There we go.  Well, I think it happened Well the recording has to be in the cloud right if you're gonna not be here. Yeah, exactly No, I recorded to the cloud I always do and and I now I don't see the the transcript Thing which is very weird, huh? But there we go. Grace, I'm gonna make you host okay, and thank you for offering This is great. I'm like excited to kick out anybody. I don't like I don't think that's ever happened on an OGM call I don't think I've ever had to kick anybody else out, but I don't know Gil's Phantom Took no taker is here. Although if you're not doing the transcript at least the no taker could That's that no taker will in fact have a transcript. That's true Yeah, it does a pretty good job of that. I can share that with people if you want anybody wants to let me know See we've solved the chewing up the computer problem Jerry There we go.  So I'm going to let grace and I'll before grace before you start It's with whatever social engineering you'd like to do you have full full rain to do what you'd like So I will I will watch the recording later. Whoa, ha ha ha And so you're in Barcelona. Yeah, exactly Fun, cool. I haven't been here in many years lived here for nine months in 2001 Was here when 9-11 happened? Very strange thing to experience somewhere else Barcelona for a couple of weeks some years ago and said it was the hardest thing you ever did to come back home It's a really really beautiful city. Yeah, nice. Yeah, I just got back from there a couple weeks ago sweet well, I'm off and Thanks, Grace. See y'all Go Alright everybody so welcome to the OGM call. I guess I'm gonna record this. Oh Somehow I'm not the host. I can't it says the host has to give me permission Is there a host? He said he gave me host, but I don't know Carl is the host Carl on her court I don't know why you're the host Carl, but it just looks like now I'm gonna have to be on my best behavior because Carl can kick me out because he's the host I just made you the co-host All right We've got a recording going that's great Awesome, so welcome to the OGM call for December 1st 2022 Today is supposed to be a topic, but no topics came up But a topic did come up on the Google groups, which I wanted to explore which is around Sense-making and the media and how we make sense of things in the media So I want to do a quick round and then a longer round and the quick round that I wanted to start with is This I think is an experience that's happened to many people And so do kind of a quick discussion of that and then maybe do an exercise Which will take a little bit of time out and the question is has it ever happened to you? That you're reading your newspaper your favorite newspaper and Or media outlet, whatever it may be or one that you trust and you read an article About something you really know a lot about So it might be somebody who you know or a company that you actually have insight information about or about food systems If you're class some topic that you know about and you read this article and you know these guys are idiots Like you read the article and you're like these guys got this and this and this and this wrong and Then you turn the page or you go to the next article in the newspaper that you love and they say something about something You know nothing about and you're like this is a great article and you believe what is on that next page So I kind of wanted to hear reflections on that topic of like has that happened to you? And where do you see yourself as possibly having been susceptible to that kind of like? Even though I know that they have dubious facts on page three when I got the page four it was like oh just fine Yeah, go ahead Stacey. Yeah, I'll go first because I think I could be short Where I've experienced that I Hear feedback to you. I don't you're muted Grace. Okay. Oh, yeah I think some other people muted which fixed the problem. Okay. Thank you Where I've actually experienced that has been on live on the live news feed Where I've seen things happen and then I hear them reporting it and that is not what I viewed and how that Then affects the next thing they report is they're no longer credible to me, but that's also how I deal with people and This is an important topic because this is a topic that I think that We really should take a better look at so we could figure out how we can fix it because I think we're all susceptible to In our in our collective sense making we shut off Certain people right away and drink in everything from other people. So I'm glad you brought it up. Thank you Hi everybody In psychology, I learned about a concept called selective exposure Like say just what's something expensive. You'll only expose yourself to information related to that product You'll tend to ignore other opinions. So I think that does play a part in that phenomenon Personally, I have not exactly experienced that but I could imagine scenarios where like maybe confirmation bias where I'm led to believe a certain way based on my experience when I was taught in school and what I've come to believe and Yeah, it's tricky to know And to see when it's challenged for for me to come to terms with what is my belief now due to a challenge Welcome Doug. We're talking about the phenomenon in which you We're talking about the media and the truth in the media and the phenomenon in which sometimes you'll read something in In a publication that you respect Which is false. You know, it's false because it's your area of expertise, but then you when you turn the page Maybe you don't you just believe the next story even though you know that they were wrong on that thing that you're an expert in Okay, go ahead call Hey, um, well the the Seems to be some resonance with like the Dunning-Kruger effect too that you don't And then I've been I brought it up a couple of times and I've been I'm really gonna really want to get some meeting together to talk about the The believing game, but there's also a piece of that's also the dynamic where we need I mean you You don't you yeah, there there's like a systematic way of of Determining whether you should you know the whether you should believe something or not and things it's kind of framed as a Complimentary to the scientific method, which is the doubting game and things so Between the two of those and I'm also interested in what Eric talked about too. If you can post reference to it There's been a deterioration of knowing like Stacy was talking about how we feel about people and It's kind of different how we might feel about an institution like a newspaper or publication and then The institutions have become more and more like individuals in some ways because there's so much freelance writing And stuff like that, but it still has the same headline on the top. Somebody was mentioning Recently this week, you know, Jeff Bezos bought the the Washington Post a few years back And it still has the exact same thing on the top It doesn't say under new ownership and now you kind of wonder like are there certain stories about retail? or about cloud Surfaces that might or might not get in there, right? You don't know. It's it's not in the headline about the ownership And the same thing I remember was talking about in New York Times like that they have a history of being slanted again Like not hiring gay people and now they're very woke and like these changes of ownership or not changes of ownership We don't notice them over time. We think we're reading the same newspaper, but maybe we are and maybe we aren't Uh kill go ahead. Yeah. Good morning So to your original question. Yeah, I have had that experience I've also had the experience of Of discounting everything else they write based on, you know, what I read about something I know about neither of which, you know, both of which are over generalizations, right? But yeah, it's it's Um Seeing coverage of stuff that I know about or that I was directly involved in really, you know, sort of shifted my view of how to look at media I've tried to In a more or less disciplined way try to triangulate a lot I read something I'll go see read other people or read other views on the subject Um, you know, I intentionally seek out contrarian views Or follow the thread of an article quote some people go see who are those people and what's their background What are the things they have written to try to build a larger field? Of shape about what that topic is My my friend Chauncey bell Says that in his mind one of the most important Capacities is to is the capacity to make good assessments of other people's capacity to make assessments It's a little loopy, but if you if you listen it, it's you know, it's it's very powerful It's like everybody is making assessments or interpretations all the time. We all do that. We can't not do that Um, and then how do we listen to how other people do that? And what's behind theirs and what do they bring to the table in terms of their own biases their own experience their own perspectives? and You know and in that process, how do I listen to my own listening? You know my own confirmation bias where I I like eric's phrase about selective exposure. We all do that Uh, so it's intriguing territory and I will I will confess that I'm culpable of being a bad actor in this because I will sometimes I noticed I sometimes will retweet retweet things because I like the headline and I haven't read the article Or um, or I you know retweet things and notice that there is no reference to the claim being made Uh, which is a place where I'm I'm I'm much more disciplined. I'm you know, I'm I'm not inclined to propagate things where someone says something interesting But there's no way to verify Is it true or not or where it comes from or where it's sourced? You know charts that have no no attribution to them and things like that So it's it's a very sloppy game out there and I noticed that I'm swept up and culpable in it and try to be really careful Great question, grace Yeah, it's kind of um another instance, uh evidence of Capitalism gonna muck I mean, here we have all of a sudden Jeff Bezos buying the washington post. Okay What are his politics? You've got the murdox on fox news CNN is losing Um media attention, so they're gonna move to the right You know because they drifted over into the left so, um You know, we like to think about journalism as something that's you know pure um And uh and factual and yet it's drifted over into what I would call, you know Advocacy journalism looking for the facts that justify a political position So, um, that's kind of a phenomenon. It's just so very very present In media today and um, you know the choices we make about what we consume I'm finding myself drifting more and more away from listening Um, you know, it's it's been background noise in my own mind for a long time I mean background noise as I as I go through the day And I'm just saying no, I I um I'd much rather listen to you know, uh um Leonard Cohen And feed my soul in that in that way and then listen to Because that's where that it's it's starting to show up for me Mm-hmm. So, I mean the bottom the bottom line is choose your source that choose your sources wisely Yeah, and I think that's really interesting Um, because I've been listening more to long-form podcasts I just realized I really want to listen to the expert talk about this quite a bit You know and go into it and go in and back and forth with an interviewer who Is either going to ask hard questions or doesn't know anything and is asking naive questions But like see does this person really know and I and I've actually substituted a lot of them I know I've been news for a long-form podcast And and it's quite interesting. It's a very different bias that you get that way And you know, I know that that those of us on the call are all kind of Left leaning whatever that whatever that means All right, um You know, but so so periodically I want to turn on fox news to see what they're saying And and it's just it's just insane I mean, it's just absolutely insane what what what what you hear in those contexts. So Yeah See that's what's interesting to me too. Like that's a very interesting thing Like to listen to something that comes from the other side And say it's insane To me that's an indicator that we're missing something If I can't understand why somebody believes something What am I missing? Because I listen to both sides and they both sound equally insane to me That's why I'm listening to long-form podcasts. Like they both sound insane. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's that's all that's insane um, the other thing that this comes in the context of just to kind of Keep moving the conversation and add more stuff even though I see there's some hands up. I'll get to you in a second but is this comes in the context of um, you know, the takeover of twitter and then This recent post that was in the google group about like how it's horrible that the that twitter is no longer in censoring co vid disinformation and And there's there's been always a long standing news outlets The pro censorship news outlets like it's horrible that twitter is out there It's horrible that people are having secret conversations on signal It's horrible that people can say whatever they want and somebody just commented that the you know, the right to speeches is limited to those who have one and so there's this tension, right like Yeah Yeah, between like how and and I was surprised to hear how many people In this group feel like censorship on twitter has has been a good thing and it's horrible that We're gonna bring back all these people who are banned from twitter I found that very interesting like like steward was saying who's left and who's right. I'm like, oh, I thought we were Free speech advocates on the left. I'm kind of confused now Klaus Stuart you want to say one more? Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to say one more thing and that's you know, um Having a legal background, um, you know, the idea of first amendment Has always been kind of deep in my soul and yet as I look around and see some of the some of the stuff that's out there Um, you know, both in the media but also in the art world and in the in some of the films that are making It's kind of like, you know um my sense making A mechanism just goes, you know, why are they throwing billions and billions of dollars into making all this junk that people are consuming? um Is that opinion, uh, is that is that assessment gill? Absolutely, it's it's my assessment because some people love that, you know, that all the crap that's out there But you know, it's it's still I will still assert that that's an edge that I think we might, you know, pay attention to at some point in time If I was creating a new world Klaus Yeah, I'm coming back to Karl's comment about the darning gorge effect I think there are there's a great way to to look at Information that is now based on your on your understanding of the of the topic Misleading or downright wrong, but then you have to look at the intentionality behind it, right? um, it's the intention Um, you know, that's just the best they know and they don't see their blind spots They just don't know what the what they don't know um, or Which is which maybe the new york times which maybe the washington post, you know Putting out an article thinking they really know when in fact, you know have blind spots Fox news on the other hand is intentionally wrong, right? It's a propaganda network So they're misleading. There is designed misinformation to lead towards predetermined outcomes, right? We have We have modeling of of viewers based on the socioeconomic backgrounds Maybe know exactly what how they respond to to stimuli So that stimuli is being put out there in order to induce Opinions in order to induce emotional responses. That's a different thing but so for as long as We're dealing with a whether that's a media network or whether that's a conversation in social media LinkedIn Twitter, whatever for as long as we're dealing with someone who is responsive To a question and here not not a not a statement but a question And then and then and then interacts with that. We're good but unfortunately There is just a lot of intentional misleading, you know, and I think we have to divide that between Misinformation that's born out of blind spots and and lack of information or lack of understanding and intentional misleading the purposeful which is which is Overwhelming, you know in our society because the The way that the Americans at the western societies are leading instead of china, you know making edicts or russia We are we are putting out information that in the end of the day has the same impact I want to Just make a comment and like pause for one second on this comment Because this is exactly what i'm pointing to That there's an assumption That the new york times is just making mistakes But fox news is leading you down a path And I don't have evidence At this moment that the new york times is less guilty of that And that's what i've been pointing to in this group Yeah, I mean that's that that's generally true It's not so much what they misreport as to what they don't report on You know, I mean the the gaps in the information that is being made available to the average american consumer Are just horrendous, you know when you take any topic climate change health Political issues, yeah, but it's the absence of discussion the absence of information That an informed citizen would need to have to make to make informed Decisions, you know who to vote for what to vote for and so on And so I agree that you have manipulation on both sides, but in the case of fox news It is active misleading. It's not lacking information. It's providing misinformation You know that that is intentional Leading to leading to people responding, you know in in in very predictable ways. So I see that as a difference I know but I'm telling you That I don't see that I see new york times in washington post doing that exact same behavior and I Don't see people. I don't see you specifically in this moment or a lot of the people here questioning that Like is the new york times doing that and in what realm Might I be able to catch the new york times doing that? Well, well, tell me what would I mean give me an example so I'll give you, you know, the ones that i'm going to pick are going to make me sound very right wing Which is hysterical to me But one example is the lab lake hypothesis which turned out to be apparently pretty true And there was a large media On the left saying this couldn't be This was you know zoological transmission It didn't come from a lab and that is important information because it comes from a laboratory How to treat it is very different The implications for how we're funding those types of laboratories And the right was the only people who were saying hey this lab leak conspiracy. Oh, you know, and if you so much as Opened your mouth And said I think there's something funny about this You you know and and the mainstream media and mostly the left-wing media was pushing this narrative But you know You could also say this was a fuck-of-war kind of issues. I mean in the middle of this turmoil you needed A national strategy on how to combat what was clearly, you know I don't see I don't see any problem With I don't see any problem With knowing the origin of this thing Right, did it come from China or not? I did it come from a Chinese lab that was funded by the United States Has nothing to do with how dangerous the virus is nothing It was a distraction in the middle of trying to formulate a national strategy Now you will but how can you formulate a national strategy when you don't know the origin of it? And you can't have an open scientific conversation about it But even if you're right even if you're right class, this was still the newspapers Making you believe a certain thing that turned out later to be untrue And banning anybody who would speak about it. And so that type of behavior is what you're accusing the right of doing And I'm just saying it's the same behavior It's the same behavior. It's not in my mind. I'm sorry. That's just Okay, cool. Let's hear from that Grace, I don't know what sources you're reading or not reading But I've seen plenty of debate about the lab leak hypothesis I know some people I know there's been an attempt to shut down debate But I've seen plenty of debate in the public media and in the scientific literature Trying to figure out what it's actually a very complicated question. So you're saying it's been shut down I think is is a bit I say it was shut down for an entire year. Look at the dates on those things. Look at the dates Yeah, that's not something I'm going to research But that's the point. That's why I picked that because it is something that people are allowed to debate now It's not like it's allowed now But for a year it was not allowed Well, I don't know for you to say it's both the same Have you ever spent a half hour watching Tucker Carlson? Look, there are people on the left who are as ridiculous as that Have you ever spent a half hour watching Tucker Carlson? I have not spent a half an hour watching Tucker Carlson But I have spent an hour listening to podcasts that I completely disagree with and they are ridiculous I invite you well Tucker Carlson has got a reach that podcasts don't have 30 i think of americans get their news from fox news Spend a half hour there This is not just difference of opinion. This is as claus said a concerted focus strategic highly funded disinformation campaign for political purposes I'm not saying same thing and to say they're both the same thing Look, people say it's both say there's political violence on both sides It's 50 times as many murders from right-wing violence as left-wing violence You can say it's both the same same thing because they both do it, but 50x is a pretty significant difference You know, I think that's fair enough. Look, that's a fair enough thing to say right And Doug sorry, but you can see The first thing you can see is that how sure You are that this is correct and then I'm wrong And I'm not even like saying that I actually believe everything I'm saying I'm just saying looking at how difficult it is to even have this conversation About a world health issue Because that's what that's what the twitter thing was about your now you're allowed scientists are now allowed And anybody is now allowed to debate the health policy on twitter And that was banned until now I don't know. I've seen I've been watching the thing for what is it now two and a half three years I've seen plenty of debate all through if you could if you could post the dates when you think it was blacked out I'll take a look I'll take a look at that. I'm willing to do that. But look, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying my experience is different than yours You say you haven't seen any of it. I say well, I have okay That's not telling you I didn't say I haven't seen it. I said we didn't see it for a year You said I'm sorry if that was incorrect So do we want this conversation? So I'm gonna I'm gonna pass to Doug but but what I'm really trying to point at is like how Certain we are that the media that we're looking at is the good guys And how difficult it is to like Even have that conversation here. We're just supposed to be a very safe place Doug Yeah, so So I sort of I sort of turn the telescope around on this And the thing that one of the one of the pieces that came to mind is there's a a transformation organizational transformation Person that I have a lot of respect for um And there was a guy who came out with a whole new take and twist and turn in that space And And she sort of respond, you know responded to this as new and a shiny new thing And and I looked at it and my comment was Correlation is not causation And he had woven a very nice condom Out of correlations That really had no basis to then leap to It's actually a sorcerer cause it causative kind of thing It was just really completely floating and If there weren't people With an appetite for Tucker Carlson, he wouldn't be in front of the camera and if there weren't people with an appetite for a whole package and gestalt and identity of Being, you know truth centered and values centered and morals centered There wouldn't be a readership for the new york times in the washington post So ultimately For my lens, it's about orientation and attachments and People with orientations and attachments By things that affirm their orientation and attachments And the world and system that we live in is a consumer model It's all about meeting needs and demands of people that want What they want and that can be amazon selling crap or it can be media newspapers Selling points of view that are reflective and affirming For the people that are receiving them And so through that lens It is an equivalency place like it's all the same from a morals standpoint or from a value standpoint There are differences But those are also sort of subjective expression of individual preference and agency and for the people You know drinking from the fox cup You know all the statements about how more righteous and true and and valid the new york times Are is in the washington post as Is as obvious and extremely ridiculous And delusional to them experientially and emotionally looking at you As you're looking at tucker call soon so from a from a An acknowledgement recognition of humans or humans And they do them They're individual orientation and values Determine and drive What they buy you know what needs they have to be affirmed in media and and I think Part of the part of the 1950s naive somewhat delusional holding on to um What's true and what isn't what's fact and what isn't a lot of that Is what's been destroyed Just as a social phenomena There was enough critical mass from The people you know that constructed alternative facts And repeating a lion not long enough makes it a truth For some people which seems to do um That a lot of those tacit Everybody agrees with What's good what's right or what whatever Governs underlying at all I think is gone um so That doesn't negate the validity of the concept of something being good on a on a Moral on an ethical on a social On an empathetic level Versus being bad um being dark You know religions have been in business for thousands of years because of good and evil like that's been their ticket So um I don't I I don't personally believe Feeding the polarities Energetically it maps to a solution It just you know is it adding another another drop to the bucket of one side or another and the the deeper question is Are there ways that that from a Fixing and healing standpoint are there ways we can figure out how to drop below all of that To land on an emotional level in a way that's universal and transcends all these constructed polarities the people Any points in those criticism like tortures is simply compelling the number Anybody else hearing that? I think that's john maybe Okay, so so yeah, so I I think you know my actually my focus Is how you know, what are the things that would cut underneath all of that and that would touch and emotionally energized People to reconnect with what they're feeling In ways that it's around things that could potentially be universal for everybody Like you know the response everybody gets if they look at a puppy or a kitten depending upon whether a cat or a dog person So with that I'll I'll stop so this is Really brings us closer to the conversation that I want to have It's not about whether I'm right or wrong about At what moment the debate came in And it's not whether I'm right or wrong about you know Climate change It's about Where do we stand? When we hear somebody criticize something dear and near to our hearts For example, if I say the new york times is a bunch of liars and they're manipulating your minds Where do we stand on media in general? What does it mean to have? censorship on twitter Or not have censorship on twitter and who are the mediators of that? And given the polarization, which is really what dug is Speaking about how do we not just create safe spaces for very brave people but create like When has it happened to you in this last year since the lockdowns have ended?  That's dangerous that a bunch of quacks might be on there Like we just first we get offended at an outraged And and and that's really my inquiry like half one was the last time any of us stood back and said hey wait a second Yeah, gill Left unmute if you want to speak you're hanging up and down. I don't know maybe that was a mistake Me in the name of ken homer I would ask you to be clear about who you mean when you say we Because we throw we around in all sorts of different you know different scopes and ranges But I also Not clear grace on what is the discussion you want to have the discussion is What do you like Where are you getting your information and how much do you question it? And where do you stand on censorship? of information And what is the right relationship between mainstream media and social media? And how do we even make sense of something in this post truth? world But it really does start at home like when do I admit i'm wrong? When do I admit i'm wrong? Or or cast doubt on the type of media that I've gotten from me For me curiosity is really important And doubt is really important when I was uh, she's when I was like i'm not 13 or something like that I encountered i.f. Stone. I don't know if people know of him I was a journalist very active in the early 1960s and his what he he started out every morning He would get the New York Times and the Washington Post and several other papers and and comb through them and look for gaps and inconsistencies and omissions And right about you know would offer a different perspective on the news. I mean this was the era in which the Through the efforts of people like him the gulf of tonkin's scam of the united states government was exposed United states claimed that north vietnamese patrol boats Had attacked u.s navy and that was the basis for escalation of vietnam war it never happened And it took some intrepid journalists working on top of mainstream journalists and government Spokespeople to track that down I learned very early on from stone that I couldn't trust everything I read in the newspapers that it took a level of analysis and perspective and mixing of points of views to dig at the truth Because of manipulation. Yeah to some degree collusion to some degree human foibles to a very great degree editorial, you know Bandwidth to another degree But and it was yeah, it was widely believed at the time it happened and it took years to get that you know exposed But you know stone was a very powerful lesson for my formative mind Which is to read critically and to question sources and to triangulate sources Which is in which I talked about before um To your to your point about talking with people with whom I disagree There's a real difference between saying what a jerk you are and saying that's interesting. Why do you think that? And opening up a conversation that is that recognizes that we are human beings with Vastly different experiences and perspectives that are formed out of our experiences You know the families we've been raised in the communities we've been raised in who we hang out with etc And we all have these biases so and I've talked before I've I've you know in the course of The covid wars the climate wars. I've become very dear friends with a guy who voted for crump in 2016 Which only happened because we were introduced by a mutual friend who said you guys would you know You guys have something to talk about and we went into an open conversation rather than a combative conversation and Changed each other's minds on some things agreed to disagree on some things and love each other deeply And so for me that was a little like a little window into something else that's possible on the other hand I couldn't have that kind of conversation with Tucker Carlson Uh who you know or people who are not interested in the conversation but are interested in strategic manipulation of populations for political and financial power And if you doubt that look at how quickly rupert murdoch turned on donald trump You know They're in a different game than the kind of game that we are all in here in this circle of of good people on these weekly calls And so that's part of it also is is you know is me discerning where it's possible to have Real conversation with real people which I agree with you is a much wider arena than we mostly live in We mostly live in our little bubbles and there's a real value to opening up those bubbles And we're in a world with some very dark forces that are not just about differences in perspective But very differences in goals of how human beings should survive on this planet Um It's really essential to distinguish between those A friend of mine said the other day when we were talking about this he said I have no interest in a conversation with lindsay glenn Pointless However a conversation with somebody who voted for winzy graham not pointless That's all Yeah, so to echo what what grace and nail me and put in the Chat and dug had mentioned in order to have that kind of conversation that gill Mentioned with that friend There has to be a level of awareness and an ability to recognize when you're wrong So whatever your opinion Opinion is if you're not the kind of person that can do that that kind of conversation will not be possible And I just want to share something that I wanted to bring to the call anyway And it touches on this in many ways I was on a facebook page and it was um somebody was post it was or he's a writer and it's a very I would say it's a very Moderate kind of page in that there are people that move to the extremes But it's kind of very diverse And they were talking about the the dinner that trump had had with yay and uh, whoever else and Because I noticed somebody said that he he was obviously a republican and he was talking about there are reasonable Republicans So I took that as you know what? Let me try to engage with him, which I haven't really done in quite a while And we did and very quickly he started talking about well, why did Nancy Pelosi Put omar on committee And so I just asked him I said well, can you tell you know, he said how vile and anti-semitic she was and honestly I don't know much about her. I don't think she's anti-semitic and that has made people get mad because we also hear the right wing media So I looked into it a little bit and I asked him. I said, can you I said, can you tell me one quote? She made that was anti-semitic And there was a very very long pause And finally he came back with um a meme that said peace for Palestine And I said well, don't they deserve peace too? At which point he started attacking me And he started saying that it should be on my conscience That i'm creating this hate So I used that as an opportunity to pivot a little bit And I said well, then if you support, you know first, I mean I again, I don't want to draw out the story I went very slowly To draw a connection that he was making Between supporting something and then something leading to violence And then after that connection was clear. I then asked him so if you voted for Trump Do you take responsibility for the amount of violence that increased, you know And he said I told you I don't support Trump I said I didn't ask you if you supported him. I asked you if you voted for him And he said I don't say who I voted for now. It was very clear you voted for him and I told him I said you're being dishonest I said I would bet my life you voted for him in 2016 And while I might not bet my life that you voted for him in 2020 I bet a small fortune and he just got like really enraged and i'm going off on a tangent But this is important This is why I actually brought it wanted to bring it in but the subject was different I finally checked his profile and it turns out he's not a real person And that was concerning For a lot of reasons and what was really interesting and that I was going to share it probably in the free jerry's brain group Because what was really interesting at the end of this whole conversation I had used a phrase And then he mirrored that phrase back to me which was really like the whole thing is interesting But how that ties in When you were talking earlier and there was the disagreement between Why the left media or the center media whatever you want to call it the more responsible media I'm going to call it even though They do enrage me as well There was sort of like A hard line Because they were trying to mitigate the damage that was coming from misinformation And i'm less concerned about Where we draw the lines with um like the whole free speech thing I'm more concerned with finding out whose voice i'm really hearing because How could facebook not know there's all these fake profiles? That should be really easy to figure out and this Whatever it was this person was really trying to fight with me And if anybody would like anybody that's on facebook wants me to tag you in so that you can look at the thread Between me and this person because I actually think it was a very interesting thread that illustrates a lot of things I don't you know, that's why I was bringing it here It's worth talking about But but anyway to get to the original point There were no facts he couldn't give me a fact as to why She was anti-semitic But what I learned is this was really orchestrated by bobart and the right wing And it was like blown out of proportion and the comment she made was it's all about the benjamin's which I would make that we all say things like that. I didn't realize it was an anti-semitic trope I'm jewish He said she didn't realize it. I take her out of her word. She apologized anyway, and she still Was able to still support what she supports you can you can Care about israel and the jewish people and still want peace for palestinians And I cannot tell you how many times i've been called anti-semitic for saying that and I served on the board of the temple So I don't you know, that's the end of my rant Thank you This conversation is really difficult for me, and I know that it's really hard for me to stay neutral in this conversation Grace before you go on i'm sorry Can I just answer what gill put in the thread place? Because he asked why in the world did I engage in deep conversation with not a real person? And for that matter why go deep with a person you don't know So I just want to answer this was a forum where there were a lot of people following a conversation And I was going very it was more about who was watching the conversation And I was giving an opportunity for him to give something factual I wasn't falling into the emotions.  I thought you were Seth's friend Carry on, you know that and that was the end of it So I just wanted to answer that Thanks very sorry So I realized that it's really hard for me to stay neutral in the conversation Because I don't think the health authorities did us a favor Through this censorship. I don't think lockdowns proved to reduce the virus I do think they had serious health implications for human beings and educational implications for children And I don't think there was a healthy debate on that at the time of those things were happening And so it's very hard for me to stay neutral on this And for me to really believe this story that It was a good thing that the media Made sure that we all got a unified message For the best of our health and I'm not neutral on that and so You know trying to moderate a conversation around Like what do you believe and what do you not believe? And where did the media steer us along? I happen to be an extremely strong free speech person I'm happy for Twitter to be full of disinformation because I I feel like that's part of healthy debate and I agree with stacey There's a real problem with people who aren't people and how do we identify them and it's been a mess It was a mess before Musk and it's a mess now and there's Misidentification of what is and isn't patrol and what isn't isn't a bot um But yeah, so I apologize for Not being neutral about this You know, I feel very strongly that healthy debate has been Taken away from us Yeah Either dug or gill. I don't know both of you have hands up well Gil if you you want to respond to what grace just said because i'm gonna Zoom out Yeah, let me just go very briefly. Doug. Thank you Um Grace I have no problem at all with you not being neutral. None of us is Uh, but I would ask of you what I you know what I said in my previous comments That if you're going to make claims be prepared to Document them And you've said several times now that there's this blackout of the lab leak hypothesis I've just been on you know, just been browsing while you've been talking I see lots and lots of discussion Uh spanning wide range of dates So ground yours Feel free to make your assertions. Absolutely, but ground them And then we can have that information. It was there was it was it was In the media that I was consuming and I will I will Provide it what I'm saying is that you're coming you you're in this conversation with a chip on your shoulder And that's okay And you have a strongly articulated point of view and that's okay And it's based on on things that you've read and done It would for me it'd be much more fruitful if you came in and said Here, you know in this date range this didn't happen and then we could say well, did it or not? Because we're just left with you making this Minutes to show up and moderate this conversation. Please give me a break. Please give me a break eight minutes before the conversation Nobody had stepped up to oh So please give me a break. I didn't know that I didn't know that and I will happily give you a break on it But I have the sense that you've held this perspective for quite a while Um, and I think we all of us this is part of to your macro question How do we engage in discussion about these things? Let's have our opinions. Yes. Let's be respectful. Yes Let's ground them so that we can unpack things and learn together That's all I'm really I'm sorry I'm really bothered by the chip on the shoulder thing I really am because I think we all kind of feel that there's some sort of bias and I That made me uncomfortable. I have I have to say Yeah, I just have to I'm done. I just needed to release that ahead Doug Yeah, I just wanted to share it's it's not a long story, but um So so I have an energy healer who I love and she's in color And and she had you know, we chit chat and she shared about She was in the process of withdrawing herself from the United States That what we would associate with you what is the us that she was somehow withdrawing from that And and I wear a bunch of hats, but one of them is I'm a lawyer And I was fascinated And I was like, do you have some material on that like could you send me some stuff? And it took a while and she sent me finally got me some links to some sites and to some documents and you know You know, I'm fundamentally a liberal New York Jewish kid, right and I started digging into this and reading this stuff And and went all the way to the bottom And it was breathtaking how The story of it the the pseudo construction of it Had so much There is similitude to reality but with twists and turns with constructs and connections and correlations that I was it was breathtaking I was blown away It was nuanced. It was elaborate. It was deep and It literally created In total A whole alternative United States of America Almost, you know, it's like one of those movies where all of a sudden there's a parallel world that pops into place and it's identical, but it's not identical It was that And it was elaborate and it was complex and it was nuanced And the differences were little trim tabs and you added them all up and at the end of the daisy chain if you Filled out this form and submitted that and did this and did that and whatever you too could effectively quit your Membership your citizenship in that version and you could join this new one and on completion of this review It completely changed My orientation my understanding Of that 30 or 40 percent Fox trunk the Kool-Aid Trump following and how you know How not Quote the deplorables these people were They were taken in And it's misguided But I could see some really bright educated people reading all of this buying all of this and And feeling completely intelligent and reasoned and discerning in doing so and You know my experience these days is like it's all about the questions because If I can understand How somebody is where they are then At least i'm starting from where they are with a full non-judgmental non-colored Appreciation of Why they are how they are where they are with what they're saying As a as a starting place And It took all of the heat out it took all of the judgment stuff out it took all of the My projection out And left me with You know These people are you know, they have a reality Fully dressed fully adorned fully elaborated and grounded in Like just enough verisimilitude stuff to be credible plausible persuasive To somebody who's highly educated pretty bright ethically and morally centered To buy it it's not just uneducated poor you know white people it's not and and That's the world we're in That's the world we're in And and I love stacy's like cherry on the sunday is And now we have bots That are indistinguishable we've hit the turing test right that are indistinguishable for real people with ai engines That can be on a mission to whip you up And we'll whip you up even with subtle twists and turns of concession and changing tactics. They're really smart. They're really capable and Yeah, it's it's It's it's I it had the the answer is in the What we have in common as human beings beings experientially and emotionally That is I think the only orientation we can take for figuring out how to How to cut through all of that so first of all, I definitely there's some really interesting evidence and interesting work by Robert Epstein out of washington Which shows how very subtle changes in your search engine results Will lead you down very different paths of truth I'm also noticing that I'm being held to a very rigorous Standard of the proof that I have to bring and I've never seen anybody else held to that standard in this room and I'm you know I don't appreciate it Just because I have a minority opinion. I'm being held to a higher standard. Is that why I don't why am I being held to a higher standard? I've never heard anybody in this room say before bring your evidence Never our search engines are biased And so when you search for something and don't find it, why are you surprised?  I'm right I'm certain I'm being manipulated just like all the rest of you But it doesn't seem that anybody else here feels that you know like It just feels like I'm still being held to this standard. Go ahead Michael Yeah, I was just going to say that with the With the absolute truth that that search engines and You know youtube suggestions push us toward Um Extremes of certainty. I mean like I I was I was posting in the chat that I like make a practice of What I referred to was, you know Watching fox news or watching msnbc, but that's not actually what I do.  Let me show you somebody who Who's more likely to be persuasive who speaks better In that same mindset and I mean, I think that's really interesting and I think it pushes us out of the The centered I mean, I would say I have stone Style skepticism. I don't know how skeptical. I mean, I have stone didn't live in a time where he had to be skeptical of people who were far to the left of him, but The Centered and I don't mean politically centered though it ends up being politically politically centered centered skepticism about anything anybody is saying And happily living in a world where we have to triangulate to find the truth just the way we would if we were In the wild, you know, I mean it's just like Oh, this indicator says, you know It's getting The weather is going this way, but then this indicator says that how do I like figure out Which route I should take and let me get to some higher ground whatever it is, you know You got to triangulate to figure out what's real. It's not black and white And the way that the attention economy works Is pushing us toward more extreme positions of certainty and I don't I don't think that that is I don't think that's so much in our nature as it is Something that we're being nurtured toward And it sucks first off grace, I I really don't want to cause you any suffering And i'm sorry if i've contributed to that for you so that We're all being manipulated I get that We're all living with very very partial information, which is what humans always do But now in a very complex world With some very powerful big actors You know, I mean people are starting one of the things that i'm noticing in in the feeds that I see Is Is a Is a rising resentment about billionaires And the power they hold and I like like See how Bezos plays the wash and then posts better than I like plays twitter, but I don't like That there are these single guys That it's enormous power and all includes gg ping in that and prudent and others and you know, and it's uh This is a cybernetic as well as a political perspective Ross ashby's law of requisite variety back from whenever that was tells me that you know You can't manage complexity with very narrow bandwidth. You just can't you know, and the and the guy at the top who knows Nothing from the field is making all the decisions and it's a dangerous dangerous situation Whether it's capitalists or competence or fascists, whoever's doing that And end of that round He's the other thing I was going to say on this Um, I I don't mean to be holding you to a higher standard, but you said early on That there was a blackout Of the lab leak hypothesis. I said in my experience. There wasn't I've seen lots of stuff about it You then said there was a year In which there was nothing and I said, can you tell me when? So I don't think that's holding you to a higher standard. I think it's asking you to be clear About your assertion when my lived experience is very different than yours So we have a difference in perception and the only way to get past that is to say let's kind of look behind Uh, what our perceptions are how we form them see what we can learn from that um The new york magazine article you you posted is is helpful um And it tells a slightly different story. I don't read that as a story of blackout, but as a story of uh, you know Self-referential media bias and the mainstream moving into pretty quick lockstep In what was a very terrifying time when people were eager to get quick answers to things and yeah, and uh, Should they have done it that way? Maybe not But it's you know, it's it's it's a bit of a different nuance than where we started and that was helpful to have that I apologize. Um You know for not choosing my world's words more carefully at that time. There were a lot of scientists who are losing their jobs over over stepping out of line And the same was true for like the great barrington declaration And scientists and doctors. There's actually a case. I think it's in the louis Louisiana state A court now about collusion between the federal government and facebook to censor certain materials And people who are losing their jobs over this and saying that they thought lockdowns were a bad idea and and and the fact that there were hundreds of medical professionals and academics who thought that was Not covered. I'll call it not covered well and um, and apparently it appears that there was correspondence between facebook and the biden administration about What would be okay for facebook to publish? Uh, which apparently is is unconstitutional Well, that would that would suck if that's what happened. Um, I'll I'll also just note for the record that Trump kicked a lot of butt of the cc early on and prevented them from acting like scientists early on And you know and they may have just may have you know done serious permanent damage to the cc And and and even trump's behavior at the beginning of his administration and how he spoke about the press And didn't let them into press meetings. I mean these things are really serious um These are all serious Strikes against free speech and then even something like having trump banned from twitter Sends a message to every world leader of every country About who's in power That's not a good thing Even if it was the right move it doesn't send a good message about who gets to decide These are all very strange and I think that's my concern But also it is like and I appreciate like This conversation right like I appreciate being able to say hey, I feel Uncomfortable and I appreciate our ability to apologize to each other. I think that's what brings the conversation forward And creates this ability to say oh wait a second I didn't mean to Yeah, get anybody upset here Yeah, steward I want to say one other thing before steward. Yeah I'm a free speech fundamentalist Um, I'm you know That's where that's where I start And there is no fire Which is what trump did And trump and trump is a mob boss heads a mob family Um, you know lives for a living Should he have the same access that you have? Given the damage It's a pretty difficult question and I I lean toward the side of well, no in extreme cases And a public health emergency is one This war is another kind of extreme case or extreme cases where freedom And it sucks and it's dangerous And it should be very very But that's part of what we have to grapple with I'm steward. Thank you for letting me rant ahead of you I'll stop And I would agree with that and at the same time it's like but who decides right go ahead steward No, no worries So it's really interesting that we're all trying to make sense out of an insane world And and and that's you know, that's kind of just just what we're trying to do here And most of us have a similar Perspective, you know, no doubt most of us were probably excited when the soviet union fell apart We all thought yay Liberal democracy is going to rain and we're going to have a world that makes sense going forward and there won't be You know strongmen just exerting their power or strong people or whatever and you know, here we are 30 years later and you know All the authoritarian power hungry forces are showing up in both political and also in In media ways today And I find myself just you know More and more not no longer able to to to to kind of take it all so seriously Just I just you know, I can't because because you know Um Great example, okay, joe biden Down home joe biden from scranton pennsylvania with all of his pro union stuff. What did he just do? He championed legislation To avert a Strike Against you know the freedom of unions to do what unions do just at a time when when I think union activity is becoming more and more important because the amazing Distance between people at the top of the economic Pyramid and those at the bottom and the fact that real real wages haven't changed since the 1970s so I just I I I find myself more and more not getting exercised Over too many things. I just wanted to throw that out into the Into the mix and also something that I put on chat but just before I left and came back and that was that you know truth You know The truths that we see are so much a function of the belief systems That we have and the belief system we have generated by the You know the lives that we've lived in the foundational backgrounds and the unconscious programming that we're all Subject to imagine if we had a few people on this call that were raised in the ghetto How they would be responding to what we were all saying and and how their perspectives would be so extremely different i.e. There's a way in which We all take media and politics that with some degree of seriousness And people would would would just have a completely different Perspective on that so There's my little rant Go ahead stacey and maybe like could you just start a round of checkouts? yeah, i'm glad steward brought up the word truth because When i've been bringing it up over the past four years i'm always led into this well, what is truth and my point is A person's truth needs to be Through with like all of their truths need to line up for them their own truths So for example this person or bod or whatever that i was talking to His truths weren't even in alignment with what he was saying and for me. That's where we need to focus Because that's How we and I am going to generalize Our job is to catch our own hypotheses and at least if we can focus on Am I being truthful within me and we learn to reflect that and help each other? That's a starting point I and I don't know if any of you have watched the vow on um HBO max it's the story of Have you because I really like to have a call about this because I think it touches on a lot of this very quickly It's um executive. What was it? Yes a executive success program It was that organization which which turned out to Be a cult, but I don't believe it started that way Actually when I first started watching the sessions. I looked it up. I was like, I wonder if this is related to landmark I mean, there were a lot of things that were very there's a lot of truth in that the techniques I Resonated with a lot of them But the red flags are there So if anybody wants to if anybody wants to watch it and have a conversation about it It ties into this because somewhere along the way We stop thinking And I'm more concerned in how do we how do we constantly make sure we're thinking Going through race's original question about we're reading the source that we believe How do we make sure we're still questioning that source that we still believe? And to me, that's where everything starts. So that's my checkout because I actually was able to Talk about the two things that have been on my mind So, thank you Julian would you like to do a check in and check out? What's the checkout Say to wrap up because we're we're coming towards the end. Ah, okay. Well, Eric just replied to me in the chat and I was going to point out. Yeah, been eroded, but that's because When they made the constitution that relied on men of honor, right? And we don't have any of those in our government anymore Men with no honor don't honor the checks and balances that were built into the constitution And that's why I say it wasn't a rigorous protection mechanism Uh, let's see In terms of check in, uh I'm still I was in europe for a few weeks and then I got back and catching up on things And preparing for the next trip, uh, because I have to have a solid proposal to get together Which involves knowledge. Well, what I've been talking about for the last few years, which is knowledge management using experiential technologies based on cognitive science right Is my audio dead? I don't hear anything We could hear you good. I think you stopped speaking and so I was thinking you were ready for us to pass it to the next person Maybe you want to just pass it to the next person when you're complete Well, it was such a dead silence that I didn't think I overwhelmed everybody so much. They couldn't think of anything to say Actually, it's grace grace. It's your mic that is spotty When you start speaking it's often Very very quiet for the rest of us I have noticed that to the call Oh, right. Well, yeah earlier would have been a better time to tell me No, I mean I just put it together that okay, okay Cool, you know, we picked in it just there's sort of a delay when you lean in like that. It's fine Okay So Michael, right Julian, did you have something else to say or no? Okay, Michael, do you want to check out since you were speaking? Sure, um, I'm glad we're having this conversation. I feel like um You know the the the lust for confirmation The confirmation bias that we all have that says um I don't know. I I've noticed lately that As there's um are there are protests in china against repressive You know anti anti-covid mandates, you know that involve I mean, it's just a repressive situation up there, which is much easier for Western liberals to see as right When it's not very different from what some on the right here We're doing but you know That's a repressive regime and so we don't really We don't talk about it the same way. We're more accepting of it and That's just an example of You know, there are places. I mean it also relates to When a mass shooting fits a script that that Makes it really easy to say gun control would have done something about this or when the shooter is a white racist instead of You know a person of color It gets it gets handled different ways in our heads because of our own confirmation biases And i'm willing to question that and just wish that we all were a little bit more It would be a better skeptical place to come for it doesn't change my political views, but I'm I'm just Noticing all the time that I have a hard time With this with self-righteousness on on either side even if I Feel like the people who are have my political point of view are more correct Um, the self-righteousness doesn't help the argument. That's my check out Yeah, I love what you said about the chinese the riots in china and I remember the january 6th riots There was somebody's paper. I think it was in europe. It might have been the new york times though But that wrote about them using the exact same facts, but as if it had been an african country what we would have written And it was very revealing Yeah Who else would like anybody else want to do check out eric stewart gale gale Yeah, um I'm I'm a big fan of skepticism and curiosity That's sort of how I approach this conversation and that includes skepticism about my own beliefs Because I don't I don't always agree with myself Um I'm Um, I think truth is a really difficult word Uh, we use it very casually. Um, but um, you know, there is no truth in science. There's hypotheses Um There's there's a line of that new york magazine article that talked about the false hypothesis Well, there's some false hypothesis or hypotheses are tested. We learn we revise and there's no truth in politics You know, there's there's opinions and judgments exercise and they succeed and they fail and they please people and piss people off There's no answer Um And I'm really wary of both sideism I'm saying that because the world is messy and people screw up to therefore everything's the same and everything's bad and julian with respect, you know, I I like what you said about the constitution and people of honor And when you know when the signers of the declaration pledge their lives their trust their sacred honor They were really serious about that and you know to look at what happened to those signers so there's there's a lot of the history of those of those men who signed that thing And they and their family suffered pretty heavily for their commitment to their beliefs and so To say nobody in government has any sense of honor or commitment to the constitution anymore To me is a pretty broad overstatement Because for all I disagree with joe biden and well the democrats and congress and so forth Looks pretty different to me than how mr. Trump it has folks What with the constitution? so i'm I'm you know very much for criticizing both sides all sides as necessary, but I'm really wary of false of the of the of the everybody does it everything's the same perspective. So I think that loses us The insight that we really need in these times and yeah Definitely gill I would say that pigeonholing is something people love to do and is almost always inappropriate You know, are you left or you right? Are you blue? Are you red and all that? It's like no just about every issue we talk about is a continuum You don't get to say it's this or this and only those two possibilities Yeah, one thing I wanted to disagree with you about And it's complicated, you know Michael talked about biden and the rail strike.  I'm sorry. You're gonna go on Oh, there were two things that was gonna say there are circumstances where it's possible to say this is wrong And this is right for example the theory of relativity This is not a discussion item theory of gravity is also not a discussion item And then the other thing is that yeah, not everybody in politics has become Lux men of honor not everybody but enough key people and key positions Like that so sense of honor that it creates lots and lots of problems Yeah So does anyone want to say something just to wrap it up? I liked what what eric said in the chat. That was great Does anybody want to fight with me about the theory of relativity? So Oh, I totally do but I don't think that it matters I'll just know that there's a serious relativity and a law of gravity. So we'll pick it up I think like the theory of relativity after gila had his talk in the context of the talk about moral relativism You know, I thought that was a really great thing to bring up. But yeah, eric, do you want to wrap up or I'll just share a quip in the little quip that's popping up in my mind is that Trying to make sense is nonsense That's a perfect perfect wrap that's a great piece of a poetic I think all right I'll just I'll just spin that a little bit eric and it's there's there's no sense in trying to make sense Okay Well, thank you everybody. Thanks for a great conversation as usual. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks grace. Thanks for taking some fire And dish it out and I can take it Bye guys. Bye everybody


Well, manufacturing was a hot topic today in Brainerd as the Brainerd Lakes Chamber of Commerce hosted a program called Good Morning Manufacturing. The event included a keynote speaker and panel discussion talking about the challenges facing the manufacturing industry in terms of recruitment and retention of employees. Finding qualified candidates for manufacturing jobs is important. Due to the impact the industry has had on the Minnesota economy. So in Minnesota manufacturing is the largest industry in the state. They employ 318,000 people. That's one in nine Minnesota jobs. Each of those jobs then impacts 2.1 other jobs in other industries. So the impact of manufacturing on the economy and on Minnesota is really important. The event was in collaboration of National Manufacturing Week. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


My name is Jimmy, his name is Jake, and this is the Weekly Dumb Jake. How are you doing? I haven't seen you in a while. Lie. James, Zack, Sam, Chris, everyone watching. If your name's Chris, leave a comment. Uh, I'm doing alright, man. Big weekend baseball. Yanks had some fun playoffs, they're so close a week away dog, and you and I are traffic monsters. I had to take a double uber because the traffic was so bad and one uber driver quit on me. And you quit on yourself. I've been in a lot of traffic lately, man, and I'm getting, uh, I don't like it. I don't like it. I sat in two hours of traffic on the way to the office yesterday, uh, hour home, and then I just, it just took me two hours to get in. Usually takes 40 minutes. And North Jersey drivers are the worst. Yo, people are f***ed.  That should be a song. How's that not a rap song? People are f***ed. People beep all the time and this is what I do. I just say, honk at me. You're f***ed. What do you want? Can you bleep my f***s? Except that one. So they know what the bleeps were in hindsight. Jim, speaking of not caring about that, but being trapped like traffic, Ohio football referees are trapped in a locker room with the door blocked by a vending machine. They're trapped for three weeks. I don't even know how long it was, but I love this story. High school football, I don't know what state it was in. Ohio. Ohio. First word of the art. First. Let it be noted that it's the first word in the article is Ohio football referees. It's high school. OH. Supposedly the assistant coach chased them off the field because he was so mad at a call. And then they went into the referee room to discuss it. Seven refs.  You think it was magic? I don't know, but it was definitely not magic. It was like more than one human. That's what cracks me up. It was like the assistant coach and two meet head linemen on the high school team were like, let's trap the refs. But you know what? Every town has their good refs and that deserves a shout out. Like everyone's got their, you know, the kid in the grade below them, whose dad refs like every game they played. And you're like, damn, dude, like, thank you.  Like if people think like the Native American ones are bad, like Crusaders literally just murderers across. There was a referee that refereed fourth and fifth grade basketball. He wore a toupee and he carried Jolly Ranchers in his pocket. And as he ran up and down the court, he threw Jolly Ranchers to like the little siblings. I think he ended up actually stealing money from like youth and got in a lot of trouble. I got to call my dad about that. But yeah, he was a known ref in town and it's like, Call your dad. Hey, Jim. Dad, I have a really quick question for you. Yes. Remember to pay Jolly Rancher ref? Yes. Was he the one that was stealing money from the league? Yes. OK, thought, thought so. Jake Storielli. All right, thank you. Well, bleep the name. Bleep the name. But yeah, true story. Two page Jolly Rancher ref stealing money from the Catholic fourth and fifth grade basketball league. Next up, almost a breakdown. And this might actually be a breakdown, but I figure we got to talk about it. Joe West gets Sunday Night Baseball again. MLB just puts I think they flexed the umpires. What's an umpire show? It's an official show. I think they flexed the umpire. So Joe West crew would have Sunday Night Baseball. I believe I heard that. And then he got not you got to believe in it. He got Sunday Night Baseball and he left his mark like he always does. This call is very hard. Judge foul tips the ball, goes into Vesca's glove. He catches it, tries to put in his hand, drops it in live time. If you're Joe West, you don't have a good view of that. But also if you're Joe West, you just want drama. Like he's in it for the drama. We had it all, man.  There was some missed ball strike calls both ways. And man, I think Joe West hasn't figured out. And you know, some people don't know when we're being sufficious or whatever we're doing. Joe West gets it, man. He gets it. I think he makes calls that add to the drama. A really good umpire goes unnoticed. Joe West always goes noticed he's going to be a Hall of Famer. Like kind of credit to Joe West. He's kind of beat the system. And then judge the next pitch. We're going to skeet shoot this can of dips can.  I'm just going to eat some. Okay.  No nicotine, no tobacco, just CBD. I do think this is a tough call because you can't review it. It is a missed call and the Yankees took advantage of it. But there was a lot of weird stuff. Ready? You got it. Did I just hit Zach? You just blasted Zach, dog. No, can just Zach. You just chowed up Zach. Man. Hey, go. Zach, can you splice in the Instagram video of you on stage? Wow.  Look at this. Watch this. Look at Zach is a rock star.  Say we all just want to be big rock stars. I'd be a good southern chump, dude. Chump. Yeah. Like I was a guy in the movie that they're just like, I got a chump. He from the south. I don't know. Movie takes place in Maine, bro. I'm talking like that. Oh, man. I never been off the docks like what? You're on the docks. Yeah. That's obvious. What else happened in the sports? Do you have more sports? Wade Bogg statues officially off limits at Tropicana Fetal. Due to the incident yesterday where a child got his head stuck in it. Been there. Giff passing. Yeah, I like this because how has this not happened?   Right. Through a railing.  Can my head fit through this railing when you're little enough?  I think that's so bad. Oh, there's definitely a group of kids that are like, think we put our heads in there at the right time. Yeah. Zach, can I set you up for the funniest thing that's ever been on the show? Wade Boggs, Wade Boggs, Wade Boggs, Wade Froggs, Froghead.  On the dock. The ripper of a joke. Ripper on the dock. I think your nickname would be Ripper. Yeah. How sad is this? The whole Tropicana stuff. All of it. Put very serious music. They should be like respected as one of the best franchises in sports and said they're like a joke. Imagine treating yourself like that. Put very serious music over this, Zach. They won't let them build a new stadium in Tampa because they want to they want Tampa to pay for it. And the owner says, I don't want to pay for it. I want you guys to pay for it. And they're like, we're going to have to pay a little bit for it.  Why would you spend five hours in traffic to go watch baseball and a piece of shit? So what they're doing is they're splitting the season in Montreal.  We're still going to have some games in town, but we're going to have half our games in Montreal. Meanwhile, Montreal is going to be electric atmosphere. Probably going to sell out. We're going to be excited to have baseball back in there. And then we're leaving now. And it's like, we know what you're doing. Like just break up with someone. Don't start dating other people openly. Like keep a secret for a little and then break up with them. We're just break up with them. Yeah, I won't use any of that, Zach. Sucks for the people of Tampa. But things aren't all bad, Jim. And that's why we always end with a good segment on not sports. Grizzly Bear found dead in Canada was killed by a goat. I need a picture of the grizzly bear. They say that they found a dead grizzly bear and they're trying to figure out the suspect and that the stab wounds are of that. That's where this takes a real twist. It's you think it's some mountain man with goat horns as weapons. Yeah, that's where this story gets funny. Officials weren't sure what had killed the grizzly, which appeared to be stabbed in the neck and armpit, which when you read that sentence, there's only one animal that stabs and that's humans, but an animal autopsy revealed a surprising culprit. The size and shape of mountain goat horns. Is that still a stabbing? They stabbed him with it. Yeah, I'm picturing a hermit in the woods that has killed a mountain goat and has now fastened weapons out of his mountain goat. He's sleeping. The mountain goat killer, the mountain goat killer. Yep, because one, he kills mountain goats. Two, he then uses the horns of the mountain.  Yes, for sure. And then he takes the horns off and those are now his weapons. I got so much CBD running through my veins now. Run through a wall. Do it. And he did it. None of you can say he didn't. Jake just ran through that wall. That's something Ripper would do. Yeah, dude, you've been Ripper this whole show. It would bring us to the employer the week is the employer the week is a guy who got attacked by my dog in a friendly way. It was Kyle. That's not what I have. What do you have? I have it goes to Chi Mac. Chi Mac, my dog Mac. Well, we'll get Zach this video. My dog Mac, Wheatons are known to be a bit stubborn. One track mind. All he wanted to do was be all over Kyle. And it was wild. So they're best friends. And I think they like, I think they they have both thought about each other since they left. So Kyle, congrats. If anyone gets killed by Wheaton teeth, I think we know who it was. Yeah. And Mac's got weird teeth on the bottom row, so you'd know as in. That was the weekly time. Today's episode is brought to you by Canada Dip. Straight out of Humboldt County, California, they've created a tobacco and nicotine free dip alternative with CBD that tastes great and really works. They are giving you 50 percent off the California roll. That's the sample roll of their five core flavors for $25 instead of $50. That's five dollars a can. You can dip into life with America's finest, smokeless product on the market. Head to CanadaDipCBD.com and add the California roll with promo code DUM to get 50 percent off. Ripper. I hate snakes, man. Why rhymes with my name? Jake Snakes, we have a shirt in the store that says that. Dude, I like the Arizona Dimebacks. I like snakes, the animal.  You like the Yankees, but you don't like Yankees. Like Ripper doesn't like Yankees, even though he's from Maine.  Ripper, you're from here. It's Maine. Not Louisiana. Ripper's also never left town. No, why would he scout everything he needs? Leads of docks. But you know what Ripper has? So many cool secret spots. Ripper's put a lot of backs on docks before, if you know what I mean. Elders.


Meltdown! Ah, a big tantrum-y kind of thing versus shutdown, which tends to be like this, where we kind of go inside ourselves. I can very concretely say that for me, like, meltdowns are much, much more intense and horrible than shutdowns are. I generally find that my shutdowns are usually more akin to a protective response. Quite often, I feel like I have sort of this thought in my head that goes round during those times, that I can actually speak, that I can actually not do this and not have a meltdown and not get stressed and over-stimulated. But in almost every single, well, actually in every single circumstance, it is not the case. It's just kind of one of these thoughts. Autistic people in general tend to have one of two slightly different reactions when it comes to overwhelm, anxiety, over-stimulation, and those two things are both meltdowns and shutdowns. So today, we're going to be taking a look at a video from Pookey Night Smith on autism, meltdowns and shutdowns. What does it mean and how do I help? What is the difference between a meltdown and a shutdown? I'm going to answer that question briefly in today's video. Now, meltdown and shutdown are things that you will relatively commonly see in children with autism spectrum disorder or who struggle to emotionally regulate. Now, the big difference between- You don't need to stipulate autistic children. It is autistic adults as well. It's a little bit more common in kids just because of the difficulties with emotional regulation that kids just tend to have if they're autistic or not. But I won't go into that too much. The difference between meltdown and shutdown is that one of them gets our attention and the other one generally doesn't. But they are at heart really, really similar and the way in which we can support someone who is melting down or shutting down is also really similar. So the best way I found of understanding the difference between meltdown, which tends to look like this meltdown, a big tantrum-y kind of thing, versus shutdown, which tends to more like this, where we kind of go inside ourselves. The big best way I found of explaining it is thinking of, you know, the kind of common anxiety responses, fight, flight, freeze. And your meltdown is more like your fight, flight response, where you've got all this anxious energy coming around everywhere and it's coming out in a big, loud way somehow. Meltdown is like your freeze.  Yeah, I think that's a good characterization. As I mentioned at the start, this is going to be more of a solely sort of mainstream focus perspective. And I think this person, if I'm not wrong, is creating content for parents. So it's going to be like focused towards mainstream sort of understanding and awareness. Those books though, I know, they're so color coordinated. Do you think they just had books, which were that color? And they just put them on the shelf? Or did they selectively buy the books that had a particular color palette? Where are the gray books? Where are they like, are there some white ones at the side? A meltdown is not a tantrum? Yeah, I agree with that as well. I think that's an important stipulation to make, isn't it? Because tantrums are usually these things that kids do in sort of a manipulative fashion in order to get what they want. Sometimes with autistic kids, they can tantrum and then it can turn into a meltdown. But in general, meltdowns are not. They don't particularly have any purpose near a point at which we become so very much overstimulated to the point where we can't function and we have a lot of emotional sort of things that come out of us. And depending on what emotion brought us to that place and depending on the individual, it can express in lots of different ways. For me, generally anxiety related, sometimes it can be related to anger, very rare cases. And even even more rare cases, it can be related to like positive feelings like excitement or happiness. I characterize those as happy meltdowns. But you're right. I think the word that they used was tantrum-ish. I think that's an important kind of language change there. So it looks really different, but generally speaking, both shut down and meltdown are as a result of overwhelm. This is a child who is overwhelmed. Perhaps they are struggling with sensory or social overload, whereas they've got big, big feelings bubbling up inside that they don't quite know what to do with. And so their body goes into shut down or meltdown. In both cases, it's really important to remember that essentially shut down and meltdown, it's about the brain being completely overwhelmed. And that young person, therefore, is not going to be in a great position to have a conversation with you about this, to explain to you why they're shouting or withdrawing. They're not in a good place to process stuff. And so actually, generally with both shut down and meltdown, it's about getting through the next few minutes safely and sensitively so that then we can enable that child to continue with their day. So meltdown is more external. This can often look like what we might call... I think one thing that I do want to highlight is that there are some people out there who do view shut downs as being the internal version of a meltdown. But in my experience of having many, many meltdowns and shutdowns and panic attacks throughout my life, I can very concretely say that for me, like, meltdowns are much, much more intense and horrible than shutdowns are. I generally find that my shutdowns are usually more akin to a protective response rather than an internalized meltdown. They're definitely not fun. They definitely both come from overstimulation, overload, etc. But they don't particularly cause me much difficulty shut downs unless someone or some of the environmental circumstances pushes me to the point where I have a meltdown. My brain goes into berserk mode. You can also form not just freeze the fight or flight. That is very true. Very, very true. Cool, a tantrum. But we need to remember this is not a child who is being purposefully naughty. It's a child who right now is completely unable to cope for whatever reason. And we might not be able to understand those reasons and they might not ever be able to voice them. But right now they're not coping. When a young person is in meltdown, shouting's not going to help. The most important thing you can do is to keep them safe and to try really hard to stay calm. What they need is for you to feel safe, supportive and predictable at this time. And that can be really difficult because it can trigger difficult stuff for us when a child is big and loud and shouty and angry and aggressive. That's really hard. And sometimes we have to do our very best acting skills or remember be the swan. So trying to appear calm and serene as we glide across the water when actually we're frantically paddling. This is the time when your stock phrases can come in really helpful. I love, I love that analogy. That is a very, very good analogy. Be like the swan. I think that's a good thing. Safe, safe, supportive, calm. Very much have to keep your frame in these situations because you can't really reason someone out of a meltdown. The only way that you can really help in that situation is to reduce overstimulation to stay sort of a supportive, calm person in their vicinity and stop them from getting even more overstimulated and making the meltdown more intense. If they've done something, if like the kids done something wrong and they got told off and then they've had a meltdown, it's not a good idea to like approach the situation while they're in states of overstimulation like this because it's not going to work. It's not really going to sink into their head. It's not going to like teach them a lesson or anything like that. When they're in this state, no matter how they got into this state, you need to make sure that they're okay. Like conversations about the whole thing afterwards can be really important. And especially when it's an adult, if it's like your partner, if it's a stranger, if it's one of your friends, making sure that you highlight to them that your opinion of them has not changed is quite important because a lot of autistic people, including myself, even though I've done a lot of work in trying to sort of accept myself and such, you can get some very, very intense feelings of shame and even when it comes to shutdowns, to be honest, when I can't respond to people, it can be relatively, it can cause quite intense feelings of shame now and again. The meltdown is almost never about the thing that has triggered it. So fixing the last triggered is nothing, frustrating the NT that's trying to help. Yes. Yeah. And especially if they view it as like a tantrum or if it's something that the person is using for their gain, I've had situations even in adulthood where people are like, oh, you just made yourself get into a meltdown. It's like, no, that's not how it works. There can be so many internal thoughts that we have. Like when we are mute, when we are shutting down, when we are meltdown, and we sort of lack the cognitive ability or functioning in that particular moment, quite often I feel like I have sort of this, this thought in my head that goes around during those times that I can actually speak, that I can actually not do this and not have a meltdown and not get stressed and ever stimulated. But in almost every single, so well actually in every single circumstances, not the case. It's just kind of one of these thoughts that I get, which I think comes from my experiences of having meltdowns shut down in the past, you know, perhaps like something akin to like intentional, unintentional gaslighting around, you can control this that kind of thing and you don't need to do that and you're okay and all of those kind of types of things. It's a very internal thought that I've had. So if you have those thoughts, as an autistic adult, when you're having a meltdown and you have those thoughts after and they kind of haunt you a little bit, I get you. Like I relate and it's not your fault. Like you wouldn't choose to put yourself in a very horrific state for no reason. I used to have much more meltdowns when I was forced to socialize. 100%, that is a really, really big one that you've brought up, Nida. Forcing communication when somebody is mute or somebody is having a shutdown or a meltdown and they're not being very responsive can increase like the intensity of it because it's stressful and it's not nice to not be able to communicate and when someone is putting like social pressure on us, that can really sort of amplify it or it has done in my cases. Helpful.  Whatever the child that you're working with finds help for you can say it as many times as you need to and remember your lovely, calm, audio narrator type voice that helps to calm you and it helps also to calm them. Shutdown on the other hand unlike meltdown which is external, shutdown is internal. This is when a child will kind of turn in on themselves and they will often become very, very quiet and withdrawn. They might become completely unresponsive. So we often don't really even notice this because they tend not to be causing any trouble. If we're in one-to-one interaction with that child or they're part of group work for example and they go into shutdown then we can get quite frustrated because we can feel like they're being sort of truculent or rude or non-responsive and again we can sometimes then be constantly prompting them trying to get a response and actually right now they might not be capable of formulating and giving a response. So sometimes what they need again then here is for you to be that safe, calm, supportive, predictable adult and as they begin to calm then they will feel more able to engage with things. The kinds of things that you can do to help a child in this moment apart from just- I think as well I don't know if they're going to talk about it perhaps after but I think there needs to be some level of highlighting like their capabilities capabilities after as well. Like just because they have returned from having a meltdown to baseline does not mean that they are like their normal self. Usually my experiences after a meltdown tends to be that I'm very very heavily dissociated like my brain's working much slower and much more sensitive to those sensory things. Can sometimes find communication hard and I kind of want to be by myself and sort of relax, do my special interests, things of that nature. And the last thing I want to do is socialize and talk about things. So you know when I said like maybe wait until the meltdowns over to address things. I would wait longer. I'd give them some time like a day or so just to kind of regulate be them by themselves. Perhaps cancel commitments that you have just so that they can kind of regulate and be in their own space. Motions are a physical reaction. You may be able to control your response to a motion, but it's not possible to control its presence. Why is words there, Piranha and no degrees of you too? Harris says, I can sense when a meltdown or a shutdown is coming, I can usually control specifically when I allow it to happen. Unless something big happens, I ultimately can't stop it or prevent it. Yes, yes. I don't know if you know much about like epilepsy, but there's this concept I think called like the aurum that people of epilepsy get where they get this sort of of a worldly kind of sense that they're going to have you know, they're going to have like an epileptic attack. I don't know if that's the right phrase or terminology for it. I don't like the word fit because I feel like people misuse it fit like socially. I don't know. Feel free to correct me on that. But I get similar experiences with meltdowns. It's kind of like my vision sort of pulls out a little bit and like I get a bit more of like tunnel vision. I get this kind of wave of dissociation or like buzzing through my body. Usually when that happens, if I don't get myself out of a situation that's causing me stress or over stimulating or over stimulating me, generally it's not a good position to be in. Precedure thing is called an aura. I hate it when I know a meltdown is imminent but it won't come trying to force it doesn't work. Interesting. Yeah, that's, it's a weird thing. I mean, I haven't really heard many people talk about like sort of feeling the meltdown come on, but definitely for me, there was this kind of reality kind of shifting experience that I have. Often just generally being kind, safe and supportive. This can be things where things like an object that they find comforting can be really helpful. So at home, like a favorite toy at school, they might have a particular item that they keep with them that helps them to feel calm or connected and it can be helpful to give them that item at this time. When a child goes into shutdown, this is also a particularly high risk time when a child might engage in dangerous behaviors like self harm. Self harm is relatively common among young people who are autistic and it's in these kind of shut down moments when we're going in on ourselves and really retreating from everything around us when we might be more likely to kind of do ourselves harm. And the other thing to remember I think in my experience, it's a lot more akin to like meltdowns, but I'm sure it can happen. I mean, this kind of falls under the category of like harmful stimming. You know, something that regulates us that is not particularly good for us and there can be lots of different things. Particularly when I've had meltdowns in the past, I've been, you know, I have done these harmful kind of things. Self hitting, all of that kind of stuff. To remember here is that during those kind of shutdown moments, everything might seem quiet to you. There's not a lot going on. That child's just being quiet, but they might have a huge amount of different thoughts and feelings swirling around in their head. So things probably seem pretty noisy to them and it can be hard for them to work their way out of this without a little bit of support and guidance from a kind and caring adult. I don't know if that's necessarily true. Sometimes it can happen. Like if I've been particularly anxious, if it's kind of like a preventative style of like shutdown, talking about it like it's a flavour. But sometimes when I shut down, my brain just goes completely blank. Like sometimes that happens. And basically trying as much as I can to disconnect myself from reality, disconnect myself from my sensory experience. And so my brain sort of dulling everything and usually that includes like my thoughts and feelings.  So I get one of those fish. Wait, is it like sharks? Like they show off like one part of their brain to sleep and then they show the other part of the brain. It might be completely wrong about that, but that could be a good analogy. I found that meldons can be quite directed in wood, like jumping on the emotional grenade instead of letting it blast. 100% pyro. I experienced something similar. There's a lot of thoughts that go in my head when I'm having a meldon, that's for sure. What would be the difference between shutdowns and dissociation? Are they somewhat related? You do experience a large amount of dissociation with shutdowns. You also experience dissociation with like depression. The amounts of dissociation can be obviously very relative. You can also get it if you indulge in a variety of different substances. Sometimes dissociation is quite a large element of them. But yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, dissociations are a component of shutdowns, but shutdowns are not a component of dissociation. If that makes sense. Like, dissociation is split up into depersonalization and derealization. Depersonalization is when you don't feel like you're real, which is something that I experienced a lot in childhood. And to be honest as well, derealization, where the world around you doesn't feel real and you feel somewhat detached from reality in a sense. It's a very weird feeling. And if for any of you who have experienced dissociation over like a long period of time, like years or like months, and it's kind of like a consistent part of your life, it can be somewhat existential to a certain degree. And it's not really a part of my life as much as it once was. And it's very strange how sort of like reality changing experiencing dissociation on the long term can be. Again, all your usual calming strategies can really, really help here. Kind of soothing music or going to a less sensory overloaded environment. Just having a safe adult alongside to sit with us whilst we calm can really help. I'd love to hear what strategies have worked for you when you're trying to calm down a child who's either in shutdown or in meltdown. Are there any strategies that you have found that work for both situations or any that you found particularly helpful for one or the other? Do leave them in a comment below. There isn't necessarily a difference in the way that you would conduct yourself. I think perhaps the difference with the meltdown is to pay a bit more attention to their safety in that sense. Because with shutdowns, I don't really have... There's not really much of a danger to them in my experience. They're just kind of this protective kind of dissociating response to prevent having a meltdown. So just general anxiety, soothing things, things that capture our interests that are kind of regular and part of our daily routine could be little things like a mobile game. Even though perhaps a kid in the shutdown or an adult in the shutdown might not be able to communicate or move or function to the same degree. Things that they do regularly like on a regular basis that's kind of ingrained into their daily routine like playing a mobile game that they really love. Sometimes they're able to do that. And because I used to write so much on my notes page on my phone, if I can't communicate, a lot of the time I can communicate through writing. It just tends to be very disjointed and perhaps not making much sense. But I can do it to a certain degree if I'm having a shutdown. If I have a meltdown, no way. It's not happening. There's not really much that you can do other than keep the environment safe, do things that regulate them, things of that nature, reduce over stimulation. It goes for both of them. It's just, you know, you have that aspect of safety in meltdowns, which seems to be a bit more concerning. Below because people do read the comments and your ideas and suggestions are really helpful to other people in the same situation. Also, I might cherry pick a few and put together a future video on the topic. So remember, both shutdown and meltdown do matter.  Both require an adult who is supportive, safe, and predictable to support the child through it. I mean, playing devil's advocate here, I think in most cases, when you are blaming yourself for them becoming overstimulated, I think that's a bad way of viewing it, looking at it. I do, however, think some people can cause people to have meltdowns. That is very sure. It's very true sometimes. But these things tend to be related to confrontation, in a sense, and not respecting someone's boundaries, not listening to the needs that they have. That tends to be the cases where that happens. It usually happens with strangers, not necessarily with close partners or parents or people that we know are quite regularly, but other people can definitely cause them sometimes. The other thing that often helps is just a little bit of time. This is happening at a point where our feelings are right up here, and with a little bit of time, those feelings will begin to dissipate and the child will become better able to manage and to put into place their other regular coping skills. But that was pookie night Smith, autism, meltdown and shutdown. What does it mean and how do I help? Pretty good video, actually. I think there's some things that need a little bit of illuminating, and I think it's generally things related to our internal experience. You know, obviously if they're an outsider and they're working with kids, they can think about what it might be like, but they don't necessarily have the inside kind of knowledge or experience of the actual thing. So I hope you have enjoyed this video. Make sure to like, subscribe and go drop a comment below below. What is your experience with shutdowns and meltdowns?