it's. You know, maybe if you're a candidate for office or if you're running a nonprofit, how like can you get there? Is there you're going to hate me for asking this, but is there any kind of a shortcut when you don't have the time to develop that kind of rapport with someone? Yeah, actually, there's some really good ones. If you a lot of the stuff, too, I blend Hollywood and rhetoric because, you know, I was a late night writer and producer in Hollywood and I've done stand up forever and I understand kind of the flows of entertainment and public performance and really great politicians understand that too. So Bill Clinton is a great example and there's this thing of think of it this as the public private. So in private, you know, we act a certain way and we have certain skills and we know how to comport ourselves in private. We go in the public and everybody freezes up and they don't act like who they really are and they act stiffer and they act more formal, more dramatic, more serious. And Clinton was a great example of somebody who was incredibly intimate and personal when he talked in public and so it creates this sense of having a relationship with him. So so authenticity basically is really important. Well, it's just being able to communicate to strangers as if they were close friends of yours and this is a Hollywood skill like you can't live, you can't survive in Hollywood unless you create instant intimacy with people you don't know. Well, and I think my I remember having this conversation actually with my pastor and I don't remember exactly what the context of the conversation was. But he said, Erica, the thing that you don't understand is you walk around life without a mask on like you show up to situations and you show up to things and you're just you. But most people actually go out into the world wearing a mask and that's what it makes me think about when you say, you know, people are either, you know, they think they got to be this way or that way or whatever. And so it almost seems like we're not even like no matter how normally you might try to be the other people are coming to the conversation with some kind of a shield, if you will, or some kind of protective measure. Sure. And they should. People are dangerous. You know, and your job as a public performer or public persuader is to pierce that shield instantly. And do you want some consulting? You want some persona consulting? Yeah. On you as a politician because I watched your videos. Is that a thing you can do? Oh, absolutely. Every every public performer or public person who can make a lot of money or get a lot of power has consultants. I'll tell you a great example of this. Do you know Ron White, the blue collar tour comedian? Yeah. You know, super famous guy now. I worked with him as just a regular stand up multiple times way back in the 90s. You know, and then back then he wore a cowboy hat and a Balero tie and cowboy boots. And he was a cowboy comic. He's from Houston and he just talked about that. And it was great comic, but he his manager brought in a consultant, an image consultant. And they remade him basically as a lounge singer. They took away the hat and all the cowboy stuff, gave him a different hairstyle, gave him a jacket, holding a glass of whiskey and a cigar, which is traditional lounge singer persona. He now he went from a fifteen hundred dollar a week, a week comedian to like 125 grand per show comedian. Just with that. The same material a lot of times. It's just now he's got a super, you know, developed super strong persona that was designed to carry him where he wanted to get to be. You would never have gotten there as a cowboy comic. That's really interesting because one of the things I have talked to Benjamin about a lot and other folks that have supported me is it's like I feel like there is. Uh, like I'm the angry lady, you know, and I remember Bet me know being one time when I went to speak at a police commission meeting, he was like, just don't be the angry white lady. And I was like, I am angry. And and it is it's like. And I'm guilty of this. Like I'm laying all my cards out because I'm no different than anybody else in how to figure out and struggling with this stuff. It's why I'm taking your course and why I'm really excited about it because it is hard to not be angry sometimes. And and like, uh, you know, how do you develop a poker face when? You know, I didn't. I mean, like you said, I used to be a liberal, right? And so I don't generally think people are bad or stupid or evil. I think that they're misguided. But when I go into situations and I'm treated like I'm evil because of what I believe, it's hard not to react to that or to put up my own sort of mask and be like, OK, well, fine, then I'm going to be the angry white lady because you're fricking mean to me. Yeah, but you're a professional persuader. So a rhetorician. And I believe very much in authenticity. I believe it as a rhetorical technique and I also believe it as a moral stance in the world. I think people should be authentically who they are. You know, I think if you want to get into public, you know, you need to have control over which part of yourself that you're going to display at which times. You know, that's what makes you a professional. That's what makes you a rhetorician or a performer or a politician is you have control. And, you know, again, on the unethical side, that becomes a total mask and total fake and totally unreal. But I disagree with that. I think it needs to be done ethically. So with you, you know, ethically, one of the one of the tenets of ethics is that you are authentic. If you feel something, you demonstrate it. You don't try to hide it or fake it. So you are authentically angry. Just be with that. Well, you know, there are techniques that help you own that. That like the problem I think a lot of times is that you're you're being judged not on you. You're being judged on other things that people see as villainous around you. So as soon as you start talking in a certain way or using certain language, then they're going to import all this experience from other people and other situations. And they're just going to dump it all on you. And it doesn't really apply to you because you're a unique person with unique views on these things. But it's going to happen. So it's just a quick, easy way to judge. All the time. It happens all of the time. I mean, I had people who would email me during the campaign as an example. And they'd be like, well, if you is poor dog drop, screw you. And like all this stuff. And if you say you're, or if you just have an R behind your name. I mean, I had a guy in the parking lot of Lowe's and Susan Blesserhart, one of my running mates, was like, hey, we're running for office as somebody was walking by. And I was like, I need to do my face, dude, shut up. And Blesserhart, she's awesome. I love Susan. But this guy was like, oh, are you Democrats or Republicans? And we were like, we're Republicans. And he's like, screw you. And it's like, dude, really? Well, what did you respond with? Did you respond with anger or like outrage or shock or humor? Humor. And a little bit of humor. I was like, God, look at you and your tolerance. Thanks. No, that's not humor. That's a script. Like you can't, you can't accuse the left of being intolerant that drives them nuts. But that's the thing is they are. Like Burlington voters, Chenin County voters are discriminatory. They're prejudiced. Well, they're evaluative for sure. They, and they are prejudiced. Like there's a clean and clear judgment about the right that you're villains. And so that, how is that not discriminatory? Is it true? No. Wait. You said McConnell was a villain. He's on the right. What's that? You just said McConnell was a villain. He's on the right. Yeah, but that's Mitch McConnell. That's not me. Yeah, but they don't see you, baby. They see Mitch McConnell. That's not fair though. How is that not discriminatory? How is fair come into it? There's nothing to do with it. Okay, so. You make real quick evaluations. Okay, well, hold on, hold on. Okay, hold on though. Back up. Okay. So I said it's discriminatory. You said it's not. Then you called it evaluative. Then did I say eval, eva, whatever word you said. Yeah. Evaluative. Oh, I said it right. And then I said it's prejudiced. And you said, yes, it's prejudiced. Which that, all those three words sound the same to me. Well, they're very, yeah, very close. Like when we start playing word games, we're gonna, I think I'm getting feedback in your, am I coming across in your speaker? I can hear you fine. I can't, it sounds like I can hear me talking on your speaker, but maybe not. Oh, hold on, let me turn it down. Anybody else hear it echoing? Message me in the chat box. I just didn't wanna drive anybody crazy with audio issues. I can't tell. Hopefully somebody will tell us. Okay, I'll let you know if I can hear it again. There was an echo, but it went away. Okay. Yeah, I think when you lower the volume, it got better. Okay. So those words are all close, right? Some of them are harsher than others. Yeah. Like evaluative, you know, is judgmental, prejudice, those are all demon words, they're all demonizing words, right? So as soon as you tell me I'm discriminatory, I'm gonna import all this other stuff in there about like race, because that's the area that I can hear myself again. Dang it. Am I coming through your headphones? I don't have you on headphones. I have you on a speaker. Dang it. If I have to plug in headphones, we might have some more audio issues. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, we'll try it again. Let me see. Gonna give it a shot. Gonna take a chance. Can you hear me now? Remember that guy? Can you hear me now, guy? Gotta get irritating. I can only make like 50 commercials before everybody wants to push you off a cliff. Flo from Progressive, are you listening to me? Well, she's done pretty well. She's not too irritating. That guy from, can you hear me now? I always wanted to just choke him and say, can you hear me now? I'm just gonna do comedy while you're doing your audio issues. Can you hear me now? How about now? Yeah, you've gone away. I can't hear you at all. Okay, I was muted. How can, can you hear me now? I can hear you now. You can hear me. I can hear you. All right. I'm gonna unplug speakers all together. Can y'all hear us? Murder comedy? What? Murder comedy. Yeah, it was murder comedy. How do you beat that? What? That's, Meena, what is, Meena just posted that comment. What does that even mean, murder comedy? Yeah. I just did a joke about the, can you hear me now, guy? And say, can you hear me now? Oh, okay. Can you hear me now? Oh my God. Okay, hopefully that's better. That actually probably is better now too, because then I can better hear Jeff if he's talking in my ear. Yeah, he says no echo, so. Okay, cool. Ben, get the thumbs up. Ben, thumbs. Yes. Okay. So, oh, that's weird. I can hear myself coming through the microphone too. That's a trip. Okay, we're good. We're good. All right. We're with you people. By the way, if you guys have any questions for Dan, feel free to just post it in the chat box. We'll read it and ask and let him know what it is and get him to answer. So we were getting on a good topic. Now I don't remember. I have to remember what we were. Discrimination. So what I was saying. Oh, discrimination. That lexicon, that vocabulary is problematic. And as soon as you say you're discriminating against me, race typically owns the word discrimination. Because I was intentionally poking people when they'd be like, oh, blah, blah, blah. And I'd be like, well, then you're just, then you're prejudiced. Oh, what do you mean? I'm like, okay. I would have valued you against using that. Okay. But I'm going to cause you more problems than you want. I just really wanted people to understand that that's what they were doing. It's not the same thing. Like discrimination, the technical definition of discrimination, yes, that's exactly what it is. But that's not the cultural use of the word discrimination. But it's also the same. But prejudice is the same thing. It's not. That's what I was saying, like ever since, especially, you know, with the civil rights movement and the black community basically owns discrimination. That's not fair. That is not fair. That means black people own words, gay people own a rainbow. This is not fair. That word, it was, that's been a long, a long fight. And so you, as a white person, can't appropriate that term without getting some real blowback. So if I use, if I get out my thesaurus and I use a different word that means the same thing, does that work? Absolutely. Words inflame people. That's why you find neutral words that don't inflame people so they'll actually listen to you. Okay. So. So prejudice and discrimination. You've lost white lady. They're not going to listen to you. See, that's great. Like, so this is the kind of thing. And I know we've talked about this before where you say, you know, you can't just use the same terms that everybody uses. Like, you know, there's a lot of times I would get really frustrated listening to other conservatives that were running for office give their answers at candidate forums as an example. Cause they would say things like, oh, you know, personal responsibility. I'm trying to think of a specific example, but I'm just like, oh my God, you just said the same thing that every old white man always says that everybody gets mad about that nobody wants to hear. Cause you're talking to other conservatives. You're not talking to the moderate middle that you're trying to win. Yeah. So like, if you're going to be sophisticated, like if you're going to be professional and work hard to give people good messaging that they can, you know, that can actually move them towards where you want them to be, then you adjust. And you're like, I need to be more sophisticated in my script here. Cause I'm inflaming people in ways that I don't want, you know, to have. And so like the right has a problem with this in general that they tend to do a lot of appropriation of other, other rhetorics, other terms and things like that. And it gets them into trouble because it's not, they haven't earned those terms. You know? Yeah. Like for white people right now to say I'm being discriminated against they have not earned that term. Hold on one second. There is a sign on the door that says, do not disturb. I don't care what you want. Thank you. But I was disturbed. Benjamin, Benjamin, when are we? Don't go stealing people's words. Oh my God. I apologize. The multiple knocks, I couldn't be undistracted anymore. So, so conservatives have a tendency to appropriate other things. And that's, and so we suck at it. No, you don't suck at it. It's just that, that appropriation is going to cause rhetorical problems. So when can you get, so you gave me an example like don't say discriminate, don't say prejudice or whatever, right? Is there other specific examples of things that you could highlight or like, or like general groups of things that people should be careful to avoid? Well, just like that one, if you use the word unfair, you'll probably be fine. People will be like, then they'll think, am I being? I'm so sorry, Dan. Hold on. Should I do more comedy? More murder comedy. I don't know how many murder jokes I have. Maybe I tell some more murder jokes and kill. Right. I don't want dead space. Entertainers never went dead space. No, they don't. And boy, this has just been a really challenging episode. You were all up on yourself at the beginning about how tech star you were. Benjamin, this is evidence that we need to hurry up and move. We were just talking earlier about how having roommates is really annoying sometimes. So anyway, here we are. Here we are. So yeah, so like, use the word. Did you get that last piece of advice that if you use the word unfair? Yeah, that seems like, that seems like not a good word to use. Why? Nobody owns unfair. Unfair, but because, you know, people say, well, life isn't fair, you know? It's still a good indictment of people. So if you say, hey, you know, I'm applying for this job and I don't get, you know, as much consideration because I'm white and I think that's unfair. Interesting. So Benjamin has a question. And he says, is there a difference between general sales techniques and Dan's concepts of persuasion? Did you see my response that I typed to him? Oh, I'm way better. Okay, well, maybe you can, maybe you can elaborate a little bit more. No, no, that's it, that's, I'm way better. Three word response. Get your weak sales techniques out my face. Really? You're not going to answer him? What's it? Well, I'm not talking about sales right now. I'm talking about, you know, persuasion. So what's the difference between sales and persuasion? So rhetoric wasn't taught for a long time and it kind of made it back into universities through business schools with advertising and marketing and sales. And so that's kind of, you know, business needs persuasion, needs it really badly. And so they've developed a lot of their own ideas about persuasion. Usually it's not, you know, it's fine. There's some really good things about sales. That's what you want to learn. But it's specific to business and it's not really specific to humanity or to politics and the things that I do. And I've worked a lot in business in the last five years doing marketing. So I've learned a lot of, you know, what needs to be done in sales. And my partner, my marketing agency is a sales guy. So I've heard lots and lots of that stuff. I think typically it needs to be thought through better that they would, you know, rhetoric's been studied for 2,500 years, sales for like, you know, a hundred. Five minutes, yeah. They could benefit from, you know, some deeper theory. So how do you maneuver? Like, is there a way to identify those verbal landmines or those language, linguistic landmines? How people respond. Okay, is there no way to know ahead of time? Well, you know, you do enough of those things and that's, you know, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you do enough of those things, that's why, you know, experienced politicians, by the time they get to national level, they're usually so good because they've done so much of that that nothing surprises them. They know all the landmines and they know all the good triggers too. So the right and the left have good trigger words that as soon as you say them, then you get good response from people, you know? And so part of becoming a national politician or really, you know, highly skilled politician is to learn all those words and to get very good at using them and not using them, depending on where you're at. So is it just a matter of like, I just think, you know, most people are not thoughtful with their word choice. They just say whatever comes to their mind, they just say things. Most people do their communication as expressives. That they don't know what they're gonna say until it comes out of their mouth. Yeah. That's not a rhetorician. So then I'm just trying to think of like, how does a person plan ahead to be able to have conversations that, I mean, maybe that's too much to ask. Maybe it's too much to say, oh, you can totally plan ahead to figure out, oh, just remove these 15 words from your language or, you know, if you're talking to a black person, these are things you should never say or like, I mean, is that just like practice and developing that stuff over time? Well, it depends on again, like, you know, what game you're playing, what field you're in, you know, if you're going across many different populations very quickly and some of them you don't have experience with, then you can only prepare so much. You can only get so much experience. I did stand up once for 200 Japanese teenagers who were in the United States doing, you know, a tour with a tour company and they bust them into the Hollywood improv and we had to do stand up for them. I had to do 10 minutes in front of 200 Japanese teenagers and they didn't speak English, you know, some of them or it wasn't their first language. Right. And they didn't understand the culture. Cultural, like nuances or jokes or people or history. You know, and they're teenagers and they were horrified by anything, you know, they were like, what's going on? And they gave them cake and I'm like, what am I supposed to do here? You know, I could not adjust to that audience. That's too far too fast. If I had taken a lot of time and understood them and learned what they think is funny and all that, then I could have made messaging, you know, that would have fit them better. But, you know, I didn't do a whole lot of those audiences. Well, and that makes me think about like, you know, a lot of as an example, a lot of the conservatives that I see running for office, you know, we're in a very liberal area. I mean, we are in a mega wicked hyper liberal place in Vermont. And if you are not prepared to have those conversations with people and you haven't taken a moment to stop and consider who your audience is, I think a lot of times it's like people don't consider who their audience is. I think that's really a big part of it. That's a more sophisticated way of doing rhetoric. Really think about your audience and pre-working so that you're ready, you know, with more script. And, you know, that's not a lot of people when they get into public jobs, like even as politicians, it's not their full-time job. They don't have training in it. They have some strong views, but they don't have the communication training, you know, to communicate those views into complicated populations. And so you're gonna make mistakes. And, you know, when you do consulting and I do training with people who wanna do public type communication, there are things that you teach them, which is, you know, don't try to do too much too fast. Start with something small that you've got control over and then move out from there. National politicians handle it with talking points. George Bush was, you know, great at this. He had a stump speech, a set of stump speeches, set of talking points. He learned them and he delivered them. Over and over, no matter what. And that's a safety net. It's designed by professional writers. You've practiced it so you know how to deliver it. It kinda annoys people in the moment that they're being given, you know, pre-written script. Right. I've heard you say this line 20 times before. Yeah, but it's still a great line and it doesn't get you into trouble, trouble. Like if you're not a good improviser and Bush wasn't, you know, he was too much of a gun slinger. He liked to joke, you know, and that's a bad thing for a politician because jokes, you know, step on, you know, social mores and taboos and shock. And that's what they do, bad for politicians. Which is what, okay, that doesn't, okay. Yes, but why? Like people say all of the time that they want people to be more authentic. That they want someone who will say the truth and be more plain, speak more plain English or, you know, whatever fill in the blank. And yet then when somebody comes out that's like that, it's a problem and we don't like it. People are too polished and that's a problem. Well, I think, you know, polish is something that bothers Americans. We like to see the real person and if it's polished, we assume we are not getting the real person. I watched this happen with Pete Buttigieg, who I thought was very authentic at the beginning of his exposure from, he was a mayor and suddenly he's on national TV and he over talked a lot and told a lot of, you know, really interesting details. And I liked the guy. And then when he went on debate stages and stuff, he'd clearly gotten some training. He sounded like Obama. He literally used the Obama speech delivery pattern. The cadence and everything, yep. Everything, he used the national cadence. So that may be good. I don't know, like getting him elected, that may be good. But it alienated me. And then after all that, he's come back now. And like I watched him at some of his, the hearings for transportation secretary and he's back to sort of talking authentically and he's very good spontaneously, you know, his responses sound authentic and thoughtful and he's not trying to be mean, but he also doesn't take anything from people. So it's interesting to see that difference of dialogue, authentic dialogue in the moment and prepared script. When you say he doesn't take anything from anyone, do you mean the speech pattern or what did you mean by that? Oh, I mean, content-wise, like both sides play this game of, you know, I need to catch you in something wrong. I need to stain you and slander you in some way during this interaction. You know, so they both, they do it to each other where they focus on the negative things about that person. It doesn't matter whether they're accurate or not. They're trying to focus on that because that's where they win is by lowering their opponent whenever they can. It's not an actual technique, but it's clearly, you know, a popular one. That is really a good point. And I was noticing this recently, you know, if your whole pitch is the other guy sucks and I don't suck as bad as the other guy, I feel like that's a pretty bad pitch. It's like- It seems to work. I mean, the right, and Trump was, you know, a master of this, of insults, insults and staining, you know, finding something negative. Like this week they came out with, oh, Joe Biden's got a Rolex. It's like, okay. All right. So I guess like he's got a million, you know, billion dollars at home and he jumps in it like Scrooge McDuck. I don't- Well, hold on. Biden's whole pitch was, I'm not Trump. Like, come on, that goes both ways. Well, actually it doesn't. Like those are not, those are completely false equivalencies. A guy with a Rolex on his watch and a guy with a gold toilet. Oh, I'm not talking about that. I'm saying like Donald Trump being rude and like him being like, oh, Hillary's of this and you know, whatever and insulting people. Like that was also Biden's whole pitch. So Trump's pitch in 2016, and I'm speaking specifically just about election season was Hillary sucks, she's corrupt, she's a twat. And can I say that? I don't think I'm allowed to say that word. We might have to bleep this out later, but you know, she's of this and that and whatever. Vote for me, right? That was his whole pitch. And now this election season, Biden was like Trump sucks and is a crazy person, vote for me. Like, isn't that the same? Well, it's the same impulse, yeah. I mean, you wanna say negative things about your opponent. Okay, got it. So why does that work? Because you can only do two things and you know, political rhetoric. You can either raise yourself up and make yourself, you know, more heroic, or you can lower the other side and make them more of a villain. And one's easier. Is it like one is just easier than the other and that's why they stoop to that? No, they do both all the time. Trump was a great boaster. You know, I got good boast. You know, I'm the greatest president. Like a champion. More, you know, I'm a stable genius. It's endless. Like he comes from a promotional background where you can make massive over claims and it's fine. And he imported that into politics. And you know, but it's all sort of the same impulse which is to build yourself up, build your side up and to tear the other side down. Those are the two major forces in political rhetoric. In traditional Greek, it's called epidaictic rhetoric. It's praise and blame. So you praise your side. There's a great example of this from Shakespeare. Mark Anthony comes up and says, I'm not here to praise Caesar, but to bury him. And then proceeds to praise Caesar for an hour and to tear down all the guys who stabbed him. And epidaictic rhetoric is just, can I make praise stick on the heroes and can I make blame stick on the villains? So then, okay, so let's, so I want to bring this back to local politics and conversations within family. From my perspective on Burlington, Vermont. No. And it held the coat there for a while. Yeah, but no, shut up. It's not the same place. Coat factory? I think the coat factories in like Connecticut or something. Burlington, Connecticut. That's just mislabeled unethical rhetoric right there. I'm just, I mean, Connecticut, we could lose as a state and I'd be fine with that. Really? I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't say that. That's rude. I don't really mean that. I'm only saying that. Well, I have a few reasons to say that. One is that you're the only state in the union that has not at least started the process toward passing the convention of states application. So 49 out of 50 states have at least, at least have some movement on the convention of states resolution, except Connecticut. I don't wanna report Connecticut. Come on. What's that? So you're gonna go after poor little Connecticut? Poor little Connecticut? Are you kidding me? They have some of the wealthiest people in the country. I don't feel bad for Connecticut. Just because they're not supporting your cause. Screw Connecticut. No, I'm just kidding. I don't really mean that. I don't really know anything about Connecticut, to be honest with you. Erica Bundy, rhetoric, you come after her, but you can't spell any of her names. No, but seriously. Oh, and Connecticut is bankrupt, apparently. That's another reason to not like Connecticut. This is a reason. Vermont stole all their money. Oh my God, don't even get me started. So how can we, so is it like, I can't tell if it's national politics has brought the conversation down into the gutter in our neighborhoods and with our families, or if it started in our families and is, do you know what I mean? Like, is there a correlative relationship or a causative relationship? Or is it just back to that same conversation, which is we don't know how to talk to each other? Well, we haven't been taught how to do political discussions. Did you ever take a course and, hey, here's how to talk to your family about politics? Again, nobody has any argument training. Or my family period, you know? Yeah, well, across the board. There is so much, more to the point, I would say it's been the opposite of that in that so much of the self-help culture and our self-centered culture is, it's about you and what makes you happy and you are the center of the universe and your truth and your beliefs and your whatever and that if people don't agree with you, well, then you should just cut them out of your life. I feel like that's actually more what's encouraged rather than trying to dwell in understanding of the people in your family. Yeah, I think that's a good, that little line that you just said, which I think is a Christian line, dwell in understanding. You know, good religions and religions are working correctly. They give you those little life instructions like that, which are incredibly powerful if you practice them. So to dwell in understanding means to sit in non-judgment, to let people say whatever they wanna say, and to, like we talked about the technique of validating it, validating them, their right to say it, their value as a person and being able to take that and that's hard for people. Well, and that's, oh, I'm sorry if I'm interrupting you, that is validating and valuing, I think is so important because it's like so many people that I talk to, it's their opinions or their political beliefs or whatever are like who they are as a person. It's almost like if you disagree with their opinion on politics or you attack their position, attack, that's maybe not the great, question their position. Excuse me. It's like you're attacking them as a human being and saying that they are something like garbage or whatever. Yeah, well, people's political beliefs, hopefully, and their social issue beliefs grow out of their core identity, who they are. So it is attacking who they are. It's going after, for you, it's going after an issue or a logic or an expressed belief and it's external. But for them, they hold these things inside of them. And so when you are criticized about those things, it is personal, the same way it's personal to you when you've got, you know, you've told me stories about being treated badly because you're a Christian or because you're a conservative, especially when you're in California. And that hurts, you know, because it feels like a personal judgment because it is to you. That's true, but I've also had to, well, and so, okay, so this is interesting. I've also had to come to terms with the fact that people's opinions of me or opinions of my opinions don't matter and that that is not, like people not liking my politics does not decrease my value as a human being. Right, but you've trained to that. You've been in politics, you've had a lot of experience with it. You've been a lot of therapy and a lot of Jesus. Yeah, you know, I've got to get to a healthier place for this because I, and therapists learn this, like you can't absorb the emotion in every interaction or you'll explode. And so public the same thing, like you learned to just, it doesn't, you don't have any feeling from it. You let it go instantly. You're like, this isn't real. They don't know me. You know, all those things that teach you, you know, again, how to be a public rhetorician, which are skills that you need if you're gonna do politics. And you need them in your private life, it turns out too, when you want to talk about politics over, you know, Thanksgiving dinner, but people don't have them. They're just raw and so they just erupt. It sounds like, I feel like a lot of these conversations end up coming back around to people need to deal with their mental health issues. And I'm, and I'm putting that, I'm using a broad term there, but like so much of what I feel like is, is a challenge in society right now, or in communication and relationships, is people not understanding that their value comes outside of themselves. Like it's not about, you know, it's like, doesn't matter, like what people think about you is not where your value comes from. Your opinions are not where your value comes from. How do you not take things personally that people say to you? It's almost like our emotional issues get in the way of us being able to be present in the conversation. It's like we make the conversation mean more than what it actually means. Yeah, and again, you know, cycle back to the fact that you've had, you know, training and experience and, you know, psych health and things like that. It's been part of your life so that you've developed some real insight into it. Some depth of experience. Most people again, don't have that. You know, like my daughter, my ex-wife is a therapist. And so my kids have all sorts of psych talk training. My daughter made a T-shirt when she was in the art program in high school and said, my mom's a therapist. How does that make you feel? And, you know, it's because they've had that training and it's helped them a lot of ways, you know, when they get into complicated emotional situations because they have, you know, some terminology for it and somebody to talk to and process it. And so again, I can't help the fact that like, I was a professor for 20 years and I just know the super value of real education. And I see people trying to work through these very difficult discussions about politics with no training and then wonder why we can't talk. I'm like, well, because you haven't been trained to and you're in a complicated explosive situation. Well, and that's the, so that the idea of validating and valuation, it seems like that would go a really long way to building that rapport that you talked about where if I'm having a conversation, even if it's with somebody that I don't know super well or don't have a deep relationship with, if I can keep that in mind that this is a person who is inexperienced in rhetoric and likely puts a lot of weight and story behind what they believe, what it means, you know. And so if I can let them know, like it's not even just enough to say like, I hear you or parroting back what they say to that you heard them, it's showing them that you're seeing them as a human being, even if you disagree with them basically. Yeah, I think that's a great technique. That's really valuable. And if you bring that, you won't be angry white lady. I'm gonna practice that. Well, you'll be accepting white lady who still has some issues that bother her and people will give you space to do that. I think you earn that by giving that kind of listening and that kind of space and that kind of respect to people. You show that to them and then you earn the right to say some of your views, whatever they are, it doesn't matter. So what do you do if you're in a place that is just like, it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what you say, you're just in an area where people treat you really unfairly, no matter what, right off the bat. Is there a way? I mean, are there sometimes as a professional rhetorician? Did I say that right? Yeah, every time there's rhetorician, but it's rhetorician. No, rhetorician. A rhetorician, is there ever a time where it just doesn't matter what you do, there's no way to get through some people or some person? Well, sure. Failure is way more common in persuasion than success. I tell people to chop it up, like if there are 500 things that could be accomplished here and you get three, then that's a victory. I can't take somebody that I just meet from a belief system that they've had for 50 years over to a new belief system, but I can make them think, I was already talking to that liberal, you know? And that's a victory and I'm not even a liberal. Like, you know, for me, it's like, one of the things I do is with comedian because comedy is just a different approach or intellectual professor on the other side is, you know, it's one of those things that people, they bother them sometimes when you come from the position of expertise. And so sometimes people, because I'm also a super working class, I mean, I came from Kentucky and I was the first person to go to college. And so when they talk to me, a lot of times they're like, oh, wasn't that bad talking to that professor guy? That's a super victory in persuasion is because I got something good in them about me. Yeah. So if it was important to me and like the converting conservatives class, to make the point that I've got a program called Convert One Conservative and it could be Convert One Liberal, I don't care. But I started with conservatives. And so Convert One Conservative, you know how much energy it takes to actually persuade a human being? No. A lot. And it's a luxury and it's no fun and it's emotionally wrecking, you know? And you have a bunch of stuff that you don't agree with in order to get through that and maybe start to convert them to a different way of thinking. Wow. And it's no fun. And so just pick one, one person. Like you, if you wanna, you know, you're gonna get mistreated when you don't fit within a political culture and you live in that community. Yeah. What I would do if I were you is, so there's the traditional ways of communicating yourself as a conservative which would probably work just fine if you were in Peraland, Texas, you know? Yeah. But if you're not, you're in Vermont. So appropriate a bunch of their stuff. Wear a bunch of blue, but with just a tiny little red button. I love your red button. I've never talked to you about it. Well, it's like wild stuff that like, you know, having a flag is fricking racist and having this is like, if you believe in the constitution, it's race. What's that? I said this at the beginning of all this. You're not being judged on Erica. You're being judged on all the stuff they've seen on TV and there have been a lot of horrible people running around with Trump flags on TV. That is true. And so you're gonna be judged like that. So you don't wanna associate yourself with that. You wanna explain who you are and avoid all that ugly judgment. I got a lot of crap for not being openly a Trump supporter during the campaign. You know, I had made some videos that said, you know, I did, like I did a video as an example, I didn't think Joe Biden could win the electoral college. I thought that he was gonna win the popular vote and not the electoral college. I thought it was gonna be, that was my prediction. And I made, you know, some other videos that were similar to that. But people kept asking me, you have to tell me if you're voting for Trump or not. And I was like, I am not going to let you, let the Vermont Senate, Chittenden County see be a referendum on Donald Trump. I'm not gonna do that. I am an individual human being and I have individual thoughts and opinions. And, you know, yes, I didn't say this to them, but yes, I'm voting for Donald Trump. But there's also a lot of crap about him that I do not like, you know? He is an imperfect vessel for, what's that? Why didn't you say that? Because I didn't want to have the headline be, oh, Senate candidate is a Trump supporter. Oh, yes, you did. Hell yes, you wanted that. No, I didn't. Did all the other Trump supporters who you actually want to represent would have voted for you. They did. Well, then you won. I mean, no. Yeah. Because people in Chittenden County are too prejudiced to even consider a Republican. I told you not to use that word. I know I said it on purpose. So we're about... It's unfair you didn't vote for me. I just, Dan, I just realized it's after eight o'clock. So I normally go for about an hour. Okay. I know we had some technical difficulties, so maybe that's why it went by so fast. No, it's because my stuff is fascinating. It really actually is. It really, really is. And I'm missing a couple of weeks of class. So I'm gonna have to email you about that. Oh, there you go. Yeah, we had a little glitch at one point, but just... Yeah. Did you sign up for full class or did you just sign up for the first two free weeks? The full class. Okay. Yeah, I'm super excited. I love it. It's been, it's so fascinating because, and I just, so everybody, if you have some curiosity about this, if you wanna run for office, if you just wanna be able to have a good conversation at the Thanksgiving dinner table and not scream at your sister's guest and tell them to go F themselves. Like I might've done a couple of years ago. Literally, it was not good. It used to Thanksgiving. Oh my God, it was so bad. It was before I started all of this process and really learning. And it also happened to just be like my life was really stressful at the time and things kind of sucked. And then this man who is a person who wants to just be an instigator, I let him get under my skin. And that's one of the things. This person didn't even really care about the things that he was saying. He was just being a jerk. Like he was literally trying to make me mad. Americans love that. That's one of their favorite things to do. Oh my God. I just, so that's one of the other things I would say is if you're having a conversation with people and they're being a jerk, like they might be doing it intentionally to upset you. And so if you go with it and you just let them lead the conversation, like you're not in control of your own self. Yeah, you have the right to determine who gets to talk to you and how they get to talk to you. That's true. That is true. I don't do trolls. I don't allow any negativity. I don't take any negative feedback. I don't argue with people I don't know. I don't do any of that stuff because it's detrimental. I don't enjoy it. I enjoy talking to people that are thoughtful and interesting and I don't care if they're right or left, but I want to hear their thoughts. I don't want to hear their accusations and they're trolling. They can do that on their own. They can say whatever they want, but I'm not required to hear it. Well, and so does your class help teach people tools? I mean, I've gotten some of it, but when people go through the whole thing, do we learn tools for kind of talking to anybody? Is it, and obviously you said there's one course that you have that's converting conservatives. And so that maybe directly or sort of tailored in a certain way, but is the other class like the one I'm taking, is that, am I going to learn how to talk to any kind of group of people or community or like, well, I learned tools for communicating, I guess, is the short answer. Your question. So there's two courses. There's the master course in persuasion and there'll be a volume one and probably five volumes at some point, but it's 25 weeks. I sell it for 25 bucks because I want people to actually take it. Wow. It costs $25 to take a class from me. Hold on. Okay, hold on. What? I don't want to do the $799 master course. I don't want to do it. Okay. So now I'm mad that I got the, I know Dan discount and it was only $25. Man, I want to just give me the 25 to support you. My partner, the sales guy launched it at 99 and I'm like, I don't care about that right now. I care about, I want people to take it. People actually doing it. Okay. Sorry I interrupted you. So it's 25 bucks. Okay. So if everybody is listening, any, every one of you that is listening right now, any of my supporters, any of my friends, any fellow politicians, anybody thinking about it, for $25 you can learn how to go talk to people and not sound like an idiot. Okay. Do it. It's avoidance training. Oh my God. Oh my God. There's no reason to not do this. Okay. I interrupted you. I'm sorry. Please finish. You were talking about the tools. That's a master course in persuasion. And basically what I do is I go through again, the 2,500 year history of studying persuasion and I just pluck out what I know are the best concepts. And I write about one each week. And so like, I think you may have gotten the one about big signals, which is the whole thing with the capital, you know, protest and insurrection depending on whatever terms you want to land on it. They, it's a big signal. Like it started to fade a little because we're getting farther away from it, but it was such a huge, you know, visual. It's such a big spectacle and the colors and the close ups and the violence and all that. It will never go away. That will be, you could talk about that 20 years from now and people will know what it was. And it's so powerful that the right is going to, they're going to suffer from that. Anybody associated with that big signal, that big piece of, you know, rhetorical symbol is going to suffer and you're watching them. They're trying to get away from it. And some of them are still going towards it. I'm like, okay, I can see, you know, I can see a play there where you want to go. But it's, so like that is the idea of like, if you're building national persuasion, you got to get a big signal, you know, you better construct something like that to drive you up like a flare that is so big, like a firework that is so big that everybody sees it. And that's real rhetorical power on a national scale. Yeah. But you can construct that stuff. And that's what rhetoricians do is like, hey, I need this. I may have to take a hundred options, a hundred tries, but eventually I find something, I design something or whatever that really pops. Yeah. And it changes everything. So the master course pulls up concepts like that. The converting conservatives is more about personal conversion. Like when you talk to people one-on-one, you know, and you're trying to bring somebody either out of a political perspective or to a political perspective, how do you do it? And I've had to do some of this with my daughter. She's a spiritual millennial, you know, she's 21 and she grew up in Austin in Los Angeles. So she's as liberal as liberal gets. But she goes, she goes romping over into the far side of liberalism that I don't particularly enjoy talking to. I'm like, you can't be that reactive because then nobody can talk. You keep taking all the words, you know? And I get that we need to be, you know, expand our vocabulary to not offend some people and understand the value of that. But you can't take all my words. That's why I was like arguing with you about not being able to say prejudice. Yeah, but you stole that word, didn't you, word? Oh my God. But all the words, I said, I'm gonna start a segment on the news program and I'm gonna call it language police. This week on the, on this week's episode of language police, why? Because you're again, appropriating for your, even if your concept is correct, you're appropriating things that you don't deserve. Oh my God. Oh my God. Why, who's earned language? Who am I appropriating language police from? Well, yeah, I mean, I don't wanna get into a new topic, but it's the same thing, like that is not, you didn't come up with the idea of language police. You're borrowing that from somebody. Oh my God, okay, so I have to come up with my, what if I come up with my own name for it? Well, that's what reparations do. You need your own unique way that avoids the negative, amps up the positive and then you've got some rhetorical energy there. You've done some rhetorical work. Oh my God, this is so much effort. Yeah, it turns out talking to public to human beings, not easy. Oh my God, because everybody's got something that they're like triggered by or, is offensive to them and I'm sorry. So I interrupted you talking about your daughter. Like, what do you do when you're talking to somebody like that? Well, you learned some rhetorical techniques for changing them. I've had to desensitize her because I don't like talking to that and I've had to adjust to her. I've had to say- So it goes both ways. Because she does professional makeup. So she's a makeup artist and she works in movies and special effects and with drag queens, and she's been in that community and knows a lot of drag queens and has done makeup for them and really knows the issues of their life and what they go through and it's important to her. So she has no tolerance for anybody who doesn't have any of that experience and doesn't have a sophisticated language to talk about it. And I'm like, again, if you want to do good things for that community, not tolerating mistakes is a bad idea. To teach people, but not with this sense of indictment and like how dare you, but more like, okay, well, let me show you something. Wow, that's probably not the right thing to say. Well, and I think that, you know, that is almost bringing us back around and probably a good place to put a pin in it is that reminder that when we insist on seeing the other person as the enemy or bad or wrong or flawed, we lose the opportunity to persuade them because instead we just condemn them. Yeah, we bash them and nobody is gonna be persuaded by bashing. No, I can tell you in all of the arguments that I've gotten in with my husband, screaming at him has never once been effective. Yeah, but it feels good. Yeah, it feels good. Okay, so rhetoricwarriors.com Yep. Is the website, is there any other place people should go to check you out, see what you're doing? Do you have like a calendar? Are you doing any standup these days? What you got going on? You know, standup died with the pandemic. Hopefully it'll come back at some point. But, you know, I, rhetoricwarriors is the main thing I'm doing right now and it's like I tweet jokes all day long at rhetoricwar, political jokes all day long. I take shots at both sides but I take a lot of shots at the right because they're easier to take shots at. They make bigger mistakes and they have bigger characters sometimes like Cruz and Holly and these guys. I'm like, so easy. And so, yeah, if you wanna, if you just want jokes, you know, about politics go to, it's called at rhetoricwar because I couldn't get warriors in there. Okay. Too long. Yeah. So that's on Twitter. We're talking about this stuff all day long at rhetoricwar or rhetoricwarriors but yeah, it's kind of my main thing right now. Okay. And then is it the same, are you on all the social medias? All the social medias. So either at rhetoricwar or Dan French. It's all at rhetoricwarriors now. Okay. Cool. And I'm not doing YouTube yet but I will be and I'm probably gonna be doing at least a week monthly or maybe a weekly newsletter. Cool. Awesome. Dan, thank you so much for being with us today, this evening, giving people some good information about talking to their grandpa at Thanksgiving and their neighbors. I'm gonna have you hold on with me just a second while I end the broadcast and make sure that we don't say anything embarrassing live. So thank you all for visiting. Generally irritable this week's episode. Next week I'm gonna have on Mary Bearworth. Excuse me. Mary Bearworth is the executive director of Vermont Right to Life and she's gonna be talking with me about Vermont's bill to add abortion to our constitution. So that should be a really interesting conversation. So thank you again, Dan, rhetoricwarriors.com. Everybody go check them out. It's $25 to take a lesson in not sounding like an idiot. That's my plug for you, Dan. Thanks. I appreciate that. All right. Good night, everybody. Bye.