How to Deprogram a Guy in 10 Days with Endless Thread

You come together because you all love newsies, and then you look around and you realize that you're all bisexual 15-year-olds. Welcome to You're Wrong About, and welcome also to a You're Wrong About and Endless Thread crossover event, like on TGI Friday when Corey from Boy Meets World would write a letter to Urkel. Or something. And with me today are Ben and Amory of Endless Thread. Hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for being here. Love a crossover. Ah, is that a familiar reference? Did that happen? Yeah. But who's Urkel and who's Corey? No, how dare don't say that. Oh, God. No, that's very familiar, although I feel like you could convince me that it happened even if it didn't, if that makes sense. That's the thing, too. Yeah. Well, and so you. You do a show where you're really. You're doing a lot of things, but I feel like partly investigating pop culture memory. Is that fair to say? Sure. Yeah. Oh, there's definitely some of that. A lot of Mandela effect popping up. Yeah, love a good Mandela effect. A lot of internet cultural mysteries. Yep. We'll take a Streisand effect if that comes along. Oh, yeah. Did the Fruit of the Loom logo have a cornucopia? Still wrapping my head around that one. Okay, don't tell us. I feel like people need to walk on over. Yeah, we described the show to each other as unsolved mysteries, untold histories, and other weird stories from the internet, and that sort of encompasses everything, but that, yeah, that's what we kind of think about and tackle. Yeah. Well, and did you have a sense when you got started that you were going to be involved less in the far too serious issues of America's fascist takeover than perhaps you inevitably ended up being by working on the internet? Ah! Oh, man. We did feel more friendly in 2017, I will say. Which is odd, right? Because, like, this was, all this stuff was in motion, but it was just, like, it hadn't, I guess it hadn't gotten that far, and we were still, we thought we were so grizzled, but in retrospect, we were like, it was like our first time at the rodeo or something. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Fun fact, like, Endless Thread sort of grew out of a story that someone at WBUR did. About a beautiful Reddit thread where someone was soliciting letters for their dying uncle with Down syndrome. It was, like, this beautiful, heartwarming story, and that was the thing. The internet coming together to be kind to everyone being kind to each other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it's all gone downhill from there. Yeah. Yeah, and it's like, and so You're Wrong About started in 2018, and I think it was based on this idea of, like, boy, howdy, gee willikers. There sure are a lot of stories. There sure are a lot of stories where, I feel like I'm doing, like, a Jiminy Cricket impression. Keep going. You're doing great. There sure are a lot of stories that we think we know, but we don't, and if we tell you the truth, then you'll remember, and you'll learn them. And, I mean, the thing is that, like, a lot of people do listen because they want the truth, and they're extremely curious, and I feel like that's maybe the most heartening thing, certainly for me, about making the show over the past, like, decade. Ugh. But I think that, you know, Michael and I began making the show out of this sense. Of, like, not to speak for him, because he's probably was, like, wiser about this than I was, but I definitely came to it with a sense of, like, really, to me, like, incredible innocence of, like, you know, now that we have the internet and information can travel faster, people can learn the truth faster and more also. And it's like. Yeah. Yeah, but there's other stuff that they prefer to learn that a lot of people are, you know, that's getting around as well. Yeah. Well, I feel like, yeah, I feel like years ago, I would sort of come to these topics and this sort of general value of the internet as it's sort of like a neutral, you know, it's sort of like, yeah, there's a lot of good, there's a lot of bad, it's fine. Yeah, we just got a, yeah, it's a series of tubes. And now I have to say that I have, like, my operating stance is, you know, more under siege than, like, yeah, let's figure it out together. Like, I. You know, and I think, I think we're all a little more jaded than we were in 2017 and 2018. Yeah, which is good. We don't want to learn nothing. Yeah, I agree with the let's figure it out together. But I have definitely increasingly become more of the let's figure it out together offline kind of person where I think I even said to Ben sometime last year, like, I don't know if I can keep scrolling, man. Like, yeah, I'm getting off of more platforms. And that means that I'm fine. I'm finding less material, but like with all things, it ebbs and flows. I get off and then I get back on and then I, yeah, you know. And then something great lures you back, you know. Yeah. Like there was a SNL sketch about the girl on TikTok with the buttons. I was amazed by that. I don't know this one. I'm out of the loop. Okay. I kind of, okay, here's the thing. I get it. I stand by this person. Because there was, like, someone on TikTok who was like, okay, for the new year, I want to have, like, 360. I want to have, like, 365 buttons just to, like, keep track of time or whatever, have a sense of time. And everyone was like, but what are you going to do with the buttons? Like, are you going to sew them on something? Are you going to, like, move them from one container to the other? Like, what are they for? And she was like, I don't have to explain it to you. I'm not going to, I don't have to tell you about it. And it just became, like, people were so amused by this. And I really. Welcome to my life. Go away. Yeah. Like, I get it. It was such a phenomenon. But as someone who, like, has been making. I was thinking about this. I was thinking about this earlier, actually. I've been publishing, writing online since 2012. That was what I started off doing. And, of course, before that, I was on LiveJournal starting in 2004. As one does. As one does. Especially when one is writing newsies fan fiction. Oh, this is a fun fact about you that I did not know. It's a biographical detail that gets a little bit funnier with every year about me, possibly. And then, you know. That I've been doing this show since 2018 and was on, like, Twitter a lot back when Twitter was really fun. Yeah. And there is this, like, and I imagine for this TikToker, this fatigue that comes with people asking you to explain every single thing you say every day. Where I like to think that maybe she just hit a wall and was like, I do not have to tell you what I'm doing with these buttons. You just, like, have a little imagination and figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Didn't, you don't have to, I don't have to tell you everything on the internet all the time. I talked once on my show, You Are Good, I think, about doing this thing I called Movie Hat. I actually stole this idea from my friends Colin and Andy Winnett, who, like, I think they just called it that, too. And you write down movies you want to see on slips of paper and then put them in, like, just something and shake it up. Because it's based on the idea of, like, throw it in the hat. Yeah, yeah. You're going to throw your ideas in the hat and pass, you know, whatever. But so the hat can be a jar. Mm-hmm. I got that that's confusing. This is my button moment. But I, like, explained Movie Hat, where, like, you write down movies you generally want to see and then shake it up and pull out one slip. And you're like, tonight we're watching Diabolique, because that's what Movie Hat says. Mm-hmm. And then, like, a bunch of people are like, but where's Movie Hat? I've searched on the App Store for Movie Hat, and I can't find it. I can't find Movie Hat. And I was just. You have to build your own Movie Hat app in real life. I'm sorry. I was just like, I'm not, I explained it perfectly. I need people to make their own Movie Hat. I can't contribute to the decline of Western civilization like this. But, Sarah, I don't understand. Your hat is a jar. I'm confused by the jar. But what are the buttons for? Anne-Marie, what do you think about the 365 buttons? Whose side are you on? You know, anything. In this important issue. Any ounce of joy that we can squeeze out of this life in these times, I am all for. So if you want 365. So you're just pro-everyone. I'm pro. I mean, truly, like, if you are not hurting anyone right now, you're doing a lot better than most people. So, yeah, collect those buttons. Put them in a hat. Put them in a jar. Get those buttons. Hide them around your house. Tell people what you're doing with them. Or not. You know? Never tell people what you're doing with your buttons. They don't have to know that about you. It's okay. People know everything else about you. They don't have to know what you're doing with buttons. That's right. Well, so I. I have called you here today to our meeting of the Midnight Society, Ben and Emery. Dearly beloved. Yes. To get through this thing called life. And we're doing a show that I have been calling to myself. This isn't. I'm not married to this title, but it is catchy. How did you program a guy in 10 days? And the idea, I guess, is to kind of call on your experience because you've done so much investigative work in this kind of counterfactual landscape. That we live in on both the silliest and the most serious levels. And I guess, you know, there isn't so much difference between them at the end of the day sometimes. That, you know, we were talking about things that you could come on this show and talk about with me. Because you were so generous as to have me on and talk to me about my satanic panic show, The Devil You Know. Which, of course, gets internet-y there at the end. But to talk about maybe this question of, you know, because I had been thinking with the satanic panic stuff. I think. we've just been talking about this how in my opinion having done this research an abusive family has about the same structure a lot of the time as a cult which has the same structure a lot of the time as a dictatorship and this question of what do you do when the cult has to disband because the leader dies or something and just that despite how few of the hopes i had 10 years ago have been borne out there will continue to be people who despite sunk cost fallacy being as powerful as it is despite all the things we've observed are going to look up one day and have to walk away from you know from kind of i guess the maga cult and this worldview that has required a lot of sacrifice from people and not really had any reward as far as i can tell and what kind of you found in in your work of what it takes to allow people to do that how that can happen what it can look like and um i don't know i guess kind of what insight your work has given you into the capacity that that people still can have to change their minds well i like the how to deprogram a guy in 10 days if you think of if we think of each day kind of like how i think about a year in podcast years where it's like one year of your podcast existing is actually 10 years in the industry or what would be a normal industry so if if a day is say uh who knows what measurement of time but longer than a day i think we do hopefully have some things to offer in that yeah arena i believe it well and it's also so interesting that you you know you're making me think uh more about the history of our show because it is true that in the beginning we were really just kind of like going down kind of fun and silly rabbit holes and we still do that right but you know some of our first episodes we were kind of like going down kind of episodes i think were about they were about people helping each other they were about um that the famous story of the guy getting sucked out of the windshield of the plane oh yeah and and people grabbing on to the pilot and and holding on to them until they got landed and things like that but then but then we started like finding all of these i feel like we started finding these debates about what was real and what was fake and what was true and what was not and i i'm wanting i want to say one of the early ones we did was another silly one which is like this piece of audio there was this like 24-hour debate about yanny versus laurel does that oh my i was just thinking about that and trying to remember the non-yanny word yeah i remember that oh my god i might have listened to you guys talking about that actually absolutely that was like such a fun early one yeah but i feel like more and more we've started to you know get into these spaces where there is a lot of debate and see a lot of debate and without you know raising the question of you know what's real and what's not real and what's not real and what's the terrible present specter of ai and that feels very all around us right now i feel like it's just become more and more common in the work that we do and we've done some pretty very different kinds of stories where there are kind of similar themes and they're they're often yeah they often get into this world of yeah i guess like how to deprogram people or how how to have people talk to each other about something they really really really really strongly disagree about and bringing people over to the you know exposing my bias here maybe like what i would describe as the rational reasonable science-based fact-based um side of any issue and i think we've we've done some yeah we've done some stories about that and i feel like over time have learned mostly just learned from the people that we've talked to yeah i mean what's interesting about yanny and laurel right off the bat is that um sort of a spoiler there is a a sort of right answer about what that piece of audio actually is the same way that there's a right answer about whether the dress is blue and black or white and gold and the difference is in how we see it or what frequencies our ears hear but there is a truth at the center of it and that when we talk about deprogramming someone right off the bat you're talking about maybe one group of people who want to deprogram another group of people but that other group of people might think that the first group of people are actually the ones who need deprogramming and whether there is a an actual right the same way that there is a the dress is blue and black you know it's some things are more up for debate than others and some things are more subjective than others and so in thinking about even if we're talking about a dress that's blue and black even just this conversation deprogramming there's like a a big flashing caveat at the at the top to say we're talking about deprogramming in general but we might not be thinking about that we might not have the same group in mind that needs the deprogramming and that makes it tricky to talk about but yes if if the first year of endless thread let's say dipped more towards the like positive and silly who knows how it actually shook out but if it was more positive and silly we kicked off 2019 with a series called infectious which was all about anti-vaxxers the history of anti-vaxxers in the u.s um how they have come to believe that vaccines are dangerous and you know right off the bat in that series we have an episode the title of which i think i'm still i don't i think you came up with this one ben but i'm still proud of it on our behalf which is oh that is good and it tells the story of are you familiar with cotton mather sarah yeah i mean i'm not like you know i haven't done a ton of course work on on the mathers but yes i know that there there were two of them they were father and son there was a cotton and an increase and they said a whole bunch of scary stuff all the time yes very good you nailed it i know the increase uh detail that his father's name was increased was was new information to me when we were reporting to you liz sappy yeah yes um so so he was this puritan minister who in the in the 1700s in boston there is a terrifying smallpox outbreak and you know most people were walking around with the evidence of smallpox either having had small this is one of my issues with with costume dramas by the way is not enough pox not enough you see a costume drama where people have pox scars come on not enough bumpy faces yeah too pristine and you know too much filler but that's you know on top of the pox issue which is my main problem so so cotton mather he has enslaved someone who has a scar and he inquires about this scar and this person that he's enslaved says we had to get the smallpox to avoid the smallpox basically and so he's talking about being scratched with a little bit of the um the pus of someone who had smallpox in his home country and that prevented him from getting full-blown smallpox and this was this was revolutionary to cotton mather and it was a really weird scary thing to think about at the time that you would give yourself a little bit of this horrific virus in order to try to prevent yourself from getting full-blown smallpox do we know this enslaved person's name or is it just lost to the sands of time well yes and no so yeah it's it's the the um the enslaved person's name is is not actually their real name as near as we can tell and it's an interesting i mean one of the things that's funny about this story too is like and i don't know maybe i'm giving away the punchline here but cotton mather gets ends up getting completely credited by the way with like saving boston from this smallpox outbreak yeah cool because he's close to the sands of time close personal friends with god it makes total sense exactly god's yeah he's picking up the god phone um but the actual person you know who like made this happen was this enslaved person in uh in cotton mather's house yeah who was like actually bringing this idea to like you know 1700s boston but it was a much older idea and someone who you trust enough to to save boston but not to be freed exactly interestingly for the puritans yeah he called him onesimus um which we're not sure exactly how to pronounce but onesimus which means useful oh dear oh dear indeed yeah oh dear indeed but at the time you know there's a there's a group that forms called the society of physicians anti-inoculators and this is you could say today is like the earliest anti-vaccine group in the in the area at the time and so cotton mather was the one uh who was conducting these weird seemingly dangerous experiments and most people saw them as such yeah and it just kind of speaks to the idea that you know mainstream thinking can flip-flop and become fringe and it has and this is vaccines are a perfect example of this great well and also that and it seems like that maybe vaccines are a perfect example of this right well and also that and it seems like that at the time was the, you know, was something that if you haven't really tested something and you're advocating using it on a large human population then i don't care what it is you know it's i don't care if it's milk i want i want more data and we have kind of done the milk thing yes and this is what's so interesting about the history is that you know in the beginning the vaccinators and the inoculators were the weird ones right they were the ones who were like okay we're just i guess we're just gonna try this we're a bunch of kooks yeah we're gonna like try this in our houses and then we're gonna try to like get a bunch of people to do it and um dr william douglas the um the person who's leading this opposition group which also was like a surprise to me that when you go back to the beginning of this history that you know people think of anti-vaxxers or vaccine hesitant people or resistance to vaccination as being a relatively new development in you know in our in our experience in our lived experience but it was going on since the beginning um and i think that's because the science in the beginning of the pandemic was that it was going on since the beginning of the pandemic and i think that's because the science in the beginning was weird and experimental and one might say not pretty non-scientific right it was like uh this person i think they they know how to do this thing that's you know gonna save us all let's let's try it on a couple of people and see how it works out well yeah and then i think we also weren't really taught that history because i i certainly you know was and i realize there's only so much time we have for this type of thing but taught history with this view of like and then science figured this out and everyone everyone figured this out everyone was like yeah that makes sense and they all did it you know and i mean also i'm sure there was stuff that i guess kind of didn't pay enough attention to but i feel like having having experienced what we are experiencing i would want to teach history with more of an emphasis on you know just the behavior of people being anything but monolithic consistently you know and things like you know this kind of different from what we're talking about but the fact that there were you know a lot of very loud isolationists before and during world war ii based on you know partly on just sort of this idea of old-fashioned american anti-semitism yep and painting america sort of as the protagonist of most historical events and the american people as basically in agreement except during the civil war feels like a disservice to sort of i don't know the history that we could learn to be able to better understand what we're going through right now yeah and that also helps us deprogram people by understanding and acknowledging that the history is mixed right because it's not actually just this way or just that way that they like there there there were experiments that have gone wrong there are things that have happened that have been huge huge disasters and you know you can you can acknowledge that stuff while still maintaining a position that's like you know whatever science-based in fact based when you're talking about the efficacy of vaccines but i think often this stuff gets turned into this because there's been flip-flopping in the past people get scared to even acknowledge how messy the past is right um because they feel like they're like giving ground up and i actually think like when you're if we're talking about how to deprogram somebody in in 10 days part part of the answer is like acknowledging even more days but it's even more right yeah yeah it is good 10 days asterisk fine print my life may vary yeah like just acknowledging that stuff is actually helpful because it builds rapport with the person that you're trying to bring around i think the thing it continuing to trace the history the thing about this that sort of broke my brain shattered me a little bit is that if you keep tracing it through the 20th century and you get to the counterculture of the 60s and the 70s when there is quite a bit of authority being questioned and you have things like the feminist movement which um you know offshoot of that is the women's health movement and growing out of that is people asking more and more questions about doctors and and doctors having the end-all be-all word and maybe doctors aren't telling us about all the risks associated with certain procedures and medications and maybe we do need to educate ourselves and advocate for ourselves and we do you know we should have control over whether we become pregnant or not we need to be empowered over our bodies and in time some of those questions end up getting applied to that generation's children and saying oh well we we should have control over our children and whether they're getting vaccinated or not there's an empowerment in the skepticism and the right to be skeptical and to exercise that skepticism yeah i feel like that and then it's like it comes around to the fact that a lot of the people you know kind of leading the the whole anti-vax id in its most recent iteration is that they're kind of bad at being skeptical because the point of being skeptical is to want to assess information on your own and in fact it feels like we have sort of something else with the the mask of skepticism on when really it turns into something that is more comforting and easier to do which is blind rule following but following someone else's rules and then letting them tell you that you're being really smart and skeptical for doing it but i mean it does feel like we got we got stuck a lot and this feels like a very sort of like part of the culture of american liberalism in the past 10 years has been you know the famous and i brought this up recently but you know the little yard sign or whatever of like it's in this house we believe science you know and just this this kind of idea of like science couldn't hurt a fly and it's like well science has broken some very precious eggs for very little reason to make some very pointless omelets yeah and it's not doing anyone favors to pretend that didn't happen you know yes totally yeah people did die in the early inoculation experiments and it led to you know modernized vaccination which has saved millions and millions of lives and both things are true and if you can't if you can't handle them both you're in trouble right we talked to this guy as part of that reporting this guy ian mccauley and he was such an interesting example because he got the polio vaccine and he got polio and there was an error in how it was administered to him so it's less likely than your typical tiny percentage of people who might get it from the vaccine but you know again like ian mccauley was a great person to talk to you because on the one hand he's like yeah i got polio from the vaccine and on the other hand he was like everyone should absolutely get the polio vaccine so so part of that like you're saying part of acknowledging you know the the broken eggs and the omelets that were pointless like leads people to make their own decisions hopefully in in a direction that they're not going to be able to make their own decisions that is is positive for everyone right yeah and also you know and that you don't you can't demand people's trust while also not giving them the whole truth um yeah which is tricky because i realized that um if there's one thing we like to indicate as americans it's that we really would prefer not to handle the truth but if you if you try and make us do it anyway you know sometimes it works that's right well and that this speaks a little bit to why people get programmed in the first place is you know when when we were talking to some parents who would label themselves as vaccine hesitant some of that hesitation or what what was hesitation turned into opposition to vaccines for some of them is a conversation with a doctor that really ended up not being a conversation because they tried to raise concerns and felt very quickly shut down like oh god here's another one like here's the packet out of my way we're getting your child vaccinated they just felt totally dismissed and that pushed them further in the direction what what might have been skepticism a normal amount of skepticism got turned up to 10 because they just didn't feel listened to and so we can right we can push people further in one direction simply in how we talk to them about something that they are uncertain of yeah well and that seems like you know again like evidence of this bigger systemic problem that so many people are experiencing where it feels like you know you're made to feel lucky to be able to see a doctor at all and then they seem as if they only have about 18 seconds yeah yes absolutely and and if you're if you're purposely going into a situation where you are trying to change someone's mind you know it's maybe a statement of the obvious but if you're a jerk to them and you like write off all their questions and tell them they're stupid that's not that's not going to work that's a bad place to start right you know that's that's part of what the professionals say about deprogramming people right is like be careful about your language talk about your own experience ask questions don't tell people don't say you know you're stupid you're wrong you know you're don't say you're wrong about yeah we're starting off on the right foot I gotta say great title for a show though it's good but you have to yeah you just have to build that trust in it you know if you don't have a situation where you're you're building that trust then of course people are gonna they're gonna say oh screw this person I'm gonna go over here and and try to figure out the truth and then you know wherever they end up going for the truth might might be even more problematic it also occurs to me that like probably in the past it was easier to make yourself feel better by denouncing someone by calling them stupid or ignorant and at this point to me it seems like the only thing that really matters is willingness to try and and learn you know because i it to me that might be the most frustrating thing is the number of people who are like i do my own research and you're like okay can i tell you some numbers and they're like no yeah we were talking about this the other day with regards to the um change my view subreddit and how people are going on there and saying change my view about x um and you know we had an example recently on the show that was something light but it was about like the correct way to open a banana so a person is going is going into that subreddit clearly with like a strong held belief about in this case opening a banana but the very fact that they're posting in that subreddit at least if they're doing so in good faith comes with the idea that they are open to their view being changed they are ready to hear other information and doesn't mean that their view will be changed but that is actually kind of a a hopeful place i think on the internet in the sense that when the person is actually posting in good faith they're saying okay show me what you got give me what you got here's what i think and and you do see in those posts sometimes going like all right i hear you okay so we need a little bit more of that i think because the shutting down and the i think isolation is a is really a key ingredient in how people fall down some rabbit hole from which they might need to be deprogrammed yeah and whether it's isolation of a uh just a doctor that doesn't even want to hear your concerns or actual isolation of you know we we talked to someone who had fallen down the q anon rabbit hole his name was jatarth jadeja and jatarth told us i think from the very simple question of just you know how would you describe yourself jatarth he says well uh i have bipolar disorder i have epilepsy i have adhd he had this like list of mental health issues that he led with and that kind of set the stage for him telling the story of falling down the q anon rabbit hole which is he's you know he's not feeling well he has isolated himself from his friends in this rabbit hole because he just feels overwhelmed by a lot of things in life and trump had just won the 2016 election and every news source that he had been watching at the time told him that was never going to happen basically and so he starts consuming alex jones because alex jones was one of the people at the time saying trump is going to win trump is going to win and he goes maybe this is the person i should be following they seem to have the answers he's surrounded by gold he's surrounded by gold and and he's surrounded by gold at a time when his mental health sets him up to fall down a rabbit hole that he really might not have fallen down otherwise yeah and jatarth was interesting too because jatarth told us like i used to be a libertarian left-wing guy um get rid of student debt etc etc i see old x-files track you start off as a lone gunman and then you end up in q anon that's right and he really took this hard hard turn and emery you can talk about how he got out but i think it was this kind of thing where he felt really isolated and we did a couple of episodes about q anon and talked to people who dealt with q anon and one of the things in the same episode where we talk about um jatarth or talk to jatarth i had had this like we really weird thing happen to me where i was uh it was 2018 thanksgiving and i did the thanksgiving tradition of going out the night before thanksgiving in my hometown and seeing all the people i used to go to high school with which i don't know why i did that to myself but i did that and i got in a lift on the way home and started talking to the guy who was driving the lift and he as soon as i told him what i did he was like oh read it he was like do you know about q and he just like went off on you know q and how donald trump was working with the secret government agent and the whole q anon story and he was in so deep like he had dates he he knew exactly what was going to happen over the next six months and he was telling me all about it and it was really it actually freaked me out like being in this car with this guy i got freaked out and i purposefully got out of the lift before i could get out of the car and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die my house because i was like i don't want this guy to know where i live he seems unhinged and then i left my phone in the car oh my god and so then like i spent the next day trying to get the phone back from this guy and he came to the dinner he came to he came back to where i was eating thanksgiving dinner and i was so thankful that i could get him i could get him back and i got i had 40 for him and i made him a giant plate of food and i was like so thankful and i went out and tried to offer him the food and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die the food and i gave him the i gave him the 40 bucks he gave me my phone he had parked in the street and i tried to give him the food and he he started crying and he was like my mother died a year ago today and i told myself that i wouldn't eat today and he sort of got out of the car and i he was like almost i was worried he was gonna like walk into traffic and i got him to the side of the and he said thank you and he got back in the car and drove away but it just struck me that he had described his discovery of q and it really had happened during this year yeah after this like super traumatic thing had happened to him he went deep into q and i'm not saying that it's guaranteed obviously that this was the thing but i think there's a lot of trauma behind our really strong opinions too yeah and yeah that's like a thing that we have to acknowledge and understand when people have a really strong opinion of us and we have to acknowledge that we have a really strong place that they're coming from and that that's part of it too and we have to be cognizant of that and it was i think it was the same with jatarth where he was really isolated feeling alone um had some really serious stuff going on in his life and that that can be a real trigger for you ending up in a place where you have these really really strong intense feelings and beliefs about something and it's and it's you're not always um looking at it as objectively as you should be yeah and he also said that like q brought him so much joy for the first time in a while because he felt like he had this this new sense of purpose in life this new sort of yeah meaning that he was a warrior for this information that only yeah well yeah and that like that only a certain group of people know the actual truth and and i have to i'm fighting the good fight for that information and it was like he said it was like he was like an addict for this information he couldn't stop talking about it because it invigorated like infused his life with something that it was missing before and so if we're going to keep people from falling down these rabbit holes like we have to confront the void before conspiracies fill it yeah and it does feel like a conspiracy theory and becoming a big believer in it i mean there's so many things that can draw you to that and one of them is just you know good old-fashioned mania um but another i feel like yeah is that like the kind of like lack of meaning yeah in life or a lack of lack of a feeling of meaning or a feeling of feeling connected with other people or with a community and that it i mean it's been such a such a long time now in a way but i mean i feel like it's is it fair to say that at least in its original iteration that kind of the the q anon fandom i guess huh was um i read it as like fan fiction of at least the first term of the trump presidency and it was like all these ways that you could decode and you could decode what appeared to be happening which was um hard to explain sometimes right because you know it would appear to be like a racist and small-time criminal who had accidentally become president and now you know you could kind of like get his ear if you gave him a bunch of pink starburst but in fact according to q anon it was really this like complex web of codes and you know just it was it was like this web of symbolism it was it was like playing mist or reading t.s elliott or something where in reality trump was um going to find all of the child sexual abusers and and get them yeah um a mission that he has undertaken with great restraint it must be said but that you know but this idea that every day you got to wake up and you got to wake up and you got to wake up and you and see not what all these idiots thought was happening but what was really happening and have a community about it like it feels like i feel like when people talk about the male loneliness epidemic like a the type i've seen that i agree with most is that there's just a human loneliness epidemic and men are about half of that um and we're focusing on them more yep and b that it feels like the proposed cure for the male loneliness epidemic proposed by men interestingly is that if women have sex with them then they won't all be so lonely so we just need to lower our standards which i don't think is it i think community is the answer and it feels like q anon was like i don't know what i want to call it a community substitute but do you think that that became an actual community for people. Oh, definitely. I think so. You know, you see this stuff at rallies and, you know, political rallies and stuff too. And people are so amped. They're so, I mean, like, I feel like the Charlie Kirk public event after his death felt that way to me, where there was a community coming together. And again, I'm not trying to compare, you know, all the people who follow Charlie Kirk to QAnon necessarily, but I guess I'm just saying, like, I think there is absolutely community in strongly held beliefs. Yeah. And I don't think there's, there's probably not a lot of Newsies fanfic and QAnon crossover. There's got to be a little, and that does worry me. You'd be the one to tell us. I don't want to know. You know, there's some things that are better left unlearned. But I do think, you know, folks are looking for community and they, you know, that when they, find community and whatever that, you know, if that community is a skepticism of vaccines community, if it's a community that is, that Donald Trump is, you know, working with a secret government agent to disassemble a deep state, like that can be a community too. Right. I see it maybe slightly differently where I, I wouldn't doubt that it is a community of sorts, but it's sort of like when you're on social media and you feel like you're interacting with your friends because you're commenting on their, their posts or their pictures or whatnot. And, and there is community in that. There's more connection there than there would be if you hadn't commented at all. But it's, it's not the same as sitting down with a muffin and I don't know why I picked a muffin, but sitting down with them. Muffin equals community. And some soup. And being face to face. And I do feel like some of this was greatly exacerbated by the fact that there was a false, a false sense of community. A very shallow false sense of community around ideas that got people really energized without actually being really connected to each other. Well, to use the Newsies fandom as an example, right? It's like you come together because you all love Newsies. And then you look around and you realize that you're all bisexual 15 year olds. And you're like, well, all right, you know, and you all love Phantom or something like that. Right. They're like, they're all these things that draw people together. And then it's like, once you know, once you're there, you got to figure out, you know, everything's always hunky dory. But like, it's easier to be a community when you're nameless and faceless on the internet than it is in real life. Well, and I guess the question is like, what is that community for? And how is that affected by the way that it's created? Because if you're a community, because you have a shared enemy, even when you invented, then, you know, how will you grow around that? And will you sort of find that, you know, because I'm sure that like, some people who are brought together by QAnon, like did find things that they had in common, outside of this, and then that could create real bonds and that there was the capacity for that. But it also feels like, you know, that that gets into sort of the part of the area of community feeling where you're just in a cult. Yeah. Where also, then it's like, you're brought together by beliefs and ideas. But then if you start to question them, then the threat, you know, implicitly, at least is that that is going to be taken away from you, because there are things that you have to believe in enemies that you have to share, or else you don't get to have this community anymore. That's right. And I also think like, this is why I think people say when you're trying to deprogram someone that getting specific is important, because you start to like you're saying you start to, you know, when you are face to face with people, and you're interacting with the community, you start to realize, hopefully, you start to realize why you're really together, why you're really getting together. And like, what is the actual thing that's drawing you together? And, and maybe it's the thing that, you know, you started with, and maybe it's not. And getting specific, when you talk to people helps you figure that out, I think helps you suss out like the why of why you're, you know, involved in this thing. And also, you start to learn other people's logic for their decisions. And I remember when we were doing some of the vaccine reporting, we you know, we met a family outside of a grocery store in Portland, Oregon. Actually, I think it was in Clark County, we talked to this family, and they were like, they were kind of like half in half out, like they were a little bit skeptical. They had like several kids, they were doing it on a different schedule. Yeah, they like did a different vaccine schedule. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, they just had decided that they were gonna, I think, give their kids most of the vaccines, they weren't sure about the chickenpox vaccine, but they just wanted to do it on a different timeline. Yep. And they felt immediately dropped into the anti-vax bucket for not wanting to vaccinate their kids on the schedule that the at least the CDC at the time. Yeah, it was was following. Yeah, I remember the mother, she was sort of like, you know, I'd rather that my kids get chickenpox, they're not going to die from chickenpox. I'm just saying this is what she said, right? Right. So why am I vaccinating them for chickenpox? And she said, because I think somebody's making money on me vaccinating. And she said, because I think somebody's making money on me vaccinating against chickenpox. And the thing is, right, and I think, I don't know if you can literally die from chickenpox. But I know that there can be very dire consequences. Or also, you know, it's like, you can get shingles later on in life. It's much, you know, all these reasons medically why it's much better to be vaccinated. And if I had kids, I would I would absolutely vaccinate them against everything I could think of. But also, I was exposed to chickenpox intentionally when I was a kid, as probably everyone was in the 90s, when your moms would just be like, all right, go get chickenpox. We got to do it now. It's gonna be worse if we wait. Yep, yep. Same. And that was kind of, I don't know, it was like fun. And it's also nice that that doesn't have to happen. It's just something that we get to share and lord over our children one day, I guess. But you know, but at the same time, right, like, I look at Ozempic, and I'm very, you know, conspiracy theory minded about that one. I don't think it's really, I don't even have to see myself as a conspiracy theorist. I think it's just a medication that has never been added. It's never been adequately tested on humans that now is being handed to the consumer. And the citizens of a large God fearing nation are being used as its guinea pigs. And we have no idea what the long term side effects are. And also people are making so much money. Yeah, you know, so again, it's like the impulse to question the motivations behind big pharma that is part of all this is like, I don't ever want to act like that's dumb, because I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. And I think that's, that's another interesting piece where like, if again, if you're trying to deprogram someone intend to deprogram a guy in 10 days, like and you're getting specific that you're talking about, I do think that that is part of it is like, yeah, I'm skeptical of giant mega, you know, multinational corporations. And I think you should be, I think you should be asking questions about that stuff. I think you should be thinking about things like, you know, uh, good scientific testing and, you know, I have similar feelings about as epic myself and I, and you might end up realizing that you have more in common with this person than you think you do. Yeah. That can sort of like build this trust. Another thing that they say, right, is that you, if the person is close to you, you have to actually spend, believe it or not, you have to spend more time with them, not less. Sorry. If, if it feels, if it, if it feels safe, if it feels safe to do so. Right. Yeah. Because again, you sort of build this, this common language and trust and rapport. And like, you understand that you both, like neither of you are necessarily like a huge, you are just going to like take whatever big pharma throws it. You, right. And that starts to build this foundation where you can, you can pull them out of wherever they are in that is, is maybe less reasonable and less of a shared perspective. Yeah. And that's, that's where the, um, the 10 days asterisk comes in. There's, there's so, there's so much patience required in that approach. And, and for some people, it's really not possible. We had done this episode right after the 2024 election where someone didn't feel like they could spend time with a pharma. It was a trans person who felt like they couldn't spend time with a family member who did not acknowledge their identity as, as their true self. And that is understandable. But if you can spend more time with them and you can just build more trust overall, and maybe you're just hanging out and doing the kind of like common ground ish activities of, well, hate is politics, but we both like the Patriots or whatever. And another weird example comes from me specifically, but if there are. And we're going to be finding more like a commonality with someone who hates the Patriots, I think maybe, but go on. I think that's the main thing to look for. Just football in general. Yeah. I mean, and I feel like no one should ever feel like they have to spend time with their family for truly any reason. Fair. But it does feel like part of the situation we're in, yeah, is like people relying on media as kind of a community substitute. And of course that's been sold to us as well. And then the fact that when we try and picture each other, we often see caricatures that have been sort of given to us as opposed to, you know, having real people to associate those ideas with, you know? Oh, yeah. Well, I think that gets at, in terms of whether you spend time with a family member or not, the question is, do you want to deprogram this person? You know, if you do, and it feels safe to spend time with them, then you go for it. And if you feel like they are, well, maybe not a lost cause, but if it's better. What if you find someone else's family member and then you can hope that someone else gets yours? That's right. If it's healthier for you to not deprogram that person in particular, that is also understandable. Well, and so in terms of the stories that you've reported on and experienced in the past, I don't know, however many eras of American life this has been, I'm curious, just kind of personally, about, like, what do you think of when you think of someone, like, changing their mind in this way or about this kind of deprogramming idea? Are there examples that come to mind? Yeah, I mean, we could go back to Jatarth, right, Amory, and the way that. And how he kind of came out of it. Yeah, what was that like for him? Yeah, so it's funny with Jatarth because he was so deep into QAnon, and yet the thing that pulled him out was pretty small, comparatively. So he comes across this video online, that has to do with a very particular theory around QAnon, which is that the phrase "tippy-top," Trump saying the phrase "tippy-top" is sort of like-- What? Not "tippy-top." "Tippy-top." He does say that a lot, or at least he did. I remember that. Yes. No, that is one of his favorites. And Q followers thought that this was a sort of, like, dog whistle to them, and that this held some larger significance. I mean, there was that episode of "Seinfeld" where George wanted to change a woman's answering machine tape, and then the code word for when she was getting too close was to go, "Tippy-toe, tippy-toe!" That's right. So, you know, I'm sure there's precedent. It all makes sense. It all makes sense. Yeah, and so he watches this one video that shows that Trump had actually been using "tippy-top" long before he ever ran for public office. Oh, no. It all fell apart. I mean, it was these tiny, like, seeds of doubt. That's incredible. Yeah, and that actually gives me a lot of hope, because you don't know what is going to sow a seed of doubt. And there are people who would say that, like, "Doubt is the way out. Doubt is how you, like, claw your own way out." And there's sort of, like, some Jedi mind trick stuff going on with deprogramming where it is helpful if you can make, like, make someone think that this was their idea. If you can put material in front of them, whether it's someone who has -- if it's a, you know, a cult, if it's someone who has left that cult and found their way out and you are helping them find that information without necessarily holding the mirror so obviously up to them and accusing their exact beliefs, it's going to be a lot easier for that person to sort of, like, doubt freely within their own mind without, you know, without you looking over their shoulder and going, you know, "Uh, are you with me yet? Are you with me yet?" -Right. -So it can be something so small, and whatever you can do to sow a seed of doubt is helpful. Well, and I think, too, that there's, like, the joy of conspiracy-making, conspiracy-theorizing is the same, in a way, as the joy of figuring out the truth or of doubting or of thinking, like, "Oh, my God, what if Tippy Topp is just, like, I found evidence saying it in 2008? We're getting to the bottom of Tippy Topp," you know? And, like, I feel like that can be not as satisfying in the sense that you think you found your theory of everything, right? But that it feels good to, like, dig into reality in that way, I really believe. Yeah, and I think it feels even better if you can really sort of either literally or figuratively wrap your arms around that person when they do come out of it because the truth feels good, but it also. you do lose some of that sort of, like, greater purpose. "Oh, no, I thought we were all. I thought. " I believe the phrase is, "The truth hurts, Amory." I believe that's the phrase. The truth, yeah, the truth hurts. And if you are making sure that there is not some new void created that will be filled with something else, but that you are there to fill the void and be there for the person as they are sort of, like. I don't know if mourning a loss is a fair analogy, but you're mourning a loss of something, of some way of thinking that was kind of intoxicating -and now you need a new. -Yeah. You need a new source of support. Sarah, do you know the Herman Cain Award? Oh, my gosh, wait, I might. I feel like it's not for something good. -What is it? -That's correct. -That is correct. -That's correct. You don't want to get it. You may remember that presidential candidate and Republican politician Herman Cain. So, he was. Herman Cain is somewhat infamous, one could say, for basically questioning COVID pretty intensely and then going to a rally in Tulsa unmasked and then very quickly after that, after publicly tweeting that the disease was not deadly, dying from complications of COVID. -Yeah. -And so, of course, there is a subreddit and, you know, there are internet communities based around this idea of the Herman Cain Award. And we did an episode about this and talked to some of the moderators from that subreddit. But essentially, the idea is taking people who are basically attacking COVID as like a hoax, et cetera, et cetera, online, and then sort of following what happens to them. And in some cases, people do get sick from COVID and die from COVID. And it is one of those, you know, when you see this stuff pass you by, well, this is my experience, when you see this stuff pass you by on the internet, you're kind of like, "Heh, well." You know, it's easier to have some schadenfreude there. But when you actually think about it, it's like pretty messed up. You know, one could say that anyone dying unnecessarily is a sad thing. And it's sort of somewhat nihilistic to make fun of people, you know, for dying. -I think so. I think I'm going to really get behind that idea. I don't, yeah, no reservations there. It is. And I get that. I think it's very hard to look at what's going on and not sort of fall into nihilism to an extent, because sometimes the, you know, the call is too strong. But yeah, ultimately, I don't want to celebrate anyone's death except possibly one. So there you go. - -Who shall remain nameless? -No, but I do think, like, and this was kind of interesting because you hope, I think, sometimes when you're trying to deprogram someone that ridicule will work. And in some cases, I think ridicule does work. But I think most of the time, it doesn't seem to work. And I think when we made this episode, we talked to both the recipient of a Herman Cain nomination, his name is Glenn, he lives in Colorado, and also the moderators. And we talked to a moderator of the subreddit for the Herman Cain Award, Hammy. We, you know, it was really interesting because Glenn is, you know, you can sort of maybe assume where he's coming from. He's posting a lot of memes on Facebook about how COVID was stupid and fake, et cetera, et cetera. He got nominated for an award, went viral because of that, being nominated for the Herman Cain Award. And then he got a call from his daughter, who was like, "Please, please, please, please stop this. Go to the hospital." He got sick with COVID, of course. And she was really upset that he had been, you know, that he had been nominated for the award and gotten gone viral for all this sort of COVID skepticism. And he stuck to his guns. He was being treated with ivermectin, and he did not end up going to the hospital. But it was so interesting to talk to him. He really reminded me of my uncles who live in Colorado, just in terms of the way he sounded. And it made me sort of feel badly that he had gone viral in this way. But, you know, of course, understanding, you know, some of the things that he put on Facebook were really, you know, misguided. And what we tried to do, because Hammy, the moderator for this Herman Cain Award subreddit, actually told us that they had seen evidence of people who got nominated for the award actually change their tune and change the way that they were thinking about this. And so what we tried to do, we didn't end up doing it, but what we tried to do is get them to talk to each other. Hmm. That would have been interesting. Yeah, because, like, eventually, like, you know, ultimately, like, a lot of these people who are, like, really upset about this stuff that is happening, and one of the interesting things was that Glenn and Hammy both had long COVID. Hmm. Mm-hmm. And so it was, like, this interesting thing where both of them, you know, they were coming from totally different ends of the spectrum in terms of what they, you know, believed about the disease and the virus and, you know, how to approach it. But they had this kind of, like, shared experience. And we tried to get them to talk to each other. They didn't end up talking to each other. But Glenn's daughter was, I think, an example of that. of somebody who had who is coming from a very different place than Glenn and I think had had a change of heart so I do think uh to you know to to be more taking COVID much more seriously so I do think that this stuff can happen and and we have talked to people who have had real changes of heart we talked to somebody we did an episode about Hassan Piker do you know of that guy no they call him the Joe Rogan of the left oh boy he's yeah he's uh or as I call him the guy from news radio of the left yes yes he's somebody who a lot of people talk to after the most recent presidential election um because he you know he's a very popular streamer and he was he was kind of helping a lot of more legacy media decode what had happened in the election um from his perspective obviously uh he's he's definitely controversial in his own right for some of the views that he holds and and some of the things that he says while he streams for streams on twitch for eight hours a day seven days a week or whatever it is that's too many hours Hassan too many hours um but we did we did we talked to somebody named Jaden who had grown up in a small town in Arkansas and and it was very small religious town grew up around pretty we could say homophobic views and Jaden eventually through this parasocial relationship with Hassan as a college kid started to question some of the things that he had you know that he had been taught growing up and eventually as he it was sort of like it was happening at the same time he was going to college and so his universe was expanding there because he was going to University of Arkansas in Fayetteville which is much a much bigger place uh than Keeber Springs where he grew up um but you know the internet was also expanding his understanding of different ideas about American foreign policy for instance and what was happening in in Gaza for instance and so like I think over time it's so tricky because I on the one hand you're like doing your own research on the internet and you're you're pulled down these rabbit holes and on the other hand when your universe expands um you can also uh find people that help you change the way you feel in what I would describe as a positive way sometimes Hassan's an interesting example too because in thinking about this topic to talk to you about it Sarah I guess I've become more and more um thinking along the lines of like one-on-one conversations and you know the idea that a lot of times when people pull themselves out of something that they didn't even realize the the depths of the hole that they've fallen into it was one person who didn't give up on them it was one family member it was one friend it was these kinds of conversations that inch their way towards you know curious well-meaning questions with a with a foundation of trust and rapport there to sort of catch them when they when they get caught in a web of like friction in the conversation and yet I think Hassan and I'm not holding up Hassan personally in this example but that is an example of some of the I don't know the approach that we could take if we were thinking about deprogramming large amounts of people there is a lot to be said for someone who just kind of sets an example that you want to follow and maybe that is a person close to you in your life maybe that's like a parent or a friend or maybe it's a person on the internet who is not just talking about politics or not just talking about whatever his fitness regimen but together there's some model of behavior that you want to emulate and we just need a lot more truth on these platforms and and being these sorts of examples of you know the kind of person you want to see in the world if we're going to swing things in a more truthful direction than in the one that we're going seem to be going in I guess I won't be too depressing about it but it's going to take some combination of better examples on larger platforms but also just better conversations one-on-one yeah part of this bigger picture I think is that you know people say they want community but then I think many of us you know in the United States have been raised to be consumers you know more than citizens and that is kind of the culture that we've been given and what has been taught to us and if we're trying to combat the sort of cheap I don't know or the like easily had sense of false comfort that comes from getting upset about something online and feeling like you're surrounded by people who are as upset as you then you can't combat that with just sort of low effort online platform type stuff it the only way to combat that maybe is through actual human connection yeah and that's the thing that you can't you can't really scale up either you just have to keep doing it yeah and I guess that's going back to sort of the beginning of this conversation and talking about the internet and its role and vacillating between optimism and and pessimism on the internet it's like I feel like maybe the if not optimism that I feel now it's more of an acceptance of the internet as a tool that is never ever ever going away and so I'm not feeling like we need to lean into it harder I'm just looking for ways to harness it to do more good than harm yeah and that's a that's a low bar for a lot of people out there that would sound like a low bar to someone who's like AI is the future but but that is like the bar that I am clinging to right now as I try to get more and more offline well accepting this genie that can't be put back in the bottle yeah well part of the problem is that it's actually a high it is actually a high bar right like in my mind you know we we looked at when we we did our series about vaccines and anti-vaxxers we looked a lot at you know Facebook groups and and other online communities where a lot of misinformation exists and I I'm not saying that there's there's plenty of misinformation and disinformation on Reddit as well so they're on all of the platforms and I'm not saying that there's there's plenty of misinformation and disinformation on Reddit as well so they're on all of the platforms and I I'm not saying that there's there's plenty of misinformation and disinformation on Reddit as well so they're on all of the platforms but you know Joan Donovan who's a Harvard researcher and was at the time she's not at Harvard anymore but she was at the time she said to us you know it's it's hard to make the truth go viral you know or some version of that which is which you know is true I think unfortunately there's so much more engagement around rage bait or you know whatever you want to call it or however you want to describe it and that's that's a big part of the problem too and so like having the internet do more good than harm is actually a high bar because unfortunately I do think it sort of leans it leans or at least thanks to the folks who have built the tools in the way that they have built them in their propensity for fixing things versus just breaking things and building things and caring more about the sort of training consumers like you're saying Sarah thanks to all of that it is actually harder it is actually a high bar in my mind to make this stuff do more good than harm I mean this is also kind of why I'll defend that the girl with the buttons because you know famously right like if you're writing for Netflix you have to have characters saying what they're doing and what the stakes are of the movie all the time because the assumption is that people are looking at their phones yes or washing dishes or something as anyone who watched the rip recently knows you have right which is like how could they do that to Matt and Ben you know it's nothing sacred and um you know and this idea that like we can't expect people to just like sit and think for one second like I'll I'll always push on the idea of like just like let's let people be a little bored encourage people to have to sit and wonder we can't write all of our media for like your mom on the day after Thanksgiving who never normally goes to see movies and spends the whole time going who's that and you're like we haven't seen him before it's Gary Sinise don't go after the girl with the buttons when there are actual climate change deniers out there we were talking as we were um sort of preparing for this conversation Sarah and wondering if either one of us had been deprogrammed or feel like we had been programmed and then deprogrammed or deprogrammed ourselves at any point in time and just the act of going through that exercise I think yeah immediately builds a little bit of uh extra compassion that is is necessary when doing this exercise because you do realize like we are set up to fail with social media just literally digging its nails into you and pulling you down with the algorithm to make you yeah believe more and more and view more and more of what you might be inclined to watch in a moment of weakness I would encourage anyone to kind of do that thought experiment with themselves coming out of this conversation because we've sort of all been there even if it's not a government cabal it might just be some weird you know button belief that we've had I was gonna say Sarah's deep belief that we've had is that we've had a lot of people who have been deprogrammed me from wanting answers on the button person so I feel that's right we're just I've come around and let button each citizen can do whatever they want with their buttons i am curious about yeah you're if if you had answers for that when you did that thought experiment or you know anything that you would want to talk about here of like yeah because when i when i think about that for myself i think about and this is maybe this is not on such a grand scale but like i've been teaching myself to sleep enough lately because i like have always known intellectually that i was supposed to be sleeping more but because like what we i'm sure we're raised to know in our hearts especially and you know there's like so much terminology that i do kind of thank social media for being hyper specific enough to come up with and one of them is like a non-sleep supportive family uh which i'm sure many of us know we're like you know you come down at like 9 a.m and they're like oh you're finally awake and you're like okay that's nice and you know and i was raised sort of where you know the the stated goal for me was to achieve highly and so even though it was you know implicit even if you know i was raised sort of where you know the the stated goal for me was to achieve highly and so even though it was you know implicit even if people were like you should sleep you should make healthy choices like you know at school and with teachers and just kind of you know from adult authority figures it felt like they were being like you should get plenty of sleep wink wink no you shouldn't because if you did that you couldn't do all the stupid stuff we were telling you to do and so i've been training myself to sleep not by teaching myself to love myself enough to do it because that's like a really big goal that i'm working towards um but because i found an app where the numbers turn a nicer color if you have less than five hours of sleep debt nice and it's like i don't have to have healthy attitudes about myself for my needs i can just start by liking the app and then baby steps i'm using my most frivolous you know i i've become a big believer lately in the idea that like you can train yourself like you're your own cute little dog and that you can you can train yourself to do something important for a stupid little reason and i don't know if that's deprogramming but it's it's behaviorizing i'm behaviorizing myself i feel like amory deprogrammed me from uh being a person who inadvertently was was pushing procreation how so i want to hear that story we did an episode about the child free uh community and i think amory i don't know if you would i don't know if you're a fence sitter wow i'm not sure how you would describe yourself at this point i don't know if you would describe yourself at this point i think i'm a fence sitter i think most of my life i was leaning no and the fence sitter on having kids that is and the fence sitter part of me is just the like well we haven't we haven't like taken all of the extremes to never have kids ever so i'll still identify as a fence sitter even though it just it has not felt like now is the time well i think amory over the course of the like like i i think i showed up for the episode being like whatever it's cool for me to say like you'd be a great mom you know what i mean and i think amory helped me understand the pressure that can be applied culturally uh especially for women you know with with those kinds of statements and comments right and i still feel like in the episode i was still kind of coming from a place of like well you know we're close we're good friends and longtime colleagues and you know we're honest with each other and so like it feels not right for me to not tell you how i feel about this if we're talking about it but i think amory helped me realize how some of that language just more broadly culturally and especially when someone you know when you're talking to somebody who you're close to like you can you should be careful about how you do that and not be putting pressure on them unnecessarily and so she i i feel like amory you you you maybe that's not full deprogramming but you really helped me kind of come from a place where i wasn't seeing the the sort of truth of it and i think you brought me towards that thanks ben yeah yeah i'll take a demi demi deprogramming deprogramming i feel like also part of what you're you're identifying with that story is the fact that you know and looking at at kind of human relationships and and this idea of having someone who's not giving up on you as being the antidote there to this kind of like bigger you know technological sweep of rhetoric that people are responding to that like there can be a big cause but maybe not like an equally sweeping solution which is so often the case annoyingly yeah but also that you know that a big part of this is like you know you or anyone else being receptive to the idea of someone being like actually when you say that it like causes me or you know theoretically another human being to like feel these things that you might not have thought of and then for you the person be like oh i didn't think of that and now i'm thinking of it because someone told me about it and now i know and that just that ability to alter your behavior out of consideration for somebody in a way also feels like the antidote to what feels like to me to be the cause of a lot of conspiracy theory fandom i guess which is the idea that like the man is oppressing you which like he should be the cause of a lot of conspiracy theory fandom i guess really is um and and therefore in order to fight back against being told what to do that you're going to rebel and i feel like it feels if you feel oppressed by being told what to do then if you can be receptive to the idea that someone is not telling you they're asking you to help them which is very different from giving someone orders and i feel like if someone can understand that distinction then that can mean a lot hmm i think my example of deprogramming is is in a very squishy place and i'll i'll offer it up with the asterisk that i'm i feel like i'm a real work in progress and i'm still figuring out well i'm finished and i am just right so that must be embarrassing for you yeah sarah's fully baked yeah the toothpick came out clean well on this particular issue aren't we all but on this particular issue um so i probably might have to say that i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to say that i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to say that i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to have probably held pretty steady for a really long time which is yeah but as food becomes more and more expensive um we're all going to be eating vegan more whether we realize it or not so yeah i got some great recipes be nice exactly be nice or you won't get the recipes also like amory really is like she was talking about before trying to kind of like whatever live as an example and i think amory you really do that with how you live as a vegan i think you're really really good at that it's a quiet strong and very respected position that you take if to me if that makes sense thank you i'm trying you're doing great you're still figuring it out you know every once in a while when we're trying to go out to eat and you're like what about this place i'm like oh god damn it but you know what you know what it's great generally speaking it's great as long as we know we're figuring it out yeah exactly but no i think that's great and um ben emory this has been so i don't know just like a very very hopeful conversation for me and i hope that this has brought some hope to our listeners too and obviously you don't have to talk to your family you don't have to talk to anybody but we all need community and you deserve to get the closeness and the connection that you need to just so you know and in terms of listening to more endless thread especially if people liked this episode and want to hear more about it please do so and i'll see you in the next episode where to start what are some episodes that you can recommend to people oh man i'm like i'm like ready for the the newsies fanfic episode um we should do we should delve find sarah's old posts look there is some great literature in the newsies fan fiction archives and i'm not even talking about the one i started about what if the newsies went on the oregon trail because i did not finish it maybe i will this year we don't know what's going to happen but i'm not even talking about the one i don't know love to hear a song about dying of dysentery that sounds great imagine having to deal with all the problems of being a newsie and then dysentery gets you it gives me too sad yeah uh we've got a couple of episodes that i feel like we usually send people to uh one is called uh we want plates and there's a follow-up to that one called i love that we want plates subreddit those people do deserve plates yes totally same if you want to hear us go on a journey in the next episode of dysentery i'll see you in the next episode of dysentery we'll see you in the next episode of dysentery we'll see you in the next episode of dysentery into the woods looking for a mountain of abandoned dishware i do this is the the episode for you and the the second part where we may or may not have found the dishware called pile of crockery beautiful amory did an amazing one called artist known about a madeline lengel book cover oh yeah wrinkle in time the most famous book cover for a wrinkle in time i feel like that book cover probably creeped me out as a child definitely creepy i think you you and everyone else and it was uncredited up until up until that episode that we made oh my gosh so you're you're putting right what once went wrong you're doing a quantum leap exactly we're we're wrinkling time i love these topics that you're describing especially after the kind of you know the more serious kind of ground we've we've trod in this episode because the world is just i don't know i don't so odd and amidst everything just the little the ways that humans i don't know like humans do the most awful things imaginable yes and yet when you look at us as a species like for the most part i remain convinced that we are not even good just weird weird and charming in our eccentricity you know and i just i love media that allows us to see that and i feel like you're doing that with your show well thank you may we change in many many many ways but not that one and that was our episode thank you so much for listening thank you for being here thank you to miranda zickler who was our editor and producer and nicole ortiz who is our administrative assistant we also have a new bonus episode that you can listen to about all things dolls creepy dolls haunted dolls dolls with dolls you and a doll survey for our listeners with our guest chelsea weber smith of american hysteria and you can find that on patreon and apple plus subscriptions thank you again for being here we'll see you next time