Episodes
Saturday May 09, 2020
#79 - Stories, Hope, and The Propaganda Paradox
Saturday May 09, 2020
Saturday May 09, 2020
Adventures in leaving the house after 5-weeks, a quick review of the crappy Vaporesso Target PM-80, populism and the supposed "wisdom" of the bewildered herd, belief and truth are mutually exclusive, atheists: leave the non-phallus swinging faithful alone, the crucial crusading distinction between religious & ideological zealots, and why the simple human need for hope probably makes us powerless against tasty propaganda.
--More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.toddzillax.com
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Wednesday Apr 29, 2020
#78 - Social Media Disease: A Cacophony of Nothing
Wednesday Apr 29, 2020
Wednesday Apr 29, 2020
Todd's merciful Bat Plague boycott continues with more spiritually uplifting content like: "F**k Subaru. I hate them and you should, too." Also, 2020's Jill Stein; Steinbeck, Salinas, and digital detox; social media "should" be regulated like radio; data overload is killing democracy; the Wisdom of the People™ doesn't exist therefore populism is pandering to a screeching herd; and rejoice! The Devil's all up in ya! Can you feel him?
--More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.toddzillax.com
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Friday Apr 24, 2020
#75 - Seekers, Preachers, The Covid Reality Wars
Friday Apr 24, 2020
Friday Apr 24, 2020
Toddzilla delivers his overdue Message of Hope™ featuring topics like strutting stupidity, social media's performance addiction, Hobbes' inevitable civil war, the need for propaganda, and releasing our infected cattle back into the bewildered herd. Book your children's party now! Use promo code "Leviathan Rising" to get 50% off!
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Saturday Mar 28, 2020
#74 - Detroit, Intellectual Distancing, The Glowing Antichrist
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
Can Detroit and rural Michigan bear what they say is coming? Social distancing as an apt metaphor and how it can be useful. A crisis instinctively prods a frightened herd into a closed-tribe psychology, which is nationalism. How data overload contributes to it and helps obliterate the utopian Brotherhood of Man mythology. Why many quietly want Trump to fail, whether they admit it or not.
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Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
#73 - Incompetent Negligence and Economic Eugenics
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Sacrifice yourselves at Mammon's Altar, proles! As coronavirus cases spike, your president holds a FOX News rally, decides the public health experts are wrong, and that the social distancing guidelines are "too extreme." Re-election trumps public health. Criminal negligence, the Dennis Doctrine, and our vulnerable healthcare workers. Where's Fauci? We're history's lab rats.
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Monday Mar 02, 2020
#67 - Propaganda, Trust, Coronavirus, and You
Monday Mar 02, 2020
Monday Mar 02, 2020
How will the for-profit boutique/reality show/agitation news media model affect how we respond to the virus? Have a drink. Make sure it's not bleach. Includes a quick introduction to Matt Taibbi's book Hate Inc. and material from Your Undivided Attention on the reality apathy and the abandonment of trust in public institutions and each other.
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
Rachel Botsman's Book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541762703/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Your Undivided Attention: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
#66 - Authentic Courage vs. Crying With The Pack
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
"God will not have his work made manifest by cowards." Genuine courage is required to stand apart against the deafening conformity of the cowardly mob. Ask Andrew Sullivan! People are inherently tyrannical. Shared secular delusions: our 21st century religions. God needs the devil; Sapiens need an enemy. Lippmann, the fragility of free speech, and democracy's Achilles Heel: an ignorant "public."
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
https://toddzillax.substack.com
https://www.twitch.tv/toddzillax
https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Music by Yellow Pills! https://open.spotify.com/artist/7rDvBzvGcNPV3BYZ1n5VdZ
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
#65 - Conform Or Be Cast Out
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Social validation & conformity: the evolutionary default setting. Why choosing intellectual autonomy over the herd is nearly impossible. Also, standing apart in self-reliance, the drifter, and mending holes in the firewall.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
https://toddzillax.substack.com
https://www.twitch.tv/toddzillax
https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Music by Yellow Pills! https://open.spotify.com/artist/7rDvBzvGcNPV3BYZ1n5VdZ
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
#61 - Unimpressed Sobriety & Sanity’s Touchstone
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
Toddzilla's latest Message of Hope formally introduces the loyal listener to Mr. Lippmann: a Man of the People! Touched on are Lippmann's "The Phantom Public", his iconoclastic thoughts on technologically pre-historic data overload, emotional detachment, objective reality, the presumed wisdom of We the People™, and democracy's fate. Have a drink first. Also, institutions and trust are dead, less-not-more is the answer, a defense of the "elites", a need for collective humility, and generalists vs. specialists.
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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
#58 - Independent Thought vs. The Need to Belong
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
The next great war: intellectual autonomy. The bold certainty of the herd, the challenges of independent thought and why seeing someone who is genuinely their own Man is so rare, the media has supplanted the church, disengaging from the ideological Holy War in favor of political atheism, and Toddzilla's Paradox: the conflict between intellectual independence and the desperate human need to belong. Still available for children's parties! Now doing bat mitzvahs!
ALSO:
- A quick impeachment fart
- You want an authoritarian
- Political Vampires
- Algorithms, Lippmann, Bernays, and You
- Silver Spoons: A Hate Crime
- The filthy Centrus Americanus
- Friendship: Loyalty & Support vs. Honesty
- Nothing can be done about climate change
- Data Overload revisited
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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
#50 - Agitational Dysfunction & Revolutionary Hatred
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
An introduction to LeBon, his ideas on mobs, and The Psychology of Revolution--specifically: hatred. The forthcoming electoral reality show, 2020's prepared script, how the spinoffs will be cast, and what happens when our Matrix Avatar Superheroes stumble into the Desert of the Real.
ALSO:
- Unrealistic expectations inside the steaming pile of Twitter
- Was it your childhood dream to be Saul Goodman?
- More on pseudo-environments and internal narratives
- Fcuk Twitter. (Not a big part of the episode. Just felt like saying it.)
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Friday Sep 27, 2019
#49 - Propaganda Blindspots & The Constituent Mob
Friday Sep 27, 2019
Friday Sep 27, 2019
Institutions fail and democracy descends into mob rule when representative are paralyzed and terrorized by fear of their voters. Trump, Ukraine, and 2020's year-long electoral reality show disguised as an idealistic impeachment. Informational sectarianism and how it's easy to see "their" propaganda. Yours? Never! Their demagogue is your savior. There may be a way for a detaching informational unicorn treat that. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper; when everything is spin and propaganda, who's a political infidel supposed to believe?
Also:
- Alternate Informational Universes
- Half-assed media sophistication: not enough
- Why can't we watch the opposition's media without going nuts?
- Our dueling scandals aren't automatically mutually exclusive
- More on the the Current Events Man
- Media isn't free. You are the product being sold.
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* Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Thursday Sep 26, 2019
#48 - The Internal Narrative Trojan Horse
Thursday Sep 26, 2019
Thursday Sep 26, 2019
"The fiction is taken as truth because the fiction is badly needed." A quick introduction to Walter Lippmann and the commonality between him, Ellul, Bernays, Haidt, and Harari. People can't personally perceive the world beyond their own sliver of firsthand experience. Therefore, the Current Events Man is beholden, dependent upon, and therefore exploited by the propagandist and his digital distortions. If democracy is demands an "enlightened citizenry", it's likely doomed from the start. Paradoxically, there's a stab at some hope in here too. Weird.
ALSO:
- Te Nosce, bitches
- Competing Scandals; Competing Networks; Competing Narratives
- Smoking, Facebook, and associative dopamine addiction.
- The Matrix and the Internet
- The responsibility and danger of exposing "their" delusion
- All Cats Meow
- Why we believe the ridiculous
- Finding hope in human imperfection
- More on likability and art
- The Hobgoblin
- Where the hell is Jill Stein? #NeverForget
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
#46 - Newton's Third Law of Totalitarian Messiahs
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
Agitation propaganda doing its work, speechcrime taking root in the form of virtual media mobs enforcing cancel culture and its point-of-view authoritarianism, the Wokeflake Messiah will arrive soon, Newton's Third Law of Extremism, slave's spirituals and frightened children scrambling to the ideological church to be soothed by visions of a future Heaven on Earth.
ALSO:
- Toxic Compromise
- The Election Won't Matter
- At all.
- Wokeflakes Becoming Trump
- We The Authoritarian People
*The Propaganda and Social Media Disease theme resumes soon. It's a good time to catch up on what you may have missed.*
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
#45 - Iceberg Ahoy! Validation Junkies & The Chosen Ones
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
Social validation, dopamine, and social media's Walter White; the predictably ridiculous reaction to Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special and how comedy has evolved from truth telling to Wokeflake proselytizing; more on how people are more willing and eager than deceived when it comes to swallowing fiction and disinformation; choking on data leading to confused gullibility; honestly in a crisis; Sausage Party Hope: children demanding their happy ending. Where's the spring of genuine hope?
ALSO:
- The Battle of the 21st Century
- The iceberg bobbing off our bow
- Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube: Walter White cutting his meth supply?
- Pinker's Utopian vs. Tragic Vision
- Evolution and self-awareness
- The apocalypse and its "chosen ones"
- Progress's Myth and becoming organic
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Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
#43 - Monetized Agitation, Unleashing Hatred, Poking Crackerbears
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
Wednesday Aug 28, 2019
This quick primer episode is the uncomfortable preface to Jacques Ellul's agitation propaganda. I explore how our Matrix Avatars themselves act as agitation propaganda and the way the informational cyber-swamp has actually managed to monetize it. Also Ellul on the dangerous effects of suppressing innate drives and human nature, the Ideology of Happiness, the universal violent human instinct, the devastating effects of dissolving human domestication to unleash and exploit primal hatred, and the self-defeating ignorance of poking the hibernating Crackerbear.
When it's done, to quote William Munny, "Have a drink, kid."
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Saturday Aug 17, 2019
#41 - Propaganda: Drunks In Denial
Saturday Aug 17, 2019
Saturday Aug 17, 2019
On Ellul's "The Need For Propaganda." We've both developed a tolerance for and a psychological dependency on propaganda's certainty-stoking, justifying, and and self-worth generating narratives, social media is a propagandist's dream, desensitization and an increasing desire for the excitement felt from being immersed in the constant, and necessary stream of propaganda, how our addiction has allowed both traditional media and social media "influencers" to monetize the Outrage Industrial Complex, our role as retained ideological attorneys, and wishful thinking (and possibly disastrous effects) of suddenly eliminating 320-million people's propaganda narratives. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Grab a sammich for this one. And maybe a stiff drink. Hey! I never said this would be easy!
ALSO:
- This is a triage situation; not a search for the "cure"
- Disinformation bit me again!
- Why we won't quit the informational drug
- A possible path to empathy
- The culture war is a War of Narratives
- Chosen perspective becomes "personal truth"
- Provoking shame as a "debate" tool: a boomerang
- Social media "influencers": personal brands hocking a product while posing as "journalists"
- The IDW: agitation propaganda
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Thursday Aug 15, 2019
#40 - Propaganda: Righteousness & Simplicity
Thursday Aug 15, 2019
Thursday Aug 15, 2019
The Propaganda opus resumes with Ellul's take on psychic "dissociation". Includes more on wordknapping, how righteous and simplistic propaganda narratives silence the self and numb natural cognitive dissonance, replacing reality with the electronic eyes of the "verbal universe", the effects of disconnecting a person's personal opinion in favor of an acceptable "public" opinion, and how opposing propagandas affect the target.
ALSO:
- Democratic Socialists: as ridiculous during Occupy as at their "convention"
- Aligned, Premeditated, and Secret Consciences: Individuality and Haidt's Elephant
- Disconnecting thought & action
- Opposing propagandas: political abstention or fanaticism?
- The IDW: Agitation Propaganda
- Data Overload and the Defective Human Mind
- Your congenial host and the Ideological Riptide
- No one's immune. Not even you.
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Thursday Aug 08, 2019
#38 - Informational Anarchy & Deadly Insignificance
Thursday Aug 08, 2019
Thursday Aug 08, 2019
After more shootings, Chris & Rich rejoin the show to discuss our "news" (propaganda) consumption, and the predictably tribal response. We're malleable psychological adolescents and clearly unprepared for this informational responsibility. Also, the same recycled arguments with a few new propaganda twists, did you know the Dayton killer was a self-proclaimed Leftist? Is it coincidence that most "news" coverage is in El Paso? Remote rhetorical assaults and the usefulness of "physical accountability": smacking bullies in the snout.
ALSO:
- "Can I believe this" vs "Must I believe this"
- Snorting pacifists: lambs to the wolves
- Arya Stark: she was fiction.
- "Educated Intellectuals" aren't immune to propaganda; maybe more vulnerable
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Tuesday Aug 06, 2019
#37 - Propaganda: Intellectual Autonomy & Banishing Fabricants
Tuesday Aug 06, 2019
Tuesday Aug 06, 2019
How propaganda acts as an informational virus to destroy critical thought and alienate the person from himself. More on data overload, the uninformed Current Events Man knowing a little about everything and a lot about nothing, mistaking feelings for thought, having to accept or reject an entire doctrine in total, losing intellectual autonomy, and how artificial tensions are often accompanied by dubious solutions.
ALSO:
- Artificial solutions to real needs
- Real solutions to artificial needs
- "Influencers", their product, and their Patreon
- The Tribal Dance of Rhetorical Fuckery
- We're a species of sleazy lawyers and pathological liars
- Self-stereotyping caricatures
- It's fine to generalize then exile sectarian fabricants
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Friday Aug 02, 2019
#36 - Propaganda: Rationalization & The Religious Mind
Friday Aug 02, 2019
Friday Aug 02, 2019
The conclusion of Ellul's "Psychological Crystallization" featuring the makeup of its slogans & how they're used to replace thought. Also, collective belief and obsessions, self-justification/rationalizations and how they spawn the self-righteous Puritan, the closing of the crystallized mind, propaganda's religious personality, and the bizarre media phenomenon: monetizing your mind rape.
ALSO:
- Marianne Williamson: The New Trump?
- Introducing the father of American propaganda: Edward Bernays
- They know you better than you know yourself
- Propaganda's side-effects and how they mirror the '60's definition of "neurosis"
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Thursday Aug 01, 2019
#35 - Propaganda: Inseminating Zealots & Vicarious Atonement
Thursday Aug 01, 2019
Thursday Aug 01, 2019
Begins with a takedown of "white privilege", self-flagellation vs. self-interest, and the asinine/futile demands of our Social Vengeance Warriors; beware the boomerang, Moonbeam. From there, I move on to Ellul's dissection of how propaganda hijacks the political cultist's mind. The first of two parts, this episode focusses on the distinction between doctrine and critical though as well as homogenous thought, codifying social, political, and moral standards, exploiting latent pre-existing prejudices, and the power of implanted stereotypes & symbols used as triggering mechanisms. The elephant is strong in this one!
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
Tuesday Jul 30, 2019
#34 - Propaganda: Manufacturing Proselytes & Militants
Tuesday Jul 30, 2019
Tuesday Jul 30, 2019
Propaganda isn't what you may think. Ellul's ideas on pre-propaganda, propaganda's conditioned reflexes, myths, and "orthopraxy". Including the triggering of active and passive action (activists, influencers, collaborators), widespread participation by "committed" zealots, the separation between thought and action, exploiting the abyss between what we say and what we do, mobilizing men for action counter to their own values, and being unable to reverse ourselves once "action" has begun.
ALSO:
- Exiling naked sectarians
- Agitation and organization
- How the Internet rejuvenates and revives conditioned reflexes
- Technology indoctrinates us much faster than before
- Presuppositions, stereotypes, and political education disguised as universities
- Mind-hacking thru a broken firewall
- Seizing your intellectual autonomy
- Excommunication is painful. But Necessary.
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com
Sunday Jul 28, 2019
#33 - Propaganda's Mindcrime
Sunday Jul 28, 2019
Sunday Jul 28, 2019
More on agitation propaganda and the psychological effects of propaganda including: loss of individuality, suppression of critical thought, creation of the mob and how critical thought is literally impossible as part of a group, the creation of a fanatically self-righteous social "conscious" leading to the demonization of the out-group, and more on the sphere of the sacred. Then, how propaganda partitions society (identity politics) via verbal fiction creating sects of victims who only speak "to themselves."
Also:
- Propaganda's only heard by its choir creating alternate factual universes: The Echo Chamber
- Manchurian activists primed for provoked outrage & action: Marionettes
- The creation of an abstract verbal universe: Personal Realities spun from Collective Narratives & "fake news"
- Sacrificing self-dignity to "the cause" and the danger of surrendering to "something bigger than yourself"
- Stereophonic propaganda
- Reclaiming individuality by removing your dog from the fight: Privatized Detachment
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Thursday Jul 25, 2019
#32 - Spinning Mueller & The Sacred Cows
Thursday Jul 25, 2019
Thursday Jul 25, 2019
Congressional grandstanding for the cameras, Mueller's testimony: viewed and spun in parallel universes, deciding whether to read the report, voting your own self-interest (Yes! Do it!), the Current Events Man, asking the right questions, when boutique news becomes fatal, and the sacred Golden Calves.
Also:
- Leaving the mob
- Evolution lurks
- Mythology and the Devil within
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Wednesday Jul 17, 2019
#29 - Guidance Is Internal
Wednesday Jul 17, 2019
Wednesday Jul 17, 2019
Chris & Rich sit in on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. We discuss the achievement, the courage of those undertaking it, and how subsequent generations were cheated of their signature crowning moment in history.
ALSO:
-Data overload, informational suffocation, and how the compulsive "current events man" is actually less informed.
-Are we "really" evolving?
-Patriotic appreciation vs. copycat anti-Americanism
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