The Daily Stoic - Professor Jo Lukito on the Rise of Misinformation

Episode Date: September 18, 2021

On today’s episode of the podcast, Ryan talks to Jo Lukito about her research on trading up the chain and the spread of misinformation, the difference between disinformation and misinformation and the importance of the distinction, the tragedy of the social media giant’s lack of response to helping resolve this issue, and more.Josephine ("Jo") Lukito is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media (in the Moody College of Communication). Her ongoing work focuses on the multi-platform spread of misinformation, disinformation, and unverified conspiracy theories in democracies, including the amplification of such messages (sometimes unintentionally) by news media and political actors. She has discussed her research on Russian disinformation in the Columbia Journalism Review and on CNN; this work was also referenced in Robert Mueller’s 2018 report (p. 27).Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. Get a copy of Ryan's book Trust Me I'm Lying: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/ryan6?_pos=1&_sid=15492deb5&_ss=rPre-orders are available for Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave - check it out at https://dailystoic.com/preorderNovo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. Novo makes banking easy and secure - you can manage your account in Novo’s customizable web, android, and iOS apps with built in profit first accounting and invoicing. Get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at https://banknovo.com/STOICTalkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show.LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com /stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Jo Lukito: Homepage, Twitter, InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holliday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

I was reading a New York Times piece a couple weeks ago and I read it was talking about how misinformation particularly spreads through smaller local news websites. So I'm going to read you this little paragraph and it was talking about just how there's something like 1700 local television stations in the United States, 3,300 radio stations, 1,300 daily papers, 5,800 weekly newspapers all over the United States. And it says Joe Likido, an assistant journalism professor who studies disinformation at the University of Texas at Austin, said local media is often a starting point that creates a trading up the chain effect.

The article goes on, it starts when a rumor is covered or published in local media, she said, where it can then gain a sheen of credibility. Then quote, when you pitch it to a Fox News or a larger news platform, you can say that this other outlet covered it, so it must be real. Well, this caught me off guard, because not only is this jived with what I've seen over the course of the pandemic, but as far as I understood, I coined the phrase trading up the chain. It's in the first chapter of my first book, Trust Me I'm Lying. It was me watching how rumors or gossip or things that started on blogs would get sort of laundered through a local news site or social

media and then get picked up by increasingly large websites until it was a breaking story on CNN or Fox News or NBC News or whatever. This is something I've been wanting to talk to you guys about because as the Daily Stoke platform has grown, I was just talking to my wife about this the other day, this was a small group originally, a small nerdy group of people who were really interested in ancient philosophy. But as the books have gotten bigger and bigger and sold now millions of copies, not everyone is coming to it from the same place. Not everyone is familiar with all the assumptions or the teachings of stoicism. And certainly, they're not all gonna be dealing with the same deck of cards as far as media literacy goes.

So it's been, I don't wanna say distressing, but it's been strange and disappointing to watch some of the vehement reactions to pretty basic historical stuff that we have talked about on Daily Stoic. Particularly this Marx-Realist quote, I love that Marx wrote during the Antenine play. And we've talked about our sort of stoic obligations

to each other, we've talked about just sort of basic human decency. And also I care about you guys, I don't want anything bad to happen to you. And so I've tried to use my platform to talk about some basic safety protocol things. And it's been strange to watch some of the insane reactions that these things have garnered.

And if you don't have to take my word for it, just go look at some of the Instagram comments or the YouTube comments on stuff that we've done. And and wrap your mind around that this is what you're seeing that wasn't deleted or banned or reported, right? This is like the stuff that passed muster or that just frankly wore down the people on my team to the point where they're like, I got to move on and focus on things that actually matter. So clearly, there's a certain percentage of people who listen to this, who have come into my work, and are, as Marcus would say, infected in one way or another,

or are vulnerable to misinformation. And so in today's episode, I wanted to talk to Professor Likido and talk about how information spreads, talk about how we can protect ourselves against it, talk about how we can notice when it's happening, and talk about what our ethical obligations are as individuals and as members of society to do something about it. I thought this was a great conversation. I really enjoyed having it.

Took me back all the way to my first book, which is crazy to me that I wrote in 2011 Trust Me I'm Lying. Now almost 10 years old. You can pick up a copy at my bookstore, ThePaintedPorture, at thepaintedPorture.com, or anywhere books are sold. There's an audiobook version as well. Professor Likido studies cross-platform media language in the context of global politics. She especially focuses on interactions between news and social media, and she studies language processing and does mass quantitative language analysis to study how ideas or concepts or words spread through these platforms. She studies political mis and disinformation. There's a big difference

as we talk about and She's been published everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review and appeared on CNN. She was also cited in Robert Mueller's 2018 report on the interference in the 2016 election. She studies live tweeting economic news coverage, public diplomacy and coverage of U.S. foreign policy. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2020, where she also has PhD minors in English, linguistics, and political science. She knows her stuff, and she is a new Austin resident,

so it was wonderful to talk to her. I think you're really gonna like this interview, and I'll leave you to it. So I came across you, I was reading a piece in the New York Times and I'm going to riff on it at the intro of the episode so people will have some context. But you were talking about, you mentioned about how information is traded up the chain. Which I was so excited to see because as far as I know, I made up that phrase. My understanding is that you did point that phrase.

And so I was like, wow, and I wrote that book so long ago, it's not when I think about all the time, although in other aspects, unfortunately, I do have to think about it all the time. But it was like, oh, wow, this is exactly what I was talking about and to see someone like you studying it from sort of a scholarly perspective and explaining how it's happening in real time.

It was both encouraging and alarming to me at the same time, but why don't we start with how you, your understanding of that concept and how you've seen it in your work? Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny you mentioned that you haven't really thought about it all too hard in maybe more recent years because it's been on my mind probably non-stop for the past two years or so. And I am a researcher who uses primarily computational methods to study cross-platform media flows. So I'm really curious about how language or links or means, all variations of human communication flow from different social media platforms, but also between social media and news. And so a lot of my work during, you know, in 2016 and 2017,

were really focused on how, for example, Russian trolls ended up getting into news media. Yeah. And a lot of that activity, at the time I realized, you know, this is, this is an interesting link to explore. The one where, you know, news organizations are really looking through social media and trying to find, you know, interesting stories to cover or opinions of the public, that sort of thing. And I realized that this push and pull goes both ways, right? And this is where I kind of came across

your concept of trading up the chain. This idea that a story can be dropped in like a social media post or a blog and then pitched repeatedly from a small news organization, a niche platform or a digital platform into one that's larger. And so I've been trying to follow that trend, particularly when it comes to political misinformation, but of course, during the pandemic, that also includes COVID misinformation.

Yeah, it's kind of alarming when you, if you watch just a single story unfold, like if you were there when it happened. I think part of a good portion of our sort of dysfunction about media, I think has to do with just how rarely people actually sort of encounter it happening. Oh yeah. If you ever like you happen to be the subject of a big new story or you witness an event that becomes a media

story or in your case you're studying it, it's quite alarming at just sort of how quickly, you know, like the sort of the thing can go from this one place or this somewhat spurious or speculative place to like all of a sudden like heads of state are reacting to it as if it's the most established, well-sustowed thing in the world. Absolutely. And I think the speed is really the tricky part. In the past, these sort of processes

might have taken a little bit longer or you would have need to have more power to have the ear of a journalist or someone who can cover it and expand that to their audience. But now it's very easy through social media. And so that process is just so quickly and easily exploited. And in my own research, when I study platforms like Telegram and Parler, for example, where the alt-right and sometimes white nationalists and QAnoners and other conspiratorial

individuals where they're active, you can really see that organization in real time, which was really shocking. There was one example I remember of a telegram channel that was discussing a piece of fake news that they were hoping to promote on Twitter. And the piece ended up going quite viral on Twitter. I'm trying to remember what it was about. This little far back is like sometimes 2018 and 2019.

And the people on Telegram were actually discussing how to promote that activity on Twitter. So they would post the tweet and encourage other folks on Telegram to retweet it. And would also give updates anytime, for example, prominent Twitter user or verified Twitter user would retweet it or when a news media organization would cover it. It's weird because when I was writing the book, I was trying to sort of say, like, look, here's how this happens. This is probably not good. And it could be used like, hey, if you have a charity,

you know, if you have a salary, you could get publicity for it. Or if you have some, you know, cause you're trying to get publicity for it, here's how this works. And then I think what the alarming thing has been, I'm curious, maybe disagree, but it really feels like these groups, the sort of, whether you're talking about Russian trolls or sort of political disruptors, it's almost as if they're more media-fluent in how these things work than not just the public, but it seems like even things work than not just the public, but it seems like even the outlets that they end up exploiting seem to be relatively ignorant of this process, and that's why it keeps happening.

Yes, I think one of the things that I get worried about is when news outlets don't have a lot of verification practices, especially for social media content. And one of the things that is scary to me is, you know, when folks pitch things to a news organization or when a news organization sees something on social media, they don't necessarily check the source of it or reach out to the person who's actually posting it to make sure, you know, is that a genuine human being? Is that, you know, content that they genuinely believe

in someone and so forth? And so, I don't know. My hope is that news organizations change that over time, but I acknowledge that that's a hard process to try to verify every individual on social media. Well, I saw this happen somewhat recently. This is a more positive example, but I think the illustration is what should alarm people is.

So I live out here in Bastrop, and I donated some money to get this Confederate statue moved. And I just took a picture of is, so I live out here in Bastrop and I donated some money to get this Confederate statue moved. And I just took a picture of it and I posted like what I'd done on Instagram. And then someone had posted that on the Austin subreddit and then literally within like 20 minutes, I got tweets from like DMs on Twitter from local reporters who wanted to interview me about it.

And then the same thing happened. I have a bookstore here and this woman came in and sort of had this big stink about wearing a mask and then she sent us this really nasty letter about it. And so I posted a letter also on social media. And again, it goes from my personal social media where I could do whatever I wanted with it. I could have photoshopped it. I could have changed it. Right? Like the donation could have been fake in the other case. And then that goes to Reddit, which again, there's no vetting.

But then then immediately you're getting inquiries from reporters who are like, who are, they're almost like Uber drivers outside of an airport, just waiting for passengers to land so they can grab a ride. Like I don't think people understand just how much anticipation and waiting there is to scoop up anything sensational or provocative and how 99% of the time this works out. The person is not being disingenuous or misleading. and how 99% of the time this works out, the person is not being disingenuous or misleading,

but- So often, yes. Exactly. And, you know, I think a lot of folks don't realize how much, for example, journalists really rely on Twitter for any of their newsmaking at this point, even if it's for factual information or for opinions, right?

And so, one of the things that I've noticed in talking to a lot of journalists is they wake up with Twitter, they go to bed with Twitter, and they're constantly DMing and reaching out to people. And even in the examples that you provided, you know, the content you're sharing is hopping across so many social media platforms, sometimes in the form of links, but very often in the form of images, which are much easier to manipulate and much harder to verify. Right. Yes. And it feels like, okay, so it went, so it went from Instagram to Reddit. To Reddit to Twitter. Yeah, that feels like it's being vetted, but these are four platforms

with zero vetting, right? Oh, yeah. so we think that as it goes up the chain, it's being vetted, but it's like, actually no one is vetting, because they're just assuming that person doesn't even even if them did it. Exactly, and one of the scariest things is that, you know, instead of it being vetted, the process for whether something is worth reporting on

ends up becoming much more about whether it's popular, right? And so have a lot of people, you know, like did on Instagram or upvoted it on Reddit or retweeted it on Twitter, that has become the indicator of whether something is newsworthy or worth covering because it's provocative or interesting

or gets a lot of reactions from folks. And so unfortunately, what we see is that that betting process has now been replaced with a viability process, essentially. So, when you just talked to us a little bit about how you see stuff trading up the chain. Like, is it certain kinds of information? Is it certain people who are like, as you study this phenomenon, what are you seeing COVID election or any types of news? How does this typically happen? Well, I'm glad that you mentioned, COVID, election, or any types of news? How does this typically happen?

Well, I'm glad that you mentioned, in most cases, a lot of this information isn't necessarily bad. Good information can also be traded up the chain. But I obviously specialize in misinformation, disinformation, because I'm worried when that kind of information is traded up the chain. And if this year has shown us anything, it's that, you know, malicious information or polarizing information can spread rather quickly. And there's been research of it in showing that false information, especially when it's emotionally

laid in, especially when it's rather dramatic or polarizing, that tends to spread much faster than factually accurate information. And so when you think about that sort of pattern in relation to trading up the chain, it makes a lot of sense tragically that misinformation, in particular about COVID, but also about the election, ends up being very easily traded up the chain. From my research, I found that a lot of times this stuff will start on smaller platforms or smaller groups in communities. So, for example, one particular subreddit or a telegram channel or on parlor. And then they will try to move it towards a larger social media platform, typically

a bigger subreddit, Twitter, obviously, because there are a lot of journalists on Twitter and Facebook. And this is where it will then get picked up by journalists, sometimes by smaller journalists who then give it attention for larger newsrooms. But sometimes it just jumps straight up to a Fox News CNN New York Times type platform. Yeah, I think when I was writing this, and it's crazy to me that I mean,

I was writing Trust Me I'm Lying in 2011 and a lot of what I was observing had happened you know 2007 2008 2009 but it is remarkable just what a stable link in that chain sort of local news seems to be or or sort of regional news, because I think, is it that there's hundreds of years of sort of equity in those brands? Why is it that people care about the local NBC station or the local this or that? Why do they seem to be specifically such a conduit for the kind of information that then escalates to national news or it goes viral on social media.

Yeah, I think it's two trends. So first, people generally trust local news media more than they trust national news media, even if they are consuming more national news media. So there is this equity that comes in from being a local newsroom and reporting on stories locally. But at the same time, these local newsrooms are the ones that suffer the most when it comes to newsroom cuts and funding cuts.

And so a lot of these newsrooms have really struggled in finding the resources to actually verify a lot of this information. And then are kind of encouraged, if not just straight out, told to share a story coming from the mother organization, the larger corporation. So for example, when I talk to a lot of folks, they don't realize that most of their local newspapers

are now owned by Gennett, for example. They think that it's still part of their local newsroom and it's the same as it's always been because the name has been around for 50 years or so. But 10 years ago, it was picked up by Gennett and as a result, a lot of the stories that you'll see in a Gennett-type newspaper are the same news stories that you see in USA today

and in other Gennett newspapers. So if you have someone share a piece of misinformation and that tweet gets embedded into a USA Today story, it might end up on hundreds of local newspaper websites, right? But folks don't necessarily realize this because it's all linked through Gennad. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other

people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings, but in less than a year his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX and its

founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today. And I think the other thing people don't necessarily realize, and I don't mean to disparage these local reporters, but these are not usually seasoned journalists with many decades of experience, the way that they once were. Usually, like, it's almost as if media has its own chain where you're sort of like if you would start at, you know,

a local broadcaster to Des Moines, but you're very quickly trying to get up to the national level. So, these people are kind of, they're either early in their career or they are trying to go places in their career. And that's a real factor in influencing what and how they cover what they cover. Yes, a lot of them tend to be inexperienced or the ones that are experienced who have been doing it for a lot of a long time, you know, they are more expensive to pay. And so they're the ones who end up getting cut the fastest.

And one of the things that I've noticed in the local newsroom space is that a lot of media corporations are doing this sort of consolidation where not only are they consolidating all the newspapers under one newspaper, but they'll also give that newspaper kind of a niche. So you have to focus on sports. And this other space has to focus on, you know, political reporting. And so what you see is a noticeable decrease in the number of people who are covering one thing, right? They end up just assigning it to one person. And so you get this kind of siloing that results in less verification and results in fewer people actually covering the story. And what ends up looking like local news is actually much more like regional or state level news.

Yeah, and a lot of these outlets don't like I've never gone to kxan.com, which is be a local, you know, Austin news site. Yeah, right. Like I don't pull that up to read the news, but I do read a lot of their reporting because it gets passed to me, right? Like I'll see it on Reddit or friends will be texting it around. So the other sort of factor that I think is operating on the news that people don't necessarily think about is, and you mentioned how sort of emotionally laid news tends to spread best,

that the stories are dependent on are they passed from person to person. So, you know, insert complicated concepts does not spread well. You know, insert sad concept doesn't usually, like it tends to be aggravating, frustrating, disappointing, outrageous, tragic, you know, it's the high valence stuff. Totally. Yeah. I like the way that you put it high-veil and stuff, and it's things that are really simple to explain and very emotionally charged.

And with COVID, I think that's one area where you see a lot of misinformation spreading for those exact two reasons, because obviously, COVID and the pandemic is a complicated thing both medically, but also in terms of like, how do we as a society deal with it economically, socially, etc. And if someone can provide a simple answer, like, you know, before the vaccine, whenever someone was talking about hydroxychloroquine and all of the solutions, it's really easy for that stuff to spread on social media where it is unvetted and then unintentionally, you're intentionally gets picked up by a news organization, right? And so the news organization not only takes cues from what's popular and

what's popular in discussion on these platforms, but then they turn it around. And when they produce a new story about it, their hope is that they can kind of jump on that bandwagon and get more traction for the new stories because they're talking about something that is popular, even if it is unverified. Well, and we've gotten to a place where we're sort of so polarizes as society. And there's always certain interest groups

that want either certain things to be true because they believe it, because they're trying to advance some agenda, because they're crazy, whatever it is. So I think this is also where the trading of the chain thing happens where like, okay, let's say there's a certain percent of the population that's been that believes this should be a thing or they believe this viewpoint. Well, they only have to get,

like, let's say there's a thousand local news websites in the United States. They just have to get one to pick it up, right? And then it's relevant to not just the people in Des Moines, Iowa, or Birmingham, Alabama, but then it's like that it was picked up by a local news outlet confirms what they already believed, right? And then it gives them something they can then pass to other people to propagate this view. So in the same way that a marketer goes, okay, I want people to talk about this movie or talk about this product that I have there like I just need one outlet to cover it. There was a great

publicist named Michael Citrick and he was he was saying that every campaign you need a lead steer, right? Like one steer starts this way to play man. And so it's like you basically have this vested interest or this energy get away from the frame here. And so it's like, you basically have this vested interest or this energy that just needs one reporter under however much pressure to write one story for one local news outlet. And then it's off to the races because now, you know, all over the world, the people who are interested in that thing can be sharing it and it drives it to the top of the leader board and then they're posting on it. It becomes this whole thing.

Yes. And I think that's true for a lot of media communication, right? and it drives it to the top of the leaderboard and then they're posting on it. It becomes this whole thing. Yes, and I think that's true for a lot of media communication, right? So for example, you found me through a New York Times article and then you reached out for me to come to this podcast. Yes. And there's a lot of examples of that. Of any time I end up in the news or if I write something for, you know, wired or Fox or something,

because other news organizations or other folks who are in the media are paying attention to that and just, you know, seeing what's up and they might have seen it on Twitter or on Reddit or something. And this is how I end up making a lot of contacts with other folks in the media organization. But it's through very similar processes.

Yes. I wanted to go back to this comment you had earlier about how political our media environment has become, our social environment has become. And I think that that polarization is not just really important for thinking about what information flows where, but it's really important to think about because they are so, a lot of the things that get shared are polarizing towards the other person, right? And so, for example, I think disinformation actors exploit this kind of polarization

all the time by showing, by producing content, for example, that makes the other political group look bad. Yes. So to give you an example, there was a Russian troll that I was following in 2016 named 10 GOP, which is short for Tennessee GOP. They were impersonating. Yeah. Yeah, they were Russian.

They were pretending to be a Tennessee GOP account. And they had found this picture. There was a person in Ohio, his name is Chris McNeil. He's kind of like a shock jock. He focuses mostly on sports. And one of the things he really likes to do is he pretends to take pictures of sports games and that he tells other people that they're actually

political campaigns. And he does this fair number of times. So in a later interview, he made this comment of like, I just put it out there and my followers know I do this all the time. But in this very specific instance, he shared this picture of a Cleveland Cavalier celebration game. And he said that it was a rally for Donald Trump in Phoenix, Arizona. And 10GOP picks up this image and shares it in his own tweet,

saying, you know, this is a picture of the Phoenix rally, but everyone said that, you know, Trump wasn't popular, but here's this empirical image proof. And so this picture, this tweet goes viral. He gets about 100,000 likes within the first couple of days. It gets retweeted by Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump Jr. It gets picked up by some conservative media platforms as an example of pictures and proof that the Phoenix rally was really big.

But then, of course, this, you know, the information comes out that this picture is actually of the Cleveland Cavaliers and not of the Phoenix rally. And it goes through the entire media cycle again, where after it's been reported on, liberal news organizations realize that it's a fake picture, and they start tweeting about how conservatives got duped by this picture, then you see stories coming out from Washington Post, or Huffington Post, talking about how conservatives were duped by this picture

of the Cleveland Cavaliers. And this whole process, no one has realized that it's actually a Russian troll that's been sharing this information. Yeah, I think people sometimes, they don't realize that the aim of the person, it's like the secondary aim of the person might have been to advance a certain political agenda. But the primary aim of the person was just to get attention period and to upset people period. And so in fact, getting it wrong is a mistake, but then debunking it the second time is a mistake because now it's actually giving the person twice than what they thought they

could have gotten and certainly twice more than they they ever deserved. Right. And, you know, as a result of all of this coverage, 10GOP jumped in followers at such a high amount because all of this happened so quickly, right? The tweet coming out going viral, getting debunked, being covered for being debunked is happening in the span of a week. And 10GOP's account name is coming up so frequently that they ended up getting a ton of followers after that whole incident. And so when I think about, you know, how easy is this kind of trading up the chain process, how easy can it be used? It's very, very exploitable now. Yes, and I would say on top of it, the other thing that we talk about less is also it's like every

one of those outlets incidentally exposed how dependent they were on this kind of information and then it makes it easier for that person or other people to do it again and so now yeah let's say some other disinformation person is trying to get something out of the world. They're looking at what accounts were pivotal in kicking that off, and that's who they're targeting with the next soleages photo. Yes, yes, totally. That's who they're, you know, at mentioning

or who they're now pitching to. And I still think pitching is still an important process. Like I think some of this information does come through through social media, but I think pitching is still something that happens especially when you're trying to direct message a journalist. So I think it's less so, you know, in 2011 or 2012, it was probably more popular to use emails. Versus now it's a lot of ad mentioning individual journalists or DMing them or trying to contact them through a social media.

Yeah, they're anonymous tip lines or they're a signal channel. They want, you know, they want to hear what's bubbling up and then they act as if they discovered it. And they never go like, oh, actually, I never stopped to ask, why did this magically appear from three different sources within 10 minutes of each other in my DMs? Yeah, absolutely. And it's really a shame when you think about the like what it does in terms of the quality of information in the media ecology, right? And sometimes

I wonder if these newsrooms realize in producing so much content that's not verified, you're just making the whole ecosystem so much worse. It's a it's a collective action problem for sure. There's there's, you know, there's that up in Sinclair line about how it's very difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. I feel like I talk about this a little bit in trust me online where it's like, you would never, you would never tolerate a journalist owning stock in a company they're reporting about, right? But what happens in this sort of clickbait

universe or the universe where they are largely judged based on the numbers they put up, is that the stock they own is in their own stories, right? And so they don't stop and go, yeah, why is this magic? Why would someone gift me this scoop? You know, sources are inherently self-interested, but you're sort of deliberately blind to that self-interest because it aligns with your self-interest. Well, interest. Yes, it aligns with your interest in getting attention for stories because that's what you depend on now as a journalist, right?

One of the things, one thing I will say is slightly different now compared to maybe about 10 years ago is to me the role of verified accounts and politicians in particular in making something look especially quality, like look as if it's quality information when in fact it's factually incorrect. And so one of the things that journalists look out for, in addition to, does it have a lot of attention, the other thing they paid attention to is who was actually paying attention, right? And so if I tweet something and a well-known

Democrat or Republican retweets it, obviously my own tweet's gonna get much more attention, but now it has the potential for New York Times or CNN or Fox News to see it because it's been retweeted by a prominent politician. And given this kind of verification check, regardless of whether it's accurate or not. And I think that's especially troubling when I look at election fraud discourse or COVID discourse, especially from Republican politicians because some of them have a tendency to share

that information. And I think increasingly, and you saw this with Matt, I think what is it, Matt, and Madison, Cothorne, the Republican Center from North Carolina, South Carolina, but he was saying, I don't see myself as a legislator.

I don't have a legislative staff. I have a comm staff. And so that these, the line between individual and media outlet is also blurred with even fewer of the senses of obligation or ethics or sort of media, they are by definition wholly partisan because they belong to a political party. And so they are seeing, they are acting like they are performing the social function of a media outlet

with none of the constraints or obligations that come with that perhaps even to a larger audience than most media outlets. Oh, absolutely. And then you think about people who are media personalities, like Tucker Carlson, who claims he's not a news organization, but puts out information as having dissemblance of news, right? And so the line between who isn't isn't a quote-unquote media person has become really blurred. And in a lot of situations, they can spread misinformation. So there's two things I want to talk to you about. I'm not sure which one we should start with. blurred and in a lot of situations, they can spread misinformation. So there's two things I want to talk to you about. I'm not sure which one we should start with. Let's start with.

You were mentioning sort of bad misinformation actors or disinformation actors. And they certainly exist. And we saw with the Russian interference and we've seen it. And clearly, like if you're a China, the cost of actually engaging in sort of real sabotage or over violence is very high, but you can. It's so cheap to hire trolls. Exactly.

So cheap to hire trolls. And so it's unquestionable to me that is going on. And I've seen some of it going on and I, you know, in my marketing days, people would approach me to try to participate in said things. So I know that that happens, but it strikes me much more in the last several years.

I don't want to diminish that threat, because it's certainly real. But it does seem like we are, we're almost fighting the last war, where we're just starting to come around to that existing, and now we're at the, I guess what I'm saying is it seems like a lot of the people spreading, let's say, COVID misinformation are not Russian trolls.

They're just people who have been mentally infected with screwed up beliefs, or like you're dealing with people who are genuinely sincere about the information they're spreading, and they're just wrong. Yeah. And so this is a key distinction between disinformation and misinformation, right? So disinformation is content that is intentionally shared that is knowingly false.

So if I shared something on Twitter and I knew that it was false, that would be disinformation. But misinformation typically describes information you share that is false, but you don't know that it was false, that would be disinformation. But misinformation typically describes information you share that is false, but you don't know that it's false. So that could be me sharing some piece of COVID misinformation that I believe is true, but is actually factually incorrect. And I think what we're seeing now is this transition from disinformation really being a concern in 2016 to now that the concern is really more related to misinformation and people really believing this content. And for me, that's a little bit scarier even

because when you really, really believe something, it's hard to refute. And in a lot of situations, when you see people who are trying to combat COVID misinformation, for example, those folks will double down. And instead of, you know, corrective information actually being helpful, it causes the individual who believes in the misinformation

to dig their feet in and really, you know, refute the correcting information. Yeah, that's what I saw when I was doing a trustment of mine. And it's like, sometimes it's like, okay, very clearly this was a marketing message that bottled up that someone did this or a political message. But then oftentimes, like, let's say it was celebrity gossip or some rumor, you like you trace it back and back and back and you go like, oh, this is from a typo or this is from a from a misinterpretation of a thing where somebody

got the date wrong on a photo or and like, oh, wow, the machine, you know, it's like the tail is wagging the dog. Not like in the movie, there's a guy doing it, but like it's like the tale is wagging the dog, not like in the movie there's a guy doing it, but like it's just like, no, the machine is operating under its own power and it takes only the slightest sort of thought or post or whatever from one person to then be all over the place. And I don't know what you do about that. I mean, I think the way that a lot of social media companies have attempted to address this is by really focusing on the content, and not necessarily on the content producer,

which kind of troubles me because it feels like if you're not going to remove the person who's sharing all this misinformation, if you're just going to remove it post by post, then you're still make that person is plenty able to keep resharing bad information, right? And I don't—it's unfortunate because I feel like this is something that social media companies can address this to some extent. But on some level, even if they, for example, get de-platform or something, they get removed from a social media platform. They could just as easily go to a different social media

account, right? And so in some of the QAnon stuff that I study, there was one interview a guy did where he mentioned that he had made upwards of 26 different Facebook accounts. Every time his account gets deleted, he makes a new one, shares the same type of COVID misinformation gets removed, starts a new account and does it all over again.

And so, you know, with practices like that, I think it's really, really hard to figure out a way to actually get rid of this sort of misinformation. And like, what is going on with that person? Like, is that person like, hey, I'm trying to destabilize society? I want people to die of a pandemic, or is it more likely that that person just like is severely convinced that they're doing the right thing?

Yeah. He, he, the, the way in which I've seen it framed in QAnon is that it's framed as a fight for good versus evil, where the person who is sharing this misinformation, they really believe that misinformation, and they believe that it is their obligation as an American and as a citizen to put that information out there, even though big brother or the cabal that they believe in will stop them from doing it. Interesting. Yeah, so there's a Marcus Aurelis quote that I love which he actually said during the Antonin plague

So so it's funny and sort of how his works out, but he said you know He says there's the type of plague that destroys your life and it kills you and then he says and then there's the pestilence that destroys your character Right and it's great quote. I know I know. And it makes me wonder if there were people like that back then. These people who like, because everyone's, so I'll post something given that I know what I've talked about, miss information, let's say, or I'll talk about our responsibility and obligation to each other. And you'll watch people respond and they're so vehement and so intense and so sort of untethered from reality.

I sort of, my reaction has always been like, oh, this, like the person who mailed in that letter that I was talking about, it's like, oh, this person has been infected with something else, not COVID, but they've been infected with something that has taken, it's almost turned a parasite that has turned them into a host organism for life, just putting out, like, shedding whatever they were infected out into the world through as many means as possible. Yes, and that's a really great way of framing it because I do, a lot of people kind of frame it in relations with cults, for example, and sort of brainwashing, but I think that doesn't necessarily capture the way in which this kind of misinformation spreads, right, where you get this misinformation

parasite, and it compels you, right, it frames the world in a way that you become this digital soldier that has to provide this information, this critical information out there. And so, even in a lot of these movements, they very much frame it as you're doing the right thing. And it really encourages you to engage in that kind of shedding process. And I was thinking a little bit about, you know, you were talking about, you know, the importance of social ties and relationships. And I think that's one of the most tragic consequences I've seen of this sort of misinformation parasite is the severing of social ties between individuals.

And there are a lot of situations I think of people who have cut ties with family and friends, especially when we talk about the vaccine and we talk about who hasn't hasn't gotten the vaccine. Yeah, it's, um, do you know about toxoplasmosis, the thing that cats carry? No, I do not. So, so there's a, like pregnant women, for instance, are, you're supposed to be careful about like having a cat that that goes to the bathroom in your house because they carry this, this, um, this, uh, virus or whatever that, that is particularly dangerous to, to pregnant women.

But the way that, as I understand, the way the virus works is cats carry this parasite that, or I don't know if it's a virus or a parasite, but anyways, cats carry it. They give it to mice and it makes mice not scared of cats. So you can see it as, it's like a biological weapon. Like, cats shed this thing and then mice get it and then mice act recklessly and stupidly around cats. So you could see it as it's like a biological weapon. Like, cat shed this thing and then mice get it and then mice act recklessly and stupidly around cats and then cats kill them, right? And it, it, there's something like that in these things where, you know, they're not having a norm, like I have political opinions, I have things, I even have like crazy, not crazy, I have

things that I'm suspicious of, or optical, I don't really all do, but it doesn't consume my life in the way that I would then, you know, trolls, like hound someone on social media or post, like, or find myself storming the capital. Oh yeah. So there's something that it infects and consumes the person to the degree where they're almost, I would argue more dangerous than a paid Russian operative.

Oh, yeah, because they probably doesn't really care. Wait, oh, absolutely. I think it's so different when you really, in your heart and your soul, you really believe it, right? Because it means as a result of that, you might end up breaking social ties with people or engaging in violence of January 6th being a really excellent example. But there was another incident in Texas

of someone recently like pulling a face mask off of a teacher. A teacher, yeah. Yes. And you know, just like how absolutely reckless that is from just like a social standpoint, even if you don't believe in mask mandates and stuff, like that it's incredibly rude behavior. Yeah, you're like a rabid dog.

Like if I like, let's say I believed X, Y, or Z religious garment was sinful, I'm like, that's your problem, right? Like, I'm not going around ripping them off people, unless I've been infected or like made anti-social to some degree by whatever is flowing through my head. Yeah, and I think it is, you know, it becomes especially tragic when we think about those kind of social relationships, family and friends who no longer talk because of the vaccine.

So for example, I'm engaged. I, and for my wedding next year, I expect everyone who can be vaccinated to be vaccinated. Of course. However, my mother-in-law is one of those vaccine skeptical people. And that has caused some just natural tension when we talk about, you know, wedding planning and that sort of thing, because I really want her to get the vaccine. And right now, she's more on the skeptical side of things and not the conspiratorial side

of things, thankfully. Like, she doesn't believe in the microchip stuff. She's just more skeptical of its effectiveness, which I think, you know, those sort of folks are easier to persuade. Those who are vaccine skeptical versus people who are just straight up conspiratorial. But it has caused a lot of strain in our family because she refuses to get vaccinated. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with the subreddit, QAnon casualties.

Yes. So I find that particular subreddit really interesting because of just the kind of stories that emerge and the ways in which this kind of misinformation can not just impact like our national politics or things that are going on politically or socially and public, but also are deeply personal private lives, right?

Like just the idea that you're no longer speaking to individuals because they refuse to get vaccinated. Yeah, it's, it's an interesting question of a friend of mine's wife is sort of a rabid anti-COVID-denier vaccine, denier-messonier. And she posts about it on social media all the time. And we sort of know objectively it's a fringe belief, right? So let's say a thousand people see each one of these posts. You know, 900 of them or 950 of them are all like this is insane. And like 50 are probably like, oh oh you have a good point, right?

Yeah But the weird part about it is like nobody says anything. I don't say anything Nobody says anything because I think we're all I was curious That's what I was gonna ask you is like what is our obligation as individuals? What's my obligation as a person? What do we owe to each other? Yeah? Yeah Or what's my as a content creator like with Daily Stoke? We have a million Instagram followers So we'll post something we I posted that mark is a realist quote that we were talking about Yeah, and it will be you can look at it's

thousands of comments from people who are like This is not true. How could you say this? You know made this quote up marks Realists would never wear a mask. He's not a cuck. All this crazy shit, basically. What is my, I'm curious, what is our obligation? Do you let it sit? Do you have to fight each one?

Do you, it makes me unhappy when I see it. Can I just ignore it? What do you feel like our obligation is as people who are also nodes in this informational ecosystem? Yeah, and that's such a great and hard question, especially when you have such a large audience like that, right? I think just from a human perspective, it'd be really hard for you or a producer to respond

to each and every single comment in a meaningful, effective way. Right? And so I think the trick is picking your battles, which is a lot easier said than done. But for me, folks who are really close to me, I think, are the ones that I try to persuade the most often, like, you know, my future mother-in-law. I think when it comes to a larger audience, it's much harder to respond. And I think when you know that the person is not engaging in genuine deliberative discourse, then it's not worth the effort.

So if someone's calling you a cuck for posting a link or something, you're like, I'm probably not gonna have healthy political conversations with you, there's not really an exchange of ideas or information in a meaningful way because you're coming into that conversation knowing that person isn't genuinely trying to talk to you.

They're just trying to insult you. Yeah, my usual policy is ban or you can restrict accounts that I can't post in your thing anymore, but. Yeah, and I think that's the way to go for a lot of these, especially if they're not engaging in genuine conversation. I think that's what's really hard about social media. Social media is really great for trading up the chain and for getting really polarizing emotionally

late in content to go viral. But it's less good for those nuance conversations unless you're in a private message or something with someone because a lot of social media is so public in nature. If I haven't argued it with someone on Facebook, everyone sees that. And so I'm not just arguing to the person back and forth, but I'm arguing to the person knowing there's an audience that I'm trying to persuade.

I want to make sure that my message or my comment gets more likes or whatever compared to the other person. And I think that that naturally just alters the way in which people talk to one another because it becomes about winning and not so much about exchanging information or persuading someone that this misinformation is incorrect. I did a piece for the New York Daily News about sort of banning these different types of people and the failures of the platforms because To me, there's kind of an analogy to like the bill of goods We've been sold like in regards to recycling

or your carbon footprint where like we as individuals go like it. Am I reusing this bottle? Am I recycling as if that or, you know, we're like, we got to stop using plastic straws. Even though that's like 0.001% of the global pollution, like it's basically like these massive companies that are raping the earth have somehow managed

to flip the obligation. So it's the individual using a microscopic amount of pollution material. Yeah, they're having to think about rationing their activities and pairing down what they're doing. It's almost as if it's a massive distraction from what they're, it's like, should you have to, like, it's like, what are my obligation to my friend's wife when really Facebook, you know, what's the, I think the question is,

what is Facebook's obligation to billions of people? Yes. And, you know, this is something that I think Facebook is only really thinking about in relation to their bottom line, which is incredibly tragic. This is only a concern for Mike Zuckerberg because lots and lots of people have called him out on it. And honestly, I don't know if Facebook will change anything unless they start seeing a lower amount of users

or really significant backlash, which is really tragic when you think about, you know, the potential or the importance of a platform like Facebook in spreading that sort of misinformation. Well, yeah, I think these infected people are very good for business because they care so much more in anyone else. And they post so much more, right?

They share so much more, they post so much more, they're reacting to one another's comments, right? I think this is a really key difference when you join a misinformation community like that, when you believe that Bill Gates has implanted this microchip in the COVID vaccine, and you find a community of people who believe the same things you do,

it's not just that you're posting the content, it's that they're reacting to it, they're responding, they're cheering you on, and all of that looks like activity on social media and on Facebook. And it does well for Facebook in the short sense of, I am getting a lot of people who are really active on these platforms, but at the same time,

it is also spreading a ton of misinformation. My last question for you, and this is a weird thing that I've gone through with the book. So my intention for writing the book was to reveal how some of these things work with the idea that they might be fixed, right, or to bring them to people's attention. So sometimes people, when I, you know, taking COVID very seriously, obviously support vaccines. I've tried to use my platform to talk about these ideas. People will sometimes go, how is you, the person who wrote Trust Me Online, could you possibly believe what the media is telling you about these things? Which is the question I wanted to post to you, which is like when you watch things get traded up the chain

all over the place, like even all the way up to the New York Times or to CNN or to all sorts of media outlets, including this so-called reputable ones, it is an interesting question, how then do we trust, you know, when they say, you know, the election was, there was no fraud in the election, where they say, COVID is real, or they say masks work. There is this, it is a tricky problem, because we are, even people who distrust the media, including myself, from my experiences, or for you having seen the vulnerabilities in the system, we are still dependent on the media to get our information.

Yeah. And I think that's not only is that a hard, important question, but it's true for a lot of aspects of our society, right? Even just thinking about the medical system, like, you know, a lot of people are unhappy with their healthcare system for a lot of reasons. And the healthcare system has not been great to everyone, particularly black and indigenous people of color and minorities.

And they've gotten so many things wrong and they've lied about it when they've gotten wrong. Like that's a, yeah, you can't dispute that. Yeah, and yet, it makes sense to me that as a result of that, folks are skeptical of the vaccine, right? And I think that ends up becoming a potential funnel for conspiratorial thoughts and that sort of thing.

But going back to the question that you had, how do we balance that? I think it's not, for me, it's not a matter of trusting media outright, but situating media information in relation to all of the other information and ecosystem. So to use COVID as an example, I think news media, there's only so much that news media organizations can do when they're writing stories about COVID because there's only so much space that you can put into a news article, right? Even if you have hundreds of news articles. So for me, knowing that it's medical information, I try to rely on a combination of news organizations, information and information from medical associations,

for example. And my hope is that if I'm triangulating information, it is an improved quality. But of course, I still do all of that with many, many grains of salt. Yeah, no, it's hard because I think that's what's so insidious about that, do your own research phrase. Because that is what you should be doing,

but I don't think some people actually know what research entails. Yeah, and I think what's really tricky about that, especially for anyone, is just how time consuming it is. In the past, when we had fewer social media, or we had fewer platforms, media platforms in general, there's not as much content for a person to have to sift and window through. Now that being said, that means you have to put a lot

of trust in the media organizations that are producing the information. And there are issues related to that. But now I think we're seeing a total different flip side where in the past, the Onus was on the media organization to be trustworthy. Now the Onus was on the media organization to be trustworthy. Now, the onus is on the audience to make sure that we are constantly verifying

that information. And it's exhausting. It's really, really exhausting. I think it was one of your previous podcast episodes where you were talking about your media consumption and the fact that you don't necessarily do that much breaking news, but you try to follow along stories that are kind of longer or kind of after, right? Yeah.

And I think those kind of practices are really, really useful. And I will probably actually take some of that advice into account because I consume way too much news and way too much social media. But in doing so, you get a lot of fatigue, right? You get fatigue from the influx of information and it makes it even harder to verify that information. Well, I think you want to, it's like, read John Barry's The Great Influenza to understand what's happening today as opposed to reading Alex Berencens nonsense tweets about it, right? Like who, you want to study the past to help you understand the future. I think, you know, sometimes people go like, you know, Ryan, you wrote this book about fake news.

How could you believe the fake news about Donald Trump? And I think it's like, well, I'm actually not believing the fake news about Donald Trump. I'm reading his direct quoted words. Right? Like, it's so, it's like the media can be very biased and very incorrect and be vulnerable in all these ways that it could have fixed by now that it doesn't for largely financial, as opposed to ideological reasons, and still be correct on certain things that are demonstrable and verifiable that you can check for yourself. Absolutely, and I think that's what, like when we talk about folks not necessarily

realizing what doing the research means, to me, a really important aspect of doing the research is going straight to the source, right? And if you're going to have a, if you're going to consume some news article about a new policy or election fraud or whatever, going to the source and seeing what election official said and what they reported is really, really essential, I think, in doing your research. And when the source is not your friend's cousin's partner who is in the FBI or the CDC or something. It's actual direct interaction with people who know what they're talking about.

Yes. And one of the things that I do feel like, for me, I've seen a lot when folks are talking about misinformation, especially misinformation that trades up the chain. I'm always super skeptical of anything that is kind of conspiratorial language, like anything that says, you know, this larger body is doing something terrible.

And I think with a lot of information, it's very easy for something to turn from skepticism into conspiracy. And so when folks are talking about doing the research, I always try to steer them away from that skepticism conspiracy, link and move them in more of a different direction. Because usually, once you start getting into that conspiratorial belief structure, that's where things really, you know, hits the fan.

When I think asking, like, what is the agenda? Cicero said, a Cui Bono, like, who benefits, right? That's the question that you ask. And so it's like, when you're reading an article from an emergency room doctor in Alabama, who's not in the media, who's not a reporter, who's not a public person, it's very obvious why that they would have little to no agenda here,

and that they are giving you, they're not even giving you political view, but they're just trying to give you the facts on the ground. We contrast this with the number one spreader of COVID misinformation this guy in Florida. It's like, this is like a quack doctor with no patients who sells expensive products on the internet to his email list.

Like, you know, you should be able to decide vet sources accordingly. But I think that's one of the things I realize is like, oh, what we're talking about, this is actually like, we used to think the digital divide was access to information, not access to information. I think it's the set of skills that allow you to navigate an overwhelming amount of information and make sense of it. A lot of people don't have the skills or time to do that.

A lady down the street who refused to get the vaccine, she died, she ran a small food truck here. And like her last words were like, please, everyone give vaccinated. But I think about like, she's sitting in a food truck all day, you know, making tacos, she doesn't have the time to dick around checking stories against each other, nor was she given the skills that you and I were treating university

to have. Absolutely. And that media literacy, I feel, is becoming a really, really essential skill set that every citizen needs to have. And yet, the places and people who would be able to teach media literacy, libraries, schools are becoming increasingly inaccessible. They're losing a lot of funding. And it's really unfortunate because those are the skills I feel are really necessary to do

that sort of sifting and winnowing of information, or to ask the really important questions like, you know, what is a person get by sharing this information? And the example that you provided, I think, is really stellar because for me, anytime someone is hawking or selling something, that signals to me the intent is not about providing genuine information. Alex Jones being a great example of that. No, of course, although it's funny people with me, oh, you're just saying this to like make money. It's like, I don't think you understand. By pissing you off, it's costing me money. Money.

Yeah. So you should also, yeah, when you go, does the person benefit from saying this or is by saying it, you know, is it actually like, you can, it's a counter signal that you can trust it more because it's not in there itself. And just although to go to what we're talking about with misinformation, it also could be that the person is now been red-pilled or, you know, their mind is so screwed

up that they've, you know, like now, now they are actively, they're actively contrary to their interests and it's so hard to tell. It is. And I think that's especially hard when you think about social media content, especially the stuff that's super unverifiable. So some of the type of stuff that I see often go viral are things like, here's a picture of someone getting sick because of the vaccine and nobody will share this, right?

And there's both the kind of really salient image and then this kind of text, this message. No one will share it, be a patriot and share it or something like that. And that sort of information is really hard to engage in that verification process. Like how do you find the people who originally shared that picture?

And it's been shared and manipulated so many times. It's probably quite tricky to find. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, I do think media literacy is the next thing. There was something, some country that's right next to Russia. I forget which country it was. Finland, maybe they were talking about like all kids for decades have been taught media literacy because they've so been worried about the threat of misinformation from emanating from the Soviet Union and now Russia, that it's just part of the lifestyle. I think that's what we're going to have to get as a society.

I mean, I would love that. I think Finland is the state that they do media literacy also from a very young age, which I think is really essential. Like, you know, if you're teaching media literacy to someone who's in their 40s or 50s, you have to really engage in an unlearning and learning process, right? Like undoing the habits that you developed for information gathering and then rebuilding new habits. Whereas if you're starting from primary school or elementary school, you're really teaching them as they are growing up and starting to consume information in the real world. And I think the earlier that we start, the better it is. No, that's right.

I think you're talking about your mother-in-law. I think about my own parents. I kind of sometimes, it's too late for them, you know? And let's just focus on the next generation, sadly. Absolutely. Well, and we know that a lot of misinformation actors and conspiracy theorists do also target children, right? They, my mother-in-law has a lot of children that she interacts with, you know, her grandkids and things like that. And you know, what I

think about those audiences or anything about those kids, I my hope my greatest hope for them is that they gain the media literacy skills to question that. But I don't know if they're necessarily getting that from people who have misinformation in their lives. No, I think that is the alarming thing. Welcome to Austin. I'm out in Bastrop, so not far from you. Oh, cool. Do you?

So this is actually my first time living in the South. Do you have any tips or suggestions? I have. I like, you mean about how to live in the South or things to do in the South? More the former, both in terms of, you know, so I'm originally from New York City and then I did my PhD in Wisconsin, which is where I met my fiancee. Yeah. This is both of our first times really living in the South and dealing with the weather

and, you know, living in a southern state and all of the kind of political implications. Not bad. Yes. Have you been here for a full year or is this you get here for the summer? So we came in, this is actually our full year as of this week. So we moved around this time in 2020. So we've lived in Austin for a year, but it's been all under the pandemic, right? And so we haven't actually seen anything or we haven't really explored Texas or even Austin really. Well, and Austin is the south, but it's sort of the functional south. So

you know, like, like I'm from California, so I moved to New Orleans. That was my first southern city. And when I was when I was writing my first book actually, and it was wonderful, but we sort of wanted a place that was also functional, like where people had jobs and, you know, like, worked at big companies and there was a IKEA and stuff, you know, like we wanted like actual life. So we sort of split the difference in Found Austin. So this is a nice place to get your feet wet for the South because it's got a lot of the wonderful parts of the South with fewer of the crazy parts of the South. Yeah, no, absolutely. And then of course, I saw I'm an Asian woman. Yes. One of the really interesting things I think about moving too often and moving to the South was just

how few Asian Americans that are, or at least like, you know, I originally came here thinking there weren't that many, but I feel like with the increasing number of folks who are transplanting to Austin, that number is potentially growing. It's strange how siloed Texas is like Houston's, like I think the most diversity in America,

and then I would venture to guess that Austin is one of the, Austin is not only not super diverse, but it's also very segregated, not just from original segregation, but just it seems very siloed and it's hard to know if there are more people like you, whatever you are. It's hard to know where those people are necessarily. Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't realize how segregated the city was until, you know, we actually moved here.

And I realized like a lot of that segregation is access to highways and that sort of thing. And that was, you know, New York has certainly some segregated portions, but not to the degree that I felt it was here in Austin. Yeah, you're just all up on I felt it was here in Austin. Yeah, you're you're just all up on top of each other in different things. And then I think and in Texas, especially you're like, we're all inside our cars. So you're not really even even though you are intermingling, you're intermingling on a five lane highway. So you're not actually getting the sense that you're in a sea of diverse people. Well, and especially I realize now, and you know, being in the summer, the reason why everyone's

in their cars, because it's just too darn hot outside. That is that is very true. And I've got to imagine with the campus only sort of being partially like this isn't this isn't sort of full-blown college town Austin that you've experienced, which is more diverse and welcoming and causing the quality. And I feel like. Yes, and it is, you know, we're actually about to start our new semester this next week. And I really want to see what that culture is like

when everyone is together, but I'm also really anxious because, you know, living in Texas, there are no mask mandates or vaccine mandates. And so I think the rollout in terms of, you know, how is the university going to address COVID while still trying to create this semblance of a college environment is going to be really tricky. Well, so I live out more in the country than you do. And it's wonderful. And I've sort of people go, so what does it like? And it's I sort of go, the nice part is you can do whatever you want. The

not nice part is that everyone can do whatever they want. And you realize that we have very divergent senses of what the right thing is and what like what this I mean, I think what Texas is struggling with and you were just alluding to is is that we seem to have a very poor understanding of what the word freedom is or we have a perverse understanding of what the word freedom means. Yes, that's a really good way to frame it. I think the the concept of freedom it hasn't just been perverse but has been exploited and manipulated, right, so that it means different things to different people. And it's a little unfortunate because

I feel like, you know, one of the things that has become separate is this concept of freedom and caring for one another, right? And this idea that they can be kind of diametrically opposed, it's very, you know, it's quite tragic, particularly in Texas, especially given the rising rates with the Delta variant. Well, and it's profoundly disingenuous, right? So the governor will say stuff like, you know, the way through this virus is through personal responsibility. And you're like, totally agree that it's obviously

the way through it. And so you're like, if that's where the sentence stopped, you know, or the statement stopped, if it was like, hey, everyone is responsible for doing their part to stop this virus, you'd be like, great. But then the set, Texas seems to have, again, perverted this idea of freedom, where it's like,

it's about personal responsibility, not mandates. And then, out of the other side of their mouth, or the second half of the sentence is, by the way, you don't actually have any responsibility, and don't have to do anything that you don't want to do, which is of course not what the word, not what personal responsibility means. So it's like if you're saying, hey, vaccines are a personal choice, mass are a personal choice. But I expect each and every one of you to make the personally responsible choice, at least that's a coherent policy that's logically consistent as opposed to, you know, this is about freedom and responsibility

and by the way, you're free to do whatever you want and you have no responsibility. Yes, exactly. And I think that that's the distinction right between freedom and responsibility and what does responsibility actually mean. Because being responsible means you should be wearing a mask and you should be getting vaccinated, but especially given this year amount of misinformation out there about the vaccine, the message coming from the governor and from a lot of politicians here in Texas

has been really troubling. Well, I'm so glad we got to talk. Please keep up the very important work. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. My newest book, Courage is Calling Fortune Favors the Brave, is now available for pre-order. We've got a bunch of amazing bonuses. You can get signed copies, of course. I'm so proud of this book. General Jim Mattis is called a superb handbook for crafting

a purposeful life. Matthew McConaughey, a father called it an urgent call to arms to each and all of us. I do hope you check it out. It's my first in the four virtue series Courage Temperance Justice Wisdom. Courage is calling Fortune favors the brave. If you want to pre-order it, I'd really appreciate your support. Go to dailystoic.com slash preorder. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoic early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with

Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. and listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.