 G'day mate 40 here So What are your favorite things? I mean it may be raindrops on roses and maybe whiskers on kittens For me one of my favorite things is to put into Google Scholar Whatever topic I'm interested in and get the latest and greatest academic research on that topic so I just did that for talk radio and Found a whole bunch of essays that I want to talk to you about but let's begin by discussing the Response to COVID in Australia, so Australia, New Zealand by and large have got off really easy with regard to Ricardo misses the green screen Well, the advantages of not having a green screen and not doing OBS is that it's just more spontaneous It's just me talking to you. That's less set up and here we go So from an American perspective the Australian and New Zealand responses to COVID seem authoritarian So Australia's just passed new laws giving police new freedom to crack down on public gatherings in Major cities in Australia that are dealing with COVID and So from an American perspective It seems like Australians are just a bunch of sheep And so Dennis Prager when he went over to speak to Australia He said you're like you're like the frog, you know getting boiled that I can't believe how many freedoms you've been given away and So there's not nearly as much emphasis in Australia, New Zealand on freedom as there is in the United States and So you're wondering like why do Australians put up with these coercive? restrictive COVID measures to restrict public gatherings and The main answer is that what freedom is to Americans fairness is to Australians and New Zealand is so Americans talk a great deal about liberty and freedom and the American reaction to COVID restrictions has largely fallen on the lines of like you've taken away our freedoms, man These are our God-given constitutional rights freedom of assembly freedom of religion Freedom of speech, how can you take away these freedoms? That's not the primary response in New Zealand in Australia So the primary value in Australia, New Zealand is fairness So while Americans think ah taking away our fundamental freedoms Australians think in terms of primarily of what's fair and so Generally speaking Australians trust their government much more than Americans do And New Zealanders trust their government much more than Americans do and Canadians trust their government much more than Americans do So Cardo says I missed the green screen. Australia's fallen from the Anglo-American sphere into the Chinese sphere of influence I don't think so But there's a good debate about that Australians being conditioned to Chinese norms. I don't think they're any more conditioned to Chinese norms than Americans are Australians the Chinese subjects now. I don't believe that's true Australia led the way Asking for a for an inquiry into the origins of COVID and Australians and the Chinese had a dramatic falling out over this so China imposed fairly draconian trade Restrictions on Australia more draconian than they've used with any other country So there are three major sea lanes to transport goods in and out of China and two of them passed by Australia Do I feel more Australian or American? I think I feel more American So in regards to freedom versus fairness, I definitely feel more American so I Don't think I could live in either Australia, New Zealand or England because I would miss too much the freedoms Particularly freedom of speech that that I have in America So you don't have nearly as much freedom of speech in Australia, New Zealand or England as you have in the United States so I think the primary Australian reaction to COVID restrictions is Asking is this fair and so I think the general Australian reaction is What's what's fair if by abiding by these restrictions do we reduce the transmission of COVID? Do we protect the vulnerable? Do we reduce the loss of life? So Australians are more communal Society than America so America is much more individualistic you get off the plane in America and as you go through customs you have the experience of being treated like the enemy like It's very alienating experience to go through customs generally speaking in America the airport airport staff You know quite different from you when they treat you as the enemy you go through customs in Australia and You're treated much more like a member of the family like you're part of the community You're not treated like the enemy because it's much more communal so Australians by and large trust their government feel of the governments on their side and For good reason because government. I think generally speaking operates more effectively and efficiently in Australia compared to the United States and So Australians are by and large gone along with COVID restrictions With with fewer protests proportionally than than Americans because Australians by and large trust their government and Understand government restrictions is Probably based on what we know. This is a good faith effort to do the right thing this does not mean that Australians regard their politicians as infallible, but I think Australian generally regard their government is making a good faith effort and And they make that with regard to COVID they're making a good faith effort to reduce the transmission of COVID to to save lives So there's a service in Australia called the Royal Flying Doctor Service and this started in something like 1922 So you have doctors will fly all over the country to provide medical services Because Australians deal with the tyranny of distance Australia is a country about the size of the continental United States but with one-fifteenth of the population so 90% of Australia is barely inhabited and so Australians struggle with the tyranny of distance you have such enormous distances and Generally speaking you don't have rivers to transport goods so To create wealth generally speaking you need rivers because it Transporting goods via rivers is the cheapest way of transportation. So with a country. That's 90% largely uninhabited to if someone breaks their leg or has some kind of medical emergency in 90% of the country where there's hardly anyone then you rely on a service like Royal Flying Doctor Service where they fly in To to treat people so to struggle with things like the tyranny of distance Australians have had to rely more on The government than Americans have Americans may be so individualistic because there's no communal identity due to all the different religions and ethnicities Yes, there's one dominant culture in Australia one dominant culture in England so the bank manager and the bloke on unemployment and the janitor generally speaking speak with the same accent in in Australia and There's there's one dominant culture in Australia. So When I talked to orthodox Jews From Australia, they will tell me that they cannot get walked a synagogue on Sabbath without getting abused verbally abused Because they dress in a distinctive way that sets them apart from the rest of the culture And so you're much more likely to get verbally abused and even physically Assaulted in Australia compared to the United States. So I have a Pakistani Muslim friend who says that her family in Los Angeles when they go shopping and dress in their traditional bright Pakistani robes that they generally speaking they only receive compliments if they receive any feedback at all It's like, oh, wow, that's so beautiful. That's, you know, wonderful that you're abiding by your traditions But you try to pull that off in Australia and you'll get abused There's there's a joke about two Afghan immigrants to Australia who compete to see who can become more Australian and And the punchline is after a year one of them like, you know, racially abuses the others for being a musy Yeah, Americans don't want many government services because these government services from a typical American perspective will primarily go to people who are different than them and There are certain groups who will take a disproportionate amount of government services while providing not very much to the tax base So you have one primary group in America that accounts for the tax base And then you have a couple of minority groups who take far more government services than they pay into the tax base So that's why America is the one industrialized nation without socialized medicine and generally speaking with fewer government services than other industrialized nations because people are not going to vote and support the giving of government services to people who are unlike them particularly if they don't trust these these other groups to To shorter their fair share of the government burden So major distinction between Australia, New Zealand parts of Canada and This may be also true of England where the primary value is fairness versus America where the primary value is Liberty and there's a terrific book about all this It was written by David Hackett Fisher who wrote the book Albion Seed About four British folkways in America and he also read a book in the 19 in 2012 called fairness and freedom history of two open societies, New Zealand and the United States and He says at the end of his book This book is the first to be published on the history of fairness And so he looks at fairness as a linguistic category as an aspect of moral philosophy Looks at it from the behavioral Sciences from genetics and evolution from brain research neuroscience the social and cultural sciences economics and folk rituals of fairness So I was reading I was reading the Washington Post. There's a thoughtful book reviewer who I don't agree with very often and He's I would say he's center left Carlos Lozada, I think he's from Peru and he's got a long thoughtful assay 9-11 was a test the books of the last two decades show how America failed and He quotes at the beginning of this lengthy book review the US government must define what the message is what it stands for This is from the 9-11 Commission report Which is really well-written? We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world committed to treat people humanely Abide by the rule of law and be generous and caring to our neighbors. We need to defend our ideals vigorously America does stand out for its values and Carlos Lozada writes this affirmation of American idealism is one of the documents more opinionated moments It's also among the most ignored. He says that rather than exemplify our nation's highest values Our response to 9-11 unleashed our worst qualities deception brutality arrogance ignorance delusion over each and carelessness And then he goes through all the major books Regarding 9-11 and America's response to 9-11 and I think he Fails to understand the importance of situation okay, so for example, I may have some wonderful qualities, but you put me in a situation of stress and What's more likely to come out my wonderful caring empathic qualities on my stern You know unempathic Selfish qualities right you put any of us under stress and Our tendency to exhibit kindness and empathy is going to be dramatically reduced So I think we have far fewer in hearing qualities than we suspect and How we behave ourselves is far more influenced by situation than what we understand so How how have other countries responded to 9-11 type situations? Have they displayed their highest values? I don't think so. I can't think of examples of other countries suffering You know anything akin to 9-11 and then responding with empathy and kindness and their highest values You put anyone under stress or any nation under stress and it's going to react from its worst qualities Not its best quality. So that's Why isn't in recovery the 12-7 recovery you want to avoid being Hungry angry lonely or tired Because when you're hungry angry lonely or tired you're much more likely to act out on your addictions So I love reading books about 9-11 So watch that Netflix series on America's response five-part series on America's response to 9-11 So here are my favorites. I liked the looming tower Al Qaeda and the road to 9-11 by Lawrence Wright that came out in 2004 I didn't read Ghost Wars by Steve Cole, but it looks good I didn't read Peter Bergen's book the rise and fall of a summer bin Laden It's gotten some good reviews and I didn't read Richard Clark's against all enemies inside America's war on terror That seemed like an important book Now there was some great books on what actually happened on 9-11. I think my favorite was 102 minutes The unforgettable story of the fight to survive inside the twin towers just amazing book and It highlighted how randomness separates survival from death in many instances. I I don't think we consciously Dwell on how much randomness affects our life like particularly conservatives place a great value in in freedom of choice and what individual responsibility and so we often think if we just make the right decisions we're going to dramatically reduce our chances of suffering from COVID or heart disease or cancer. I think conservatives tend to over estimate the Capacity of freedom of will and freedom of choice to shape out life outcomes so The 9-11 attacks meant that innocent people lived or died because they stepped back from a doorway or they hopped on to a closing elevator Or they shifted their weight from one foot to another just these small small choices determined whether people lived or died So 102 minutes narrates all the events inside the World Trade Center from the moment the first plane hits through the collapse of both both towers just excruciating and riveting book Now had the World Trade Center been erected according to New York City's building code in effect since 1938 All right, it would have been a very different World Trade Center But the building code was changed in this 1960s and 70s In accord with the desires of the real estate industry and this is particularly important to me because I live in Southern California And any moment now we are going to have a massive earthquake Which may well render life impossible for 95% plus of the current residents Life will be impossible for days weeks months Before you we have sewage again and water Let alone electricity and the internet so we're gonna have a massive earthquake any moment now and We've made some improvements with our building codes, but if we'd simply Mandated about 1% more in building Expenses we would be far more likely to have buildings that not just will enable us to survive the quake But we have to continue living in them. So our building codes are simply to maximize survival human Survival from from a quake, but not to maximize the survival of the buildings. So Many of our buildings will be uninhabitable and only 1% more As I read in the Los Angeles Times only 1% more in expenditures. So just Just mandating a little stricter building codes Then buildings would far be far more likely to remain habitable after an earthquake so I Am not looking forward to some major earthquake rolling through and life becoming impossible in Southern California as a result for months and maybe years so Due to the real estate industry The building code was changed in New York City To make it cheaper to build and to operate Skyscrapers so they increased the floor space available for rent by cutting back on areas that had been devoted under Under earlier law to evacuation and exit. So as a result getting everybody out on 9 11 was impossible so Thousand people inside the North Tower who initially survived the impact of the American Airlines flight 11 They could not reach an open staircase their fate was sealed For decades earlier when the stairways were clustered in the core of the building and fire stairs were eliminated It's a wasteful use of valuable space So the Twin Towers embodied the power of American capitalism and their design embodied the folly of American greed and both conditions proved fatal Then there's a terrific oral history of 9-11 the only play in the sky So it was amazing that American flight American Airlines flight 77 It struck the one part of the Pentagon that because of new anti-terrorism standards had just recently been reinforced and renovated So it was not only stronger, but it was also relatively unoccupied So if the plane had hit any other wedge of the Pentagon There would have been 5,000 people and the plane would have flown right through the middle of the building instead fewer than 200 people were killed in The attack including the passengers on the hijacked Jets so chance of preparedness came together to save lives. Oh another Interesting American characteristic about what happened on United Airlines flight 93 Right the passengers made phone calls when the hijacking began and they learned the fate of other aircraft that day and so The passengers voted on whether to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane They decided they acted but first of all they voted They voted on it so that they They they took part in that great American ritual of voting then four books on the dark side of America's response to 9-11 you got bush at war by Bob Woodward in 2002 Jane Mayer the dark side The torture memos by David Cole and you've got the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture so Very early on in the Bush administration's response to 9-11 the president said You know, we're not gonna allow ourselves to get loyal to death But they did lawyer the thing to death They saw to it that the sharpest best-trained lawyers in the country came out with all the legal justifications They needed for a vast expansion of the government's power in waiting a war on terror Some more good books. You've got Robert Draper to start a war Night draws near by Anthony Shadeed imperial life in the emerald city The forever war by Dexter Filkins. I read that book and I also interviewed the author Dexter Filkins My website before net then there's the Afghanistan papers by Craig Whitlock Just recently reviewed in the New York Times Excellent what come the war in Afghanistan and then remember the surge into Iraq in 2000 late 2006 2007 2008 Overseeing by General David Petraeus Well, there are three books on counterinsurgency so Joe Biden you'll notice he says I don't believe in counterinsurgency I believe in counterterrorism so counter counterterrorism is a strategy where you go after the terrorists and you kill the terrorists counterinsurgency is where you try to win hearts and minds of the populace and Biden based Biden is for counterterrorism. He's against counterinsurgency So whenever we've tried counterinsurgency we've lost whether it's in Vietnam or Afghanistan So three books on counterinsurgency. You've got the Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual which you can buy Thank you for your service by David Finkel who served and the Iraq study group report Then the 9-11 commission report is a great read came out in 2004 We've got subtle tools the dismantling of American democracy from the war on terror to Donald Trump by Karen Greenberg and the reign of terror how the 9-11 era destabilized America and produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman Have not read any of those. Okay, so to provide more context For the effect of stress on how we behave. I read another excellent paper by Alan V Orwitz so I've been talking a lot about his work. He is a sociologist who specializes in medicine and So in 2000s you published your recent book just month or two ago on the DSM I think particularly focusing on the DSM 5 The diagnostic and statistical manual which is the dominant prism through which mental health is treated diagnosed medicated researched and Discussed in not just America but the world the DSM 5 so 2007 he published An interesting paper transforming Normality into pathology the DSM and the outcomes of stressful social arrangements. So Carlos Lazada the Washington Post the book reviewer is outraged that America did not respond to 9-11 with its best values But rather its worst values and my point is we generally tend to react to stress by displaying our worst values rather than our best values and recovery means minimizing the amount of Intense stress in our lives. So maturity means how much stress you can handle without lashing out at yourself or others But stress tends to bring out our worst So distress is a normal response to stressful situations right we are tremendously influenced by situation Often maybe Most of the time our behavior will more reflect the situation. We're in than any essential characteristics about us So people who have inadequate resources people who are poor People who are low status people who see no prospects for rising in status and People who are unable to achieve their goals Will Consistently display poor mental health and you can diagnose this as a pathology as major depressive disorder Right, you can give it a psychiatric diagnosis, but it's a normal response to a Stressful situation in a low socioeconomic status will produce more stress and I had to move in 2011 From a place where I'd live for 14 years. It was incredibly stressful Why was it stressful because I had such limited economic resources? It was painful for me to encounter reality and to notice How limited my choices were for where I could move So my poverty produced, you know tremendous anxiety and stress so We all tend to display distressed mental health consequences consequences from poverty From last loss of attachment so loss of connection with family friends community and From lack of ability to achieve our goals. So I never expected to be a 55 year old bachelor Women are much more likely than men to be in subordinate roles which may explain women's much higher rates of depression and distress Loss weakness or absence of valued attachments to other people creates distress Right weak social ties lead to higher rates of suicide and higher rates of psychological distress What are the three most stressful life events? divorce marital separation The death of an intimate so the most stressful life events all entail the loss of close attachments People who are unmarried and socially uninvolved have much higher rates of distress than married and socially integrated people on the other hand It may be that Losers are more likely to be unmarried and losers are more likely not to be socially integrated And so therefore you'd expect losers to have much higher rates of distress So if you live in a neighborhood with low levels of social trust low levels of social cohesion cohesion low levels of Connectedness you will generally experience and display much higher levels of psychological distress Also the inability to achieve important goals that provide coherence and purpose to our life also lead to bad mental health. I Remember when I got chronic fatigue syndrome. I was basically bedridden in my 20s I started reading some books on psychology and My my parents sent me out with a psychologist And I remember saying fairly early on in our sessions that I wanted to be able to endure Humiliation and setbacks in life events without getting distressed about it because I got the impression from reading these self-help books that we can be resilient and and we can endure anything and We just have to get out mindset straight So I need to take a 30-second break. So let's listen to some hope cake Come to our big book 12 step workshop the Set-aside prayer is up for an open mind and an open heart. Please join me God please set aside everything that I think I know about myself My unmanageability the 12 steps in you For an open mind and a new experience with myself my unmanageability the 12 steps And especially you please join me in the Serenity prayer. I mean a serenity to accept the things I cannot change Courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference Thanks, sir Appreciate it. Oh man, did you guys see that terrific performance by my alma mater the UCLA Bruins? Like just putting down the hurt against LSU magnificent UCLA football victory last night There's no way you can't rank the Bruins now in in the top 20 All right, and the game was played at the beautiful Rose Bowl in Pasadena. I was only there once I saw UCLA with Troy Aikman just have a stunning victory in 1988 Yeah, you see late 1988. It was it was like a Saturday evening game. Yeah, they they thrashed Nebraska. I Was there my one time at the Rose Bowl in September of 1988 when and they beat like the number five team Nebraska So the Bruins are back Luke is a 55 year old bachelor because he did porno stuff during his youth and wasn't looking for a woman to have children with Luke needs to Restock the recaller on his desk. I got bags of it, bro He's looking on a cry or have a meltdown behind that door Was I looking for a woman to have kids with I met a woman when I was 19 and She was the daughter of my boss She was 15 and it was the first time that I thought seriously about getting married and That relationship never went anywhere, but I had good judgment because she she married some Some other dude and she's been I assume happily married ever since has had multiple kids But yeah, that was the first time I thought about marriage, but I don't think any of my girlfriends would have been Good a good fit for me so It's not like I have one relationship that I really regret Not getting married and not having kids You should look at this unorthodox Netflix series and discuss it. I did watch unorthodox. It was I thought it was excellent I had one friend who Came from a Hasidic background thought it was the best portrayal of Hasidic life that he'd ever seen I wasn't just dating porno stars I was just very social in my 20s and 30s. I was hanging out with a Getting to bear with a bunch of women who are about as dysfunctional as I was because what are you gonna get when you date a people have about the same approximate level of Maturity that you do and yeah, well remember Chechnyan terrorism and The Russian response to Chechnyan terrorism it didn't exactly bring out the kindest and gentlest aspects of Russian national character Right. Nobody reacts to terror From from their highest values It's naive to expect that America would have reacted to 9-11 from its highest values Stress and terrorism promote stress is going to bring out our most brutal sides I mean did Germany react to to difficult circumstances and trauma and Stress by exhibiting its its highest values during the 20th century look If you want to know what it was like for me to get blown by it by porn stars And I just want to emphasize that I only did it for journalistic reasons I did it for the sake of my readers so that I could I could provide participatory journalism and I could expand their range of awareness of the human condition and I also did it for spiritual reasons Like I thought that it'd be be important that I cross that Rubicon so that I could I could just understand more of this World that God has given us So I'm not sure why God sent me to report on the porn industry, but I'm just a vessel for God That's the downsides of being a Chad, bro You're a social in your 20s and 30s peak physical and mental time. You're in your lane Unorthodox is pretty bad because it makes it seems like you can just go to Berlin and get all these good-looking friends Good academic position, etc. I Thought it was a terrific series Did you know that David Orini Davis Orini modeled his internet persona off the graphic novel character from trans Metropolitan named spider Jerusalem No, I didn't Okay, let's get back to the great Alan v Horowitz so evidence from evolutionary psychology and biology and Sociology finds that human beings become distressed in context of subordination Attachment loss and the inability to achieve valued goals So you can call this distress major depressive disorder. You'll exhibit many if not all The symptoms of major depressive disorder, but these responses are normal and natural to situations of distress loss of attachment and the ability inability to achieve goals so our mind is made up of very specific modules and mechanisms that are designed to respond to Environmental challenges and so when these mechanisms are working appropriately All right, we are going to feel distress in certain circumstances so just like the purpose of the heart is to pump blood and so our heart is Maladaptive if it's not pumping blood properly and the purpose of the pancreas is to Send out insulin appropriately and if it doesn't do that then the pancreas is acting in a maladaptive fashion So too when we're in distress because of low socioeconomic status Loss of valued attachments and inability to achieve valued goals Our mind is going to react normally with the symptoms of distress So these are the three particular environmental contexts where states of distress may well be adaptive so a distressed emotional state is May well be naturally selected to develop among subordinates So that people who are above them in status don't think that those who are below them are a threat Right So if people and with more power think that people below them are not a threat then they're going to be less inclined to beat up on them So animals and chronic positions of subordination and that move downward in social hierarchies show far more distress than those in dominant positions, so you can measure stress hormones and Lower levels of blood serotonin So when positions of dominance are precarious high rank Also is accompanied by stress And then we all react with distress when we lose valued attachments around love intimacy sex friendship, right? You lose friends. You're gonna feel distressed you lose community You're gonna feel distressed you lose a girlfriend or a spouse sexual partner. You're gonna feel distressed So distress that arises from and is created by and is maintained by acute or chronic stressful situations Is a fundamentally different outcome from mental illness, right? So if you go into a funk because you lost your girlfriend All right, that's normal But if you go into a funk because your favorite character on a TV show lost his girlfriend then that's weird That's mentally ill So that indicates that there are psychological mechanisms working in you that are not acting in situationally appropriate ways So if you are hearing or seeing things that are not present, right? That's mentally ill if you're excessively exuberant or constantly sad or Continuously anxious regardless of your circumstance regardless of the social situation then you're mentally disturbed So if you're having you know bizarre emotional outbursts that not linked to in a situation Not linked to real losses not linked to chronic stressful situations, then that's mental disturbance So there's a difference between normal reactions to stress and abnormal maladaptive reactions to stress But thanks to the DSM from the DSM 3 DSM 4 DSM 5 These normal reactions of human sadness and normal reactions to stressful situations have become pathologized All right, they've been become regarded as an illness a sickness that can be medicated So our whole understanding of health and what medicine is for is completely transformed Since the 1940s so prior to 1940 health simply meant the absence of illness But in 1946 the world health organization came out with a paper that defined health as No, social health and psychological health and physical thriving it vastly expanded what we understood as health and so We also developed a vast overestimation of the ability of medicine including psychiatry to improve our lives So now people battling with normal human sadness and normal human stress think that they can get on Prozac To just get more pat than vigor that they can get medicated for normal human emotions like sadness and stress and We have pathologized a great deal of what is a normal response to a difficult situation so We have normal responses to stressful social arrangements and mental disorders are abnormal dysfunctional maladaptive responses and They indicate that some psychological mechanism is not functioning in accordance with the dictates of natural survival So psychiatry has and medicine have conflated the difference between normal responses to sad situations and pathology Now why would they do this? Well one they can make more money if they can get you to come in for Consultation to come in to see them regularly to go on medication They can make money from your normal reactions to sad situations and they can also extend their power Like every profession wants to extend its influence and power like to be human means to be constantly striving for more status 40 you over intellectualize everything bro Probably it's not all about money. It's in part about money, but it's A lot of it's just striving for more status so if you can posit yourself as someone who's got the solution to Normal aspects of human sadness such as stress and that you can prescribe medication Then you expand your influence your power and your status So all professions and all individuals are constantly striving to increase their status That means increase their influence and their power so the mental health profession likes to do mental health screenings for depression and so they they then Designate, you know vast segments of our population as being Mentally ill is having major depressive disorder when really most of these people are acting reacting appropriately to a sad or stressful situation and There's been a major trend within the mental health profession to lower the threshold of diagnostic criteria To increase the number of people who can be diagnosed as having major depressive disorder So think about common symptoms of depression sleeplessness fatigue thoughts of death right sleeplessness can easily result from anxiety as a natural reaction to a stressful life situation fatigue can result from over-demanding obligations in your life and Thoughts of death can be related to wars to the death of some famous person like when Kobe Bryant dies a lot of people exhibit the symptoms of major depressive disorder and If you can increase the number of people who you can pathologize and say mentally ill Then you can increase the number of your customers and patients and your influence So we have vastly expanded Our understanding of what is pathological So all professions strive to maximize the range of their authority And I think this is just true for individuals as well We all strive to maximize the range of our authority and we also strive to make money So it's very common for dentists. I think dentists of all medical professions Abide the least by evidence-based medicine. So dentists are continually recommending procedures that are unnecessary so that they can make more money they For example, root canals are very commonly prescribed when they're unnecessary Because the dentist gets to make a lot of money when he does a root canal Also pharmaceutical companies are the probably the most obvious beneficiaries of symptom-based definitions of mental disorder that don't take into consideration context Because these companies can only promote drugs as treatments for specific illnesses. That was a 1962 FDA ruling that medicines can only be promoted for specific illnesses So the DSM then provides targets for pharmaceutical products and then pharmaceutical companies Capitalized on the DSM approach they claim that their drugs only treat conditions that the psychiatric profession recognizes as diseases as pathological so Drug companies relentlessly promote through things like TV advertisements The idea that common emotions such as depression agitation anxiety inability to concentrate a symptoms of mental illness Also the spread of managed care HMOs through the health care system since the 1990s Also promote the use of medication to treat normal levels of human distress and mental disorders Because managed care approaches rely on strategies that reduce health care expenditures by underwriting the least expensive possible treatments and So it's usually less expensive to give people pills than to give people psychotherapy Luke went from Wignap blood sports to put in huge viewership to this overly intellectual stuff that gets very few viewers Forty is like a nearly arrived 1930s Jewish immigrant. He's an outsider trying to prove he's part of the culture Forty is like Jerry Siegel the creator of Superman. I took yesterday's status advice and I'm now a successful person Have you hosted one-on-one online consulting? I do that as a sponsor I do that for free, but I've had people reach out for one-on-one consulting So I just I offer that for the same amount that I charge for Alexander less than so a hundred dollars an hour So mental health advocacy groups they get to have more power and more influence more prestige the wider percentage of the population That can be considered Needed recipients of their services. So the more people who are mentally ill then the more power influence and prestige that mental health Advocacy groups can amass So we have this cultural climate that Has vastly expanded the number of people who get the diagnosis of mental illness But we're losing a lot when we treat normal emotions as pathological We we lose focus because much of the distress is related to a social situation. It's not it's not an illness We can be much more effective with our interventions if we're treating true pathology as opposed to a normal human reaction to sadness so we develop You know mismatched public policy When we vastly overestimate the number of people who are ill be a transferring scarce treatment resources from people with serious mental illnesses To those who have no disorder at all Okay Here here's a paper that's really gonna This is gonna tax my 120 IQ is called ears wide shut Epistemological populism argue Tainment and Canadian conservative talk radio This paper came out in 2011 so I remember I came back from Australia spending a year after high school in Australia and The news director of K high K Hill radio Pete before and told me when I was in my senior year at plus or high school that if I ever wanted an internship I should look him up because for two years during high school. I did a news report on plus or high for the radio session and so when I came back from Australia in June of 1985 I called Pete before and I Came in for an interview to be To be an intern in the news department and he said why do you want to work in radio? You know, why do you why do you love? Why do you love radio and I remember thinking but not saying this out loud? well, I got fired from my position at the Orban Journal, which is the local newspaper and There are no internships available in TV news. So this is like the The only option available to me But now instead I talked about how much I love radio But I think for for most of us radio just seems like an anachronism like it just seems technologically inferior to image-based medium like live-streaming and TV and it also seems less serious than text-based media like newspapers magazines and and books so Radio has tended to be treated as a marginal and ephemeral medium with little enduring social and political significance But with the rise of political talk radio since Rush Limbaugh debuted in his national show in 1988 We start to have more academic studies on the influence of political talk radio. So this paper looks at a nationally syndicated Canadian political talk radio show Adler on line So this paper argues that the program's rhetorical practices established a specific Epistemological framework. So epistemology means how do we know what we know? And so they call this framework epistemological populism. And so I think this is important. It's an academic term for the dominant rhetorical approach in talk radio in political talk radio political live-streaming and political opinion TV shows It's it's a framework you can call epistemological populism. So it uses these populist rhetorical tropes To define certain types of individual experience as the only ground of valid and politically relevant knowledge So I'm not primarily talking to you right now from my own experience. I am referencing these various academic papers that I've just read so Obviously, it's not as compelling. It's not as entertaining But I'm not primarily talking about my own experience when I'm referencing academic papers It's not as entertaining as just sharing anecdotes from my own life but What's what's a more valid and relevant basis for for knowledge and then the The two academics writing this paper argue that the style of debate Performed and enforced by the host privilege of certain types of political speech Speech that is passionate simple and entertaining, right? That's the speech that dominates live streams and talk radio and opinion TV shows, right speech that is simple that is passionate that is entertaining Right, so it's far easier to try to trigger people's rage And to engender a sense that the end is here Now we're living in apocalyptic times the world has just gone to hell and that's an easy way to trigger your emotional buttons And so these two academics call this approach argue tainment Like that argue tainment So this these rhetorical strategies the populist rhetorical strategies Tell us who has the authority to speak really only those people with first-hand experience and How and when people get to speak and what type of knowledge should be viewed as legitimate and worthy of our attention So Charles Adler is a Canadian broadcaster who returned to Canada in 1998 after working in US talk radio for a number of years Why is the chest saying I don't work I work like a son of a gun? You think it's easy being God's prophet in the world. You don't think that's work They went God asked me to do this I took that on just like Job being asked to go to Ninveh The job no Jonah Jonah remember when God sent Jonah to Ninveh or where God sent Hosea the prophet to go marry a prostitute I mean, I don't know why God asked me to do this. I've just I'm just God servant Luke Ford is peak scholarship. I come to Luke's channel to get all the newest latest and greatest peer-reviewed research and psychology and medicine Ford is peak academic at politics medicine psychology peer-reviewed Trump lost the election fairly since it was peer-reviewed My left-wing academics at Harvard must be true, bro. No election fraud Japan suspends 1.6 million doses of the Moderna shot So why is Japan having so much trouble with COVID because they didn't regard other Vaccine research is valid for Japanese They think they had to do their own research on Japanese because they thought that the Japanese are just so physiologically different from other people the previous Research on COVID vaccine effects on non-Japanese just doesn't cut it So that's why the Japanese have been so late to get vaccinated Agutainment is nicely put. I did not invent the word. I just took it from these Canadian academics Yes, I am the Hosea of Hollywood Richard Spencer says in his new podcast that he would outright ban porn and legalize prostitution How come Israel isn't doing well with COVID when Israel is what the most vaccinated country in the world? I don't know Yeah, God ask you to bang those porn stars to journal about it and now to live stream Like who am I to question the Almighty, bro? Lionel Nation says of Ted Cruz. He needs to do things to change the situation He does Twitter and interviews instead I am on nation The great conspiracy theorist Okay, I know you want me to get back to this academic paper on Canadian talk radio so Adler online is a nationally syndicated English language current affairs talk show produced in Winnipeg and broadcast across the chorus radio network So this paper was published in 2011 Adler online proudly describes itself as Canada's only national private sector talk show It's the only program of its kind have a quasi at national profile It is in 12 Canadian markets including all the major urban centers from Vancouver to Toronto takes callers from across the country and It streams live on the web It is highly popular. He came in number one in three markets Winnipeg Vancouver and Edmonton He's like the Kevin Michael grace of his genre So epistemology refers to theories about what legitimate knowledge is and how we acquire valid knowledge And what marks reliable indicators of valid knowledge? So what we're doing here on this show in this conversation is epistemology Because you come with your sources of information. I come with my sources of information I come with my anecdotal first person experiences You come with your anecdotal first person experiences and it's just like a football game We we we line up and the ref blows the whistle and we run into each other so This academic analysis says that defining and policing what counts as legitimate knowledge is a key component of Adler online's discourse and this discourse renders Certain political Perspective is reasonable and others as illegitimate so In in our conversations, I'll quote from the new york times unless my audience will say ah Comes from the new york times. It's not legitimate. It's just for losers, bro I'll quote the usa today And elliott blatt will tell me oh usa today not gay at all Or I'll say look, this is a peer reviewed academic paper and you'll just say gay All right, so much of what we're doing here is debating what counts as valid forms of knowledge And what are valid indicators of valid forms of knowledge? so It seems like most of my audience comes from a place of epistemological populism so you want to valorize the The knowledge of the common people as opposed to the elites And the common people have valid knowledge because of their proximity to everyday life As distinguished from the rarefied knowledge of elites who dominate academia The elites they're alienated from everyday life and from the common sense that it produces so Did you realize that you come from a rhetorical perspective of epistemological populism So you probably assert that individual opinions based on firsthand experience are more reliable forms of knowledge than those Generated by theories and by academic studies. There are certain types of experiences that are particularly reliable sources of legitimate knowledge And emotional intensity is an indicator of the reliability of opinions so people like to Watch live streams and listen to talk radio where there are particularly intense emotions because that's more compelling and intense emotions are popularly regarded as indicators of valid opinions and valid sources of knowledge and So the populist approach dismisses other types of knowledge as elitist and therefore illegitimate And so another key part of the populist approach of talk radio and live streaming is appealing to common sense This is the discussion ending trump card Greetings to Colin Liddell Luke did you see the new article on the problems with peer review and medicine journals and how the primary data is just trusted when they found it Being false at least 25 of the time. Well peer review is only a benefit According to the quality and the courage of the peers who are doing the reviewing What happened to the recollers? Oh The recollers are out bro. I was just uh, I was just hiding them Recoller nationalism is back Can you do peer reviewed banging of porn stars? Well, there are sites hubbier sites where people rank their experiences with porn star prostitutes So you can you can go on to these hubbier sites and find out what it's like to to bang your favorite porn stars and I think they they rate them and the most powerful reviewers Uh get You know freebies from porn star hookers because their reviews carry so much weight in the community And many of these leading hobbyist reviewers also get to do it, uh raw Get to do it raw dog style Because the the porn star prostitute is afraid of alienating the very powerful, you know, essentially the consumer reports of porn star prostitutes Even with honest peer reviewers, they don't verify the primary data of the research I don't know but There's certainly been a verification problem in the social sciences Israel's national coronavirus are on Saturday called for the country to begin making preparations to eventually administer fourth doses of the vaccine. Yeah, I expect we're going to continually need a booster shots and apparently getting A vaccine booster shot boosts your immunity to getting covered for a few weeks and a few months and then the immunity gradually decreases the Getting getting vaccinated does dramatically reduce your chance to being hospitalized and dying I am not familiar with the gay porn star Billy Carrington It is a great lacuna in my knowledge a missing part of my knowledge I don't know much about gay porn when my book a history of x 100 years of sex in film came out in 1999 Publishers weekly criticized the book for not containing much information on gay porn the IMF lent Belarus Almost a trillion dollars only under the condition that they implement strict COVID lockdown measures Which the leader of Belarus rejected? Have I tried black licorice recallers? No All right, you're saying 40 start with the chit chat get back to this learned Canadian analysis of populist epistemology So one of the things that Charles Adler says on his show Opinions that are armed with life experiences. That's what we're looking for on this show So that's a common promo for Adler online. It's a common transition for Adler online going into commercial breaks. So the difference between Talk radio on commercial stations and talk radio on public stations stations meaning without commercial interruption is that I'm in commercial radio callers are used Primarily to elevate the status of the host So in commercial talk radio the host is the star and the focus In public NPR style public radio talk programs The focus is on the callers themselves So individual experience is what supposedly lies at the core of common sense and this is what is consistently celebrated in the populist approach Because it's the counterpoint to the excessively ideological intellectual and idealistic politics of those who lack grounding in the real world So Charles Adler says opinions are great Opinions are wonderful, but opinions aren't with personal experience. That is knowledge. Those opinions are a whole lot better So knowledge that grows out of an individual's lived experience is knowledge one can trust now That's not That's not necessarily true, right? It's not Inherently more likely to be true knowledge gained from life experience as opposed to knowledge gained from reading academic papers So from a populist perspective knowledge And experience are essentially identical. So an individual's lived proximity to something becomes An index of their capacity to truly understand something to truly care about something and to develop valid opinions about it and to speak with Authority so the more abstract the form of knowledge and reasoning the less rooted in concrete individual experience The more such knowledge is regarded with suspicion Especially when its conclusions contradict the wisdom of common sense and everyday lived experience There needs to be a round table with Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes, Catboy, gay porn star Billy Carrington and Milo Billy Harrington All right, let's get back to this learned academic paper so This populist epistemology of common sense was prominent in Adler online's extensive treatment of crime during a recent Canadian election so on a Canadian election from about 12 years ago So national polls consistently identify health care as the most important political priority for Canadians But discussions of crime and criminal policy receive more attention Than any other single issue on the program during the campaign. So law and order themes Feature on one third of the program's broadcasts So twice the frequency with which health care was discussed so Adler online's unequal waiting of topics like crime privilege that's an academic word meaning to give more prominence to A conservative political perspective because if an election is fought on crime That's generally going to be better for law and order right-wing parties while if an election is fought on issues such as health care And government social services, that's going to be better for political parties that are left of center So the focus on crime Crimes the value of individual security which correlates closely with right-wing political points of view north america and then What type of guests, callers and experiences Are Given a premium legitimized and valorized and privileged All right, and it's those perspectives that Reinforce epistemological populism. So there's virtually no discussion of statistical rates of crime So steve sailor is not a populist because his blog is heavily data driven so evidence of the urgency of the issue of crime Takes the form of guests and callers serving up a mix of anecdotes anecdotal confirmation and common-sense observations Which themselves function as theoretical generalizations But they simultaneously disavow their theoretical status So it's a violent crime become a major problem in canadian cities As a canadian penal practice become a revolving door for violent offenders. The answer for charles adler is clear Yes So anecdotes pile up in segment after segment Which serve to immunize listeners against Countervailing arguments and evidence about declining crime rates or the futility of law and order campaigns So for example, there's been a lot of populist talk On live streams and talk radio about skyrocketing rates of inflation Well, the elites tell us that our inflation is relatively modest. It's operating at about 5% level But the popular You know on the ground lived experience is that we're experiencing Inflation rates that are much higher than that So do you see the accumulation of anecdotes from firsthand experience as the most valid form of knowledge? and Do these anecdotes that enable you to dismiss contradictory arguments reasoning facts statistical and academic analyses How important is taking a bowel movement on longevity? I keep getting ads from the poop guy who has pills to make one very regular This unorthodox show on netflix is trash. It's a great show What's wrong with it? Oh column Adele links to some grade a content By Keith Preston why I am not a progressive So the populist approach Is is based on experiential political reasoning reasoning from anecdote reasoning from your own experience and the experience of other people like you And this approach shifts back and forth between personal experience either one's own or others And broader social and political questions and it champions Personal lived experience as the most valid form of knowledge So broader trends and perspectives Never allowed to challenge the generalizability of certain individual experiences in the populist rhetorical style But not everyone's experience is the same. So not all anecdotes fit the common sense conclusions served up by populist talk radio. So how does a host of right wing live stream or right wing opinion show or right wing talk radio show distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate forms of individual knowledge experience and common sense So programs tend to use ideological filtering of guests To strain out those whose experiences opinions and epistemological frameworks differ from one's own So the 30 guests that appeared on this show to discuss crime over seven weeks Not a single one was a criminologist or a social scientist. So most criminologists left wing. So 90 percent of criminologists left wing Playing green walled went on Tucker Carlson said 20 years of war in afghanistan was all a fraud. That seems Seems right to me Keith Preston is the best Cotto Gottfried guest The big tech crackdown has made life boring for the round table discussions. It has even made luke gray It's like he does not have a canvas to paint on true. So I'll admit that When I was younger, I just thought I was awesome and whatever I would turn my attention and talents to I would be a winner at and I would hear from Adults in my teens and early 20s that whatever I choose to devote myself to I'll be a success All right, so this is common people in their teens and early 20s They tend to have a vast overestimation of their own abilities. And so I've had experiences of success I've been interviewed on 60 minutes entertainment tonight written about in the new york times la times They written about in rolling stone, right? I've had my experiences of individual success And so I deduce from those that I'm just totally awesome But I did not want to face up to is how situation dependent my success has been All right, for example, my success as a blogger and as a journalist is totally dependent upon my access to sources right access access Determines How compelling you can be as a writer and as a journalist So tom wolf when he graduated with his phd in american studies from eo university. He thought that The quality of his writing would be the predominant Determinant of how good his writing would be but then He realized over time that it's The content for the writing it's what you're writing about. It's the material That is far more important for a success. So I'm thinking about Uh, there was this great book written on peter guber How he took uh, sony for a ride So it was called hit and run how john peters and peter guber took sony for a ride in hollywood. So just great compelling book because John peters and peter guber were such compelling characters to write about like they were just Amazing larger than life. So when Kim masters Then went to No, nancy griffin. Was it net? Oh, yeah So when she then wrote a book on disney the keys to the kingdom how michael eisner lost his grip It was not nearly as compelling Right. She was just as good a journalist. She was just a skilled writer She was just a skilled storyteller But the subject in one book was michael eisner who by comparison to john peters and peter guber is boring So hit and run how john peters and peter guber took sony for a ride in hollywood is incredibly compelling tale Because the main characters are so compelling The same talented journalist takes on michael eisner in disney and it's a much less compelling book Because the main characters are less compelling. So when I got to write about and do shows on say immediately viscerally compelling topics like The the porn industry or like the alt-right. I had a much larger audience And it wasn't because I was so awesome Primarily it was because I was competing with very few other people So I had a big pond You know largely to myself And so I was able to make much more of an impact because I was dealing with viscerally compelling content That was effortless comparatively effortless for me to serve up And so when I don't have access to people or I'm not willing to do the work to develop sources to get access I can't produce as compelling a journalism And I can't host as viscerally compelling a show If my guests and topics are not as viscerally compelling So now I'm promoting I'm working on a much wider field where there's much more competition And so I have five percent of the audience that I used to have So if I was to host a show now with some alt-right personalities I could get easily 20 times the audience I have right now because the alt-right personalities are much more viscerally compelling So my success Is situation dependent Depends on the genre I'm working in depends on the field I'm working in depends on the quality of the guests that I bring on So it's that wonderful time of the show again where I need to take a little break So listen to some third case On step four We're about to conclude it tonight in terms of the instructions please Have the perspective of This is your personal journey. Yes, you're attending a weekly workshop. Yes, there are weekly assignments. Yes There are discussions about those weekly assignments All of that's true and will remain true for the balance of the time together as I mentioned I'm extending the workshop to mid december because I think we'll need that time Tonight I'm giving you the assignment of moving ahead Or next week next tuesday We will take a look at assignment 18 step five It's a reading assignment page 72 to 75. I believe Three pages It would be who of you to read the 12 and 12 Probably 10 pages Not critical not necessary But nice to do and if you don't do it for next week do it for the following week That's it Read and highlight the material in the big book on step five Then next week tuesday, I will be unpacking that line by line A lot of information there and I have a lot of knowledge and experience outside of the big book That will help fill in what I consider to be making it a very powerful therapeutic and healing experience Okay, I hope we're all having a very powerful therapeutic and healing experience right now. Thanks herb. That was great. So Because of my episodic success Retailing discussing Presenting reporting on and opining on the point industry and the alt-right It was very easy for me to develop The notion that I was just fascinating That I was a star That I was just this compelling transcendent translucent amazing, you know, fantastic guy and Yeah, all those people who told me that whatever I put my attention to I'd be a success that they are absolutely right but I was not taking into account How situation dependent our context dependent my success was so me just talking to my phone Not so compelling Not so commanding of an audience now. I'm just another bozo on the bus right there are 10,000 people doing what I'm doing and uh Many of them doing it as well as I'm doing it and many of them doing it far better than I'm doing it So when I had certain situation a certain context I had this much larger audience and more income and so it was much easier for me to think. Oh, I'm amazing I'm just so talented. I'm just a star Aren't I great aren't I great? But then When I come here and try to talk to you about some academic paper on epistemological populism It's uh much more difficult to hold your attention It's not nearly as entertaining not nearly as many of you as not nearly as much income So, yes, the big tech cracked out and has made life boring for the round table discussions and so I I also vastly overestimated my own ability as as a host by When I was fortunate enough to be able to bring lots of people on the show I thought oh, I'm amazing. But then when I started doing solo shows For any length of time. I would like I would I would seize up my throat would get tight I would see my audience numbers plunge Like I developed, you know, much greater appreciation for for the abilities of a Jean-François Garopi or a Kevin Michael Grace And all these other people who can do solo shows and command, you know, a much bigger audience than I can So my success such as it was in streaming depended upon the people I brought on my show It was not primarily a reflection of how amazing I am So there are two types of hosts there are People who read the temperature of the room and there are people who set the temperature of the room So most hosts 95 percent are people who simply read and react to the temperature of the room That's me And then there are five percent of people very few people Who can set the temperature of the room by the power of their own personality And that's someone like a kevin michael grace or Jean-François garopi and I am I am not the thermometer setter. I am a thermometer reader What's the most Jewish 12-step euphemism you can think of? Come think of one right now Wignats are very entertaining. Yes Luke's curation vacation the pause representing the best of the west Both shows are solid. I miss the clips and the reaction. Yes the topics bro. People want entertainment Luke so are you purposefully rebranding away from alt-right stuff now? Yes I am because Up until hell gate and richard spencer the alt-right was considered Some you know bunch of merry pranksters After hell gate the alt-right became considered a bunch of nazis and so I don't want to be associated with a bunch of nazis Sports lane would be gold, but there are so many people doing shows on sports I didn't think I have anything special to say I despair the Dallas Cowboys even reaching a championship game let alone the Super Bowl as long as Jerry Jones as a general manager of the Cowboys Ah, so have you guys tried colostrum? So this is the new wonder supplement colostrum So it's important to take this on an empty stomach Psychologist Lane is too saturated bro. It won't bring in the views Luke you could have gone down the going defense league Lane the alt-right Lane The psychologist Lane plenty of lanes Who is down voting this this this stream has been throttling in the double digits for a while now Oh, Christopher Cantwell wrote a few letters from a jail just like Martin Luther King's letters from a Birmingham jail So Christopher Cantwell wrote a few letters from jail about how he's rebranding So he rebranded even when he was doing alt-right stuff. He also did a show that was just conservative Do people go to you when they search for the other famous college player look for it? I'm sure sometimes they do or they go to me when they're searching for the Australian actor Luke Ford And then there's a guy who runs an online computer A repair operation who's also named Luke Ford And even Richard Spencer has run away from the alt-right. He now calls it petty nationalism Yeah, Christopher Cantwell runs the jail, bro What the people want is porn analysis Hellgate was just the cosmetic reason for the crackdown It was the manifestation of a pathology that had been there all along But it's like you can be deceptive or to cancer And or you can have genes that are susceptible to going in unproductive ways But then a particular situation will bring out the manifestation of that underlying pathology Big tech cracked down Because Kairus was hacking social media to polarize the West who is Kairus All right, let's get back to this learned Canadian academic essay on epistemological populism So he talks about how this Adler online show didn't bring on any criminologists or sociologists Just brought on people who had first hand experience So no criminologists. No social scientists No one who could offer academic insights into the social causes and consequences of crime Or a historical and comparative assessment of different approaches to penal policy So by contrast the show's 14 guests included victims of crime police officers community activists faith leaders and politicians So what was the common link between these guests? From many perspective there was only incoherence But the show's choice of guests Was essentially defined by the dictates of epistemological populism. So the guests had to reinforce and enhance The epistemological legitimacy and moral authority of the opinions of certain types of individuals Who portrayed as having a particularly close immediate and personal experience with crime as opposed to an academic And removed perspective So kyrus of course china russia. So colin the dell says that the alt-right is essentially a manifestation of Of china and russia hacking social media to polarize the west Yeah, kevin michael graze curates, but there is a vibe of there's no name said this and it was published outrage fest Yes, kevin produces an outrage show Nick fuentes does this too and sargon of a card So yes, I've also deliberately shifted away from an outrage show because I have growing realization That it's not good for me and it's not good for other people So I want to produce a show that's going to work through all aspects of my life And when I run into strangers, I'm not going to instinctively go into a defensive crouch So everything I say here is public and it can be heard by many different audiences Who will be susceptible to interpreting it in many different ways So I want to do my best to create a show that fits with the rest of my life instead of destroying the rest of my life So populist talk shows filter gas to reinforce a populist perspective So they effectively erase contending perspectives And erase competing epistemological frameworks So they valorize certain forms of knowledge and opinion and Dismiss and eliminate others So the host opens a discussion With his last guest noting you're the mother of an 18 year old gun murder victim Who on this program that you're listening to is making sense to your ears. So this setup This line of questioning and the follow out discussion frames her experience as the mother As as her experience is the most important Right, she's going to have special insights into discussions of criminal policy because she was personally affected So she has a privilege standpoint from which to comment on and criticize The claims of other people on the panel such as politicians. Yeah, I got rid of the rage porn I've I've tried to get rid of that which is anti-social From the show Or at least try to reduce it and try to Increase the amount of the content that's good for you. So it's a lot easier to to create food that immediately Leads to positive explosions in your your mouth than in your your nervous systems like junk food, right? It's more immediately compelling than healthy food, but healthy food is better for you, but healthy food isn't a quiet taste So I'm trying to shift away from junk food shows to healthy shows So a populist approach Gives a premium to those who have firsthand experience and purportedly common sense So Colin Liddell says Luke is on the right path. Thank you Colin. I There aren't many people whose opinions I respect But yours is one of them. So I'm not someone who has Yeah, this this wide thin range of friends. I'm someone who has a few intense friendships in my life Speak speak about china that would get views for Luke, but he'd have to be careful You're not even going to play Tucker Carlson clips anymore. I'll stop playing clips at some point in the future I just have no idea when so On the one hand this populist approach gives laudable respect and sympathy For the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of this woman's son and the public sphere in these spaces for the retailing of our individual experiences Especially in regard to important public policy decisions needs to be taken into account, but The populist approach to talk radio and live streaming Now goes way beyond just opening up space for individual experience as you know, one type of valid knowledge That deserves this place along other types of valid knowledge rather epistemological populism tends to elevate individual experience as the only legitimate form of knowledge And extend that authority way beyond the realm Where the person's immediate experience is relevant So here the host charles adler Has an exchange with the mother Of one of the police officers murdered in maple thawp And he positions her as a grieving mother And therefore she has an authoritative advantage point from which to advocate opinions on a range of topics from mandatory minimum sentences To the abolition of judicial sentencing discretion to raising the legal aid you consent for sexual activity So for example, there's nothing about being a holocaust survivor that makes you more moral or more wise than anyone else There's nothing about surviving some horrific event that makes you more moral or more wise than anyone else There's nothing about surviving a horrific event Or being the parent or a friend or a relative of someone who died in a horrific event that makes your Opinion and perspective more valuable than any other opinion or perspective All right people who survive genocides are not inherently more moral or more wise than people who never experienced genocide And on the other hand just because a paper academic paper is peer reviewed doesn't mean it's truthful or accurate or important So it's not any direct victims of crime whose experiences are important I mean the views of people working on the front line in the fight against crime are also given priority in the populist perspective particularly police officers and prison workers But not social workers so police officers And prison workers are accorded essentially a monopoly on expert knowledge in the populist framework So their views are accorded special authority and the host And and right-wing hosts in general often speak in a way of uncharacteristic deference to police And there's nothing inherently moral or superior about being a police officer So obviously you should treat with respect anyone who carries a gun You don't want to piss off anyone who carries a gun and that includes law enforcement So this is how Charles Adler opened a segment with a Toronto police officer Adler You deal with gang violence on a day-to-day level you hear it talked about on the radio You read about in the newspapers and there must be times when you say to yourself, oh man, this is just bs This is nothing to do with the problem Wonder if you would just tick off one or two points for us of light I want you to tell me where it is that your mind implodes on listening to certain kinds of rhetoric So Adler is employing terms of phrase that clearly show he's got empathy for And he's encouraging his audience to have sympathy for the policeman So he's encouraging His audience to accept the Constable's opinions essentially as facts and as objective truth Not on the basis of any evidence presented But because of the Constable's day-to-day lived experience as a police officer and you hear this from from victim groups as well that We need to privilege those with lived experience of racism or sexism or ageism or locism So lived experience is not inherently a more valued And more reliable source of knowledge than other sources of knowledge so populist rhetoric flows from its ability to activate and apply the popular celebration of the people of common sense and With the accompanying attack on elites To thereby dismiss contending forms of knowledge and opinion So you've got the laudable voices of the people in the populist approach In that contrast with the elitist views of academics defense lawyers social workers political progressives Because those people they just represent the special interests of criminals and gangs so the policeman's authority It's not only secured by reference to his lived experience, but by reference to his views About the BS and the rhetoric in the news media So you've got the peddlers of this BS and the rhetoric The mainstream news media and academics so one common thread in populist approaches is to dismiss elites and to dismiss elite opinions and elite analysis Well Luke visit the Jewish temple at Venice Beach. I've been there many times Crocodile Dundee Paul Hogan as a home nearby Big crackdown on homelessness by lawmakers in California from the governor To Los Angeles politicians. There's an increasing crackdown on homelessness Most social workers I met are really stupid So most social workers are on the left People on the left Tend to have the opinion that human nature is basically good And that society and its institutions corrupt the innate goodness of human beings The right wing perspective is that people are basically inclined To wickedness and that it is society and its institutions that make people better Kenneth Brown is working on a documentary The title sad where jack's danger to our democracy. Yeah, Kenneth Brown has a lot of interesting insights This unorthodox show is BS on Netflix. How does she have money to live in Berlin? All these strangers just randomly take her in and become friends so easily or the show is based on her lived experience, bro It's based on her autobiography. So either that's accurate or it's not accurate Social workers want to take care of refugees social workers want to nurture and take care of people in general so dismissing contending forms of knowledge By explicitly attacking them as elitist is a frequent pattern in populist discourse so There was a call to the Adler online show where Says brian grew up in this area where there's a proliferation of gangs and gang violence worked at a liquor store So he saw a lot of this bad behavior And the call was primed and activated a series of coded network associations. So you've got the The bad crime area you've got the liquor store So you've got a framing a moralizing and a racializing of the issue in subtle but concrete ways So I have a friend his dad owned and operated a liquor store and he was he was shot and killed by an urban youth in that liquor store so A lot of jews shifted from the left to the right during the 1960s during the explosion of crime And so they were liberals who became mugged So they shifted from left-wing perspectives the right-wing perspective after getting mugged and after being victimized So the main strategy that many populists host employee to bolster the credibility of their own views is to attack opposing views as absent from any realt lived experience of a particular area of a particular situation and describing your debating opponents as elitist and profoundly self-interested and self-serving so I don't regard people on the left as any more inherently self-interested and self-serving than people on the right I don't regard people on the left as inherently less moral than people on the right Wonder how many taliban will become homeless in the u.s. I don't think many Come on guys. Don't we love our refugees? They are our closest allies We're just bringing in 100,000 afghan translators They worked hand in glove with us How can we how can how can we be indifferent to their fate? The homeless and the taliban have have seen the babies so a populist host will assert that The elites who are trying to solve issues of crime such as politicians civil servants criminologists and community activists are Are essentially a self-serving industry that are preying upon the victims of violence Trying to get money for their own special purposes and their own special programs Failing to see what is to be created in that area so that people can have a normal life The only people who can create that environment a normal life Those are the police So only the police can solve the problems of violent crime. This is rooted in his personal experience and is embraced by His populist rhetoric to contrast those who like himself Who have firsthand experience supposed to a parasitic industry of self-interested experts bureaucrats academics and elites who depend upon the inner city social problems to justify a continued misuse of government resources so Another major shift in intellectual discourse is we've shifted from Discourse based on words to a discourse based on pictures So you get a picture and it's usually Much more emotionally compelling right than than words But pictures and lived experiences do not translate into any type of politics So that may be why we have less coherent politics these these days because our politics is based much more on emotions lived experiences and images So lived experience and images are too diffused too contradictory too ambiguous to translate into a coherent politics Right the forming of a political World view is profoundly complex and subject to a whole range of significant variables So you have all sorts of left-wing politics that are founded upon lived experience and talk radio is a medium that Privileges real-time two-way debate so it can accommodate and express a wide range of perspectives but political talk radio tends to be right-wing and populist so Adler online this nationally syndicated conservative populist talk radio Show in canada was a rhetorical marriage of an experientialist epistemology with tropes of populism Filtering out experiences and perspectives that would challenge the conservative opinions of the host and the caller So the best way to be successful as a host In in my genre and in talk radio and on tv And as a pundit is to tell people what they want to hear And the best way to be unsuccessful is to tell your audience what it does not want to hear So that's why most pundits get captured by their audience and they become afraid To tick off their audience by saying something contrary to their expectations So the style of debate and populist discourse Determines what type of opinions and ideas can be expressed and whether or not they appear reasonable or ridiculous so We develop these academics developing their analysis from infotainment To argument and this style has several defining characteristics So it's a populist logic Which defines itself as a utopian alternative to mainstream models of journalism So argument justifies itself through its ability to speak to and represent the interests of the people. That's why it's populist It defines what is good for the people and it moves effortlessly between political and market tropes So the commercial success and the public good are fused together. So if I have a large audience That reflects that what i'm doing is in the public good Even though it's entirely possible to have a large audience and what you're pumping out is toxic and against the public good So there is a strong argument to make that talk radio, for example fuels outrage and may well Have a deleterious effect On the public. So for example, I was profoundly influenced by Dennis Prager And I used to listen to him initially when he just had a saturday and sunday night show on kbc radio 1988 89 in los angeles and then About 1993 Dennis Prager got a daily show And I noticed when I listened to his daily show that I would usually emerge from listening more angry than I was going in So even Dennis Prager a guy who wrote a book on happiness Listening to his show my experience tended to make me more angry. So generally speaking my experience of talk radio over the last 30 years is that it tends to leave me more angry And more unhappy than before I started listening to it so From the populist right-wing perspective what people want in commercial terms. So your ratings your viewership Is the same as what people need in political times And what people want In this format is a provocative and entertaining debate That's highly emotional passionate strongly opinionated simple brief aggressive Confrontational, right? That's the model for success in this formula So argument assumes that an aggressive and opinionated host Will filter out ideas and modes of speech which the audience does not want to hear So an effective talk radio host Will embark on an endless quest to discipline his callers towards a very specific model of free discussion So Charles Adler Would claim that he was ushering in a broadcast revolution which antiquated conventions of journalism and bland Empty rhetoric of public relations just swept aside in the interests of an energizing political debate So he invites us to participate in a populist renewal of the public sphere Which public discussion and debate simulates what he imagines at kitchen tables and coffee shops You know frank honest confrontational exchange of opinion that's open to anyone wants to join the conversation and He wants us to contrast this open discussion with the decayed elitist forms of discourse So the mainstream media with its traditional commitment to balance to objectivity to political correctness Have led to an anemic and boring public sphere In which this unconditional respect for the views of others has completely Emasculated our capacity and desire to make difficult but necessary political judgments. So reading from this analysis by two canadian academics on agutainment about nationally syndicated conservative populist host Charles Adler Adler online his show So for Adler mainstream media's traditional commitments to balance objectivity and political correctness led to anemic and boring public sphere so our Unconditional respect for others has emasculated our capacity and desire to make difficult but necessary political judgments So these mainstream norms Have sheltered those whose claims could not withstand the scrutiny of common sense reasoning and lived experience And so from a populist right-wing perspective calls for balance and objectivity and fairness These calls merely encourage an apathetic public sphere And allow the political claims of vocal special interests to exercise disproportionate influence So a style that is confrontational aggressive and passionate is politically valuable because it shakes people free from an elite induced apathy and ignorance So Charles Adler Discussed crime with guest Margaret Wenty who was a columnist for the Globe and Mail Imprompted by Adler Wenty attacked the cbc the public broadcasting Network in canada She attacked the cbc for airing opinions which suggests that media attention to white victims of crime was much greater than to black victims So on a commercial basis There's more money to be made focusing on white victims of crime rather than black victims of crime So one person gets shot in westwood. That's bigger news than 27 people getting shot in south central Because there's more money to be made and more general interest about you know one Asian girl getting shot and killed in westwood compared to 27 gang bangers getting gunned down in south central los angeles So wenty says we have the cbc and the other media and they trot out the usual suspects naming all the usual culprits I'm just sick of it so the usual suspects naming the usual culprits is peddling the second seconding liberal dogma the structural social economic factors have a role to play in explaining crime And Adler says or why is it dan that these hustlers the usual suspects the so-called experts Why is it they can continue to get away with it? Is it because someone gives them a microphone because they are entertaining on tv And wenty replies white guilt white guilt is what stands in the way of truth telling that we need to grapple with the issue of crime So then adler endorses wenty's claim the crime in canada is connected with the jamaican subculture of violence imported by immigrants So is it racist want to screen out the ones who are part of the Gun and drug culture because every time you ask a question like this people say charles. It's very very complicated And I don't think it is So for charles adler a pervasive elitist commitment to a polite non-confrontational politically correct style Stands in the way of an open honest and frank discussion of social problems and how they should be addressed And complexity is stigmatized as little more than an excuse to avoid asking the tough questions and a willingness to violate political correctness conventions of cultural sensitivity becomes a sign of lucid and honest speech It's a sign of moral courage Just hurts my heart People tell me you can't talk candidly about a specific problem. You've got to go all around it. I'm saying why Am I going to offend the gangsters? Why would I care about that? So complicated leaders theories not only misguided They are morally corrupt They privileged the hurt feelings of gangsters of the duty to protect hard-working law-abiding common people So the populace will congratulate himself on having the fortitude to challenge political correctness Because he is the organic defender of the people's interests and he will point to his ratings and his market share as the equivalent of a democratic vote of confidence in support of his approach so People with good ratings will boast that you know, this shows that they're acting in the public good and these high ratings are a tribute to one's bold and aggressive style Because on this show we don't let people get away with crap Someone wants to come on and simply dump crap Well, I take it personally because I think of you the listener as family I don't like it when people try to crap on my family People will say i'm attacking. I don't see myself as attacking I see myself as defending what motivates me You motivate me. You're part of my family And that's populace rhetoric So adler adopted an aggressive tone with a caller trying to argue That a conservative plan to cut the sales tax would disproportionately benefit the wealthy. That's not an argument People are going to say why do I have to be such a bully? Why do I have to be so obnoxious because i'm not an idiot and I refuse for the audience to be insulted So every time charles adler the populace host challenges a guest or a caller He defends his actions as being in the interest of his people the audience He is a proxy for their political judgment. So he acts when they cannot He's symbolically taking back the airways from the elite He's ruthlessly evicting the fuzzy logic and indefensible opinions of those who monopolize the public space for far too long So this is a utopian vision So conservative populism often invokes an authoritarian sensibility as necessary for democratic renewal So adler's populace rhetoric authorizes and requires a host who is a strong man Someone who will safeguard our interests by vigorously patrolling and enforcing boundaries between good and bad talk in the interests of the people For just my extended family So these authoritarian Interventions are required to clear out the elitist nonsense perpetrated by the mainstream media And then there is a second rhetorical defense of an aggressive and confrontational style That is the defense you need to be entertaining people turn in to be entertained So populist live streaming and talk radio fuses commercial imperatives with political imperatives To create a style and a justification for argue attainment So I watch football in parks. I love watching, you know, people run into each other and Argu attainment is viscerally compelling because it's like people smashing into each other So the populist genius of talk radio lies in its ability to portray the logic of commercialism Meaning treating political talk as entertainment As a politically virtuous invigoration of democracy So the discipline imposed by the need to entertain you Keeps political speech honest accessible and authentic And it counteracts the mainstream media's counterproductive pursuit of diversity balance objectivity and moderation So argue attainment simply gives people what they want This does not lead to a decline of public discourse Leads to an invigoration and a democratic rebirth By welcoming in the values and priorities of ordinary people So the logic of the market the logic of commerce Is now regarded as an instrument of political democratization So the people are put back in charge of the public sphere Man, this is so tiring just to look into my phone screen instead of looking out The window I need to look out the window for 30 seconds. Let's listen to it. Okay Tonight we're rounding the corner finishing step four By looking at the final pages 70 and 71 in the big book Bill brings it to conclusion and I'm going to look at that and then I'm going to give you my own Expanded version like I do with most of the big book from my knowledge And my experience of how to be fourth step preparation To a really good conclusion The big book is really good. It's really good, but he also said we know alone And that's certainly been my experience and now hopefully at least your exposure In terms of the way we approach column three and column four in the resentment inventory The work that I gave you as an assignment the work that most of you did I mean we spent a lot of time sharing the work that you did Wonderful a robust penetrating deep Not just in the conscious man looking to a screen is so much more tiring Than like face-to-face interaction like zoom calls so much more tiring than a normal conversation Okay, I just need to do some la la las and I'll be fine Yeah, the didgeridoo is the Aussie version of loose music Okay, so A populist host will use political and commercial logic when he describes his program There's radio that makes you think You're not going to get people to think why do radio? Notice how my voice changed just from doing some la la las Completely different quality of my voice But the larger impression that you get from listening to populist hosts is that they don't want to make their audience do anything at all They do everything they can simply to serve their audience So the populist hosts will continually remind his audience that he is serving their needs and their interests and that is his top priority All the interventions he makes to discipline and shape political speech Designed to make the program and the discussion more palatable to them So as he explained on this show we use the slogan bottom kills Which is why we use a lot of entertainment values production values. We try to do an animated conversation Sometimes people say you're rude. You're interrupting people. I say look, I'm most concerned about the listener I want to move on One of the death nails of talk radio is listeners and others going on and on to make a point We like to do rapid fire radio So the suggestion is that listeners are incapable or unwilling to follow lengthy complex or abstract arguments So politics must be served up in appetizing morsels, which the audience can easily appreciate enjoy and digest Whoa, the chat says in real life is always better The chat says that in real life sex is better than virtual sex That's a bold and controversial stand all right, mate Do you have a license for that opinion? So avoiding boredom is the defining criteria for a populist show So avoiding boredom is a justification For adding entertainment and production values, right? This is not the logic of political discourse This is not the logic of democratic debate It is the logic of the culture industry Where the needs to entertain the consumer from moment to moment to moment trump any other obligation So as consumers in the marketplace of political ideas We learn we're under no obligation to listen to opinions or statements that we find unpleasant challenging or boring So when the host erupts indignantly when challenged by a contrary point of view or arbitrarily cuts off a caller who hesitates or stumbles It symbolically gives license to the rest of us to adopt an equally arrogant and narcissistic posture When it comes to not listening to and not engaging with the views of others But this entertaining style of discourse is then defended as necessary to overcome the apathy and the decadence of mainstream media So for charles adler brevity and passion are the most important characteristics Distinguishing speech that has entertainment value from that which does not entertaining talk can be quickly boiled down to a brief passionate comment and a single emblematic anecdote arguments that can be made quickly and succinctly without hesitation Those are the strongest arguments So explaining your reasoning or explaining the context behind a political opinion in more than a sentence or two Is customarily met with a terse injunction to make your point failure to do so leads to being cut off Folks, you're really going to have to murder. I don't have any patience I just have a sense what it's like to be a listener. I've listened to programs at the other end and I'm saying to the host Hey, move it on and move it up We're most concerned here about the actual listening audience Half Galician has joined the show This sounds like yet another liberal deconstruction of talk radio to justify it Why no liberal can succeed in the medium or Or it's a good faith analysis from a particular perspective that may have something valuable to impart which is my perspective Apply this to sports talk radio. Is that populist? I assume it is The comment section is saying that they changed the unorthodox show on tv from the book. I did not read the unorthodox book But I recently put talk radio into the search box for academic papers google scholar and libgen lib gen And so just downloaded a whole bunch of papers on talk radio and they're Found some books on sports talk radio, which I may delve into So emotionally intense debate does make for entertaining and commercially successful radio and live streaming and tv Now should we however privilege this style of debate? over other forms of discussion That what's best for our society Someone sincerely and passionately believes in something It has the personal experience to back it up and they can make their case forcibly quickly and emotionally They're more likely to be true and right and accurate and good is passion and outrage An accurate index for sincerity quality and truth or truthiness in political speech And if there's not a large amount of liberal talk radio, does that mean that liberalism Can't stand up to interrogation. Does that mean that liberalism is inherently an inferior form of politics to conservatism? So Half-collision says my thesis is the left is too self-serious to succeed in the format of talk radio Our america was tried and failed differently Well part of the reason that there's not as much left-wing talk radio is that A large constituency of the left-wing side of the spectrum blacks and latinos have their own radio stations And then another reason is mainstream media meets The the with the liberals blessing right liberals have a much higher regard for mainstream media than do conservatives So liberals don't feel nearly as alienated from mainstream media. So they get their needs map media news opinion needs map from national public radio and The mainstream media while conservatives by and large Have much more suspicion and hostility towards the mainstream media So the northeast of the united states has the most positive view of the mainstream media And the south generally speaking has the most critical view of the mainstream media So passion testifies the close connections between expression and experience So talk is not idle chatter Needs to be solidly grounded in real life experience and deeply held moral convictions So any stylistic signs of hesitancy or ambiguity Signals a disjuncture between political place and personal experience and reasoning which is abstract Complex takes too long or is too boring And is ideological elitist and contrary to the interests of the people So at a visceral level populist style of argument performs models and intensifies The dictates of epistemological populism Argument teaches us that we can judge the validity of particular comment Not merely by art or pro hominem shorthand Offered by populism by by an even immediate more immediate shorthand of the passion and brevity of the speaker's communication style Or our emotional reaction to it So epistemological populism Plays a key role in establishing the parameters of who is allowed to speak what experience and knowledge can be offered And how we are allowed to speak in the public realm of talk radio the name of a renewal of public discourse So democratic and market imperatives coalesce So speak up and speed up or shut up because what's good for ratings is good for democracy So concluding thoughts from this essay by two canadian academics So what lies beneath the surface of what seems like trivial and ephemeral discourse is a sophisticated rhetorical pattern that profoundly impacts the type of experience knowledge and styles of political speech that allow entry into the political debate of populist talk radio So the specific epistemological orientation style of debate populist talk radio helps us understand why the medium of talk radio Is open to political specters across the ideological spectrum but commercial political talk radio Does not really promote real political debate But naturalizes certain political and policy conclusions and dismisses others as worthy of ridicule So this is achieved by overt guest selection call suggestion issue prioritization values priming and by rhetorically establishing very specific epistemological and stylistic rules of debate If we limit public discourse to those perspectives, which can be expressed anecdotally quickly passionately and confrontationally We can filter out a wide host of perspectives and policy positions based on broader analyses of structural inequality and power Since many progressive perspectives employ these disallowed types of analyses And conservative perspectives can be communicated according to the dictates of populism and argument The populist talk radio Preemptively immunizes its audience from having to seriously confront and consider progressive ideas So populist talk radio cultivates convictions and stylistic habits While not appearing as overtly political tend to frame many conservative policies as commonsensical and reasonable And portraying progressive policies as self-evidently illogical and ridiculous So conservative populism Is the dominant form of discourse on right wing talk radio and it challenges mediated and reflective action reasoning and communication purges mediating institutions and discursive practices Which maintain the distinction between public and private In favor of a pure form of political expression that directly reflects the will of the people Now the ability of conservative parties to deliver populist institutional reform Has been remarkably limited. So donald trump for example talked a great game, but he wasn't a particularly effective president So populist talk radio models renovation of the public sphere Which value authority of knowledge opinion and argument is proportional to the lived experience of the people So this discursive populism is can be seen as a dress rehearsal or a compensatory stand-in Allows its believers to avoid becoming overly cynical About the concrete failures of conservative parties to deliver institutional reform So donald trump talked a great game did not deliver such a great game That's it. Bye. Bye Let me just check the chat Nick pointers in a recent call-in show says ben Shapiro has no name rabbis on On the right only went as far as stefa molyneux weak shows sargon as a joker loses debates The left is the establishment. They don't need am radio Do I delve into american renaissance content? I'm not sure is one allowed to say in 2021 that one delves into american rovers renaissance content I'll have to pray about that Bye. Bye