Episodes
Monday Oct 12, 2020
#91 - The Whitmer Plot, Michigan's Militias, Socialism's Facade
Monday Oct 12, 2020
Monday Oct 12, 2020
Brian rejoins Todd just in time to discuss the plot to kidnap our governor, Michigan's militias, the psychology of extremism, and the ongoing destruction of social and governmental norms. What are these groups fighting against and do they have a legitimate point buried beneath their theatrics? Is socialism a cult destined to lead to disillusionment and a totalitarian state whose main purpose is maintaining the utopian illusion? We also discuss data overload, Manchurian Propagandists, as well as free speech and the responsibility that comes with it; when does free speech become destructive? Can we tell the difference between propaganda and information? Has propaganda become so ubiquitous that it's actually replaced objective fact without us realizing it?
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MORE: https://www.escapingthecave.com
MUSIC: The Limbos & Paul Vernon
RE20
Monday Sep 21, 2020
#88 - Steinbeck, Murrow, and The Social Media Disease
Monday Sep 21, 2020
Monday Sep 21, 2020
Continuing the Social Dilemma theme, Todd and Brian delve further into the social, psychological, and personal effects of more than a decade of social media, including meeting members of their direct families for the first time directly via Facebook. Also, Todd's argument against monetization, digital reunions and the bizarre new expectation that, somehow, everyone from every epoch of our lives now deserves a seat at our virtual table. We also discuss the failed utopian vision of "informational democracy" and the essential nature of gatekeeper, learning how to both use these platforms as tools and sabotage the Zuckorithm, as well as possible macro and micro solutions. Is this a triage situation? The show closes with a surprise appearance by Edward R. Murrow and why informational anarchy and intellectual autonomy, not climate change, is the crisis of our time.
Murrow's Text: https://www.rtdna.org/content/edward_r_murrow_s_1958_wires_lights_in_a_box_speech
More Zilla: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Music: Paul Vernon
Monday Sep 14, 2020
#87 - The Social Dilemma: War of the Virtual Worlds
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Todd and Brian discuss The Social Dilemma, the new Netflix documentary probing the exploitative, corrosive, and polarizing effects of social media, both psychologically and socially. Also, the addictive nature of the medium, how it manipulates evolutionary psychology, the potentially dangerous side effects of performance withdrawal and how, once you escape, you become an organic organism in a digital ecosystem. We also tinker with solutions and discuss the horrific dystopia awaiting us if we fail to find them. Hint 1: It's the people. Hint 2: The tube: it's social media and Google!
Like it? Tell a friend! Even on Facebook! Book your seat on Toddzilla's 2021 Motivational Speaking Tour now! My world famous children's parties are 50% off for a limited time!
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
Friday Sep 11, 2020
#86 - The Illusion of Knowledge & Democratized Opinion 2.0
Friday Sep 11, 2020
Friday Sep 11, 2020
Are we creating the democratic utopia many naively envisioned at the Internet's birth? Or, are we descending into hell on Earth unleashed by informational anarchy and the freed, and anonymous, human beast? A prelude to my deep dive into Ellul's Propaganda, this episode begins with a description of the DIKW pyramid then moves on to how Plato's Illusion of Knowledge fable applies to the digital Matrix dominated by Social Media, Google, and ostentatious sophists posing as "influencers."
Also: a discussion ofDr. Elias Aboujaoude's stellar book Virtually You and a one-sided examination of the God-Devil duality lurking inside each of us. Like it? Share it!
The Social Dilemma: watch It! https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
Dr. Eli: http://www.eliasaboujaoude.com
His book: https://www.amazon.com/Virtually-You-Dangerous-Powers-Personality/dp/0393340546
For the masochist: www.escapingthecave.com
Friday Jun 19, 2020
#83 - Discourse? Or Just Waiting To Talk?
Friday Jun 19, 2020
Friday Jun 19, 2020
On the Social Media Disease: how exhibitionist combat and agitprop disguised as "debate" is having an effect on verbal comprehension and the ability to engage in meaningful organic conversations. Also, demagogues exploit and thrive on chaos, boycotting the for-profit Media Division Complex in favor of each other, and the switch: it's internal. It's still the people. Like it? Share it!
More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.facebook.com/escapingthecave
Thursday Jun 18, 2020
#82 - A "Real Conversation"? Allow Me to Retort...
Thursday Jun 18, 2020
Thursday Jun 18, 2020
You say you want a real Great Racial Awakening™ dialogue? Great! Quit proselytizing long enough to take a stiff drink and have a listen. Remember: when you clicked you asked.
Also: supporting lockdown protests and the 2A while mocking militia stalkers at the capitol, burning heretics and blasphemers at the free speech stake, influencers exploiting and monetizing catastrophe and chaos, electoral Ground Hog Day, and why Biden's VP choice is maybe more important than anything. Like it? Share it!
More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.facebook.com/escapingthecave.com
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
#81 - Activist Media, Dogma as God, Marrow of Humanity
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
When the entire media's just abandoned their "objective" pretenses, where do you go? Also, digital detox and cutting the incoming noise, homogenous consistency of thought throughout a congregation qualifies as "religion", retained ideological attorneys, the difference between organic human beings and their virtual online projections, and the Marrow of Humanity: who we are when no one's looking. Don't worry. I'll get to the protests, riots, and thought-purges soon enough. Prepare yourselves accordingly!
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More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.facebook.com/EscapingTheCave
Tuesday May 19, 2020
#80 - The Stalker Militia, A Hydroxy Hardon, Woke Youth
Tuesday May 19, 2020
Tuesday May 19, 2020
So, about that silly "in this together" thing... Topics include Trump's bizarre and supernatural hydroxychloroquine erection, quarantine and consumerist withdrawal, free-rage extremism and Michigan's armed stalkers closing the capitol, ideological bleed-over, identity politics infecting the virus, humble ignorance, a COVID-exploiting Woke Youth Recruitment video seizing the national airwaves, and what happens when I go off my gated social media reservation and why it's becoming nearly essential to completely disconnect.
More: www.escapingthecave.com
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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Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
#77 - The Blacklands Abyss
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
Taking an improvised break from Bat Plague punditry by focusing on more "uplifting" material like cancerous cynicism! Also, a few old hitchhiking yarns and the metaphysical notion of trail magic, losing your religion, the God/Devil parable, and ignoring the positive side of universal human duality. Just for optimistic kicks, I also muse about my podcast's course and its ultimate futility. A warm and fuzzy episode? Believe it or not, kinda. And, no Covid! You're welcome.
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--More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.toddzillax.com
[CEP2]
Monday Apr 27, 2020
#76 - Hot Pockets & Lysol
Monday Apr 27, 2020
Monday Apr 27, 2020
"Idiocracy 2: The Pandemic" continues. Todd discusses how the coronavirus hype has matched the reality, his digital detox, covid's ominous sign for star spangled socialist "revolutionaries", hot pockets, and how one quarantine doesn't fit all. He also asks where the Lansing protest's ideological diversity was (not what you think) and rages against Trump supporters and the intellectual treason of joining his limp and lame post hoc orgy. Children's parties: booked thru May! Book June's bat mitzvah or graduation party now! Promo code: "Brawndo" gets you 50% off! Clip: Jim Gaffigan.
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--More: www.escapingthecave.com
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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--More: www.escapingthecave.com
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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--More: www.escapingtheccave.com
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
#71- The Primaries: Noise Makers vs. The Majority
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
The Sober Majority and why Biden's resurrection and surge should surprise no one. Bernie's "revolution" was always fueled by Clinton disgust and a foolish dependency on a Youthquake fantasy. Mike Pence is a Biden asset, Jill the Vulture is back, and embrace Biden: he's far from certain but all you've got; the only thing that "can" work. Also, a 2024 wokeflake warning.
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Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
#70 - COVID Media: Crying Blitzer, Aftertruth & The Religious Mind
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
Wednesday Mar 11, 2020
COVID-19: the media sounds like the Weather Channel sensationalizing a hurricane. They'd better get it right or the Aftertruth Age fully arrives. "There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies." Why doesn't matter.
Also:
-Competing incompatible "realities"
-Personalized Informational Warfare
-Informational becoming literal anarchy.
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
https://toddzillax.substack.com
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
Sunday Feb 23, 2020
#63- "Vladdy Loves Bernie?" Or "It's The Destabilization, Dummy!"
Sunday Feb 23, 2020
Sunday Feb 23, 2020
Of course Putin's playing both sides and assisting Bernie in the Democratic primary. It's about agitation, discord, and eroding the public's already fractured belief it itself, not ideology. This is the perfect insurgent agitation storm: who in this country are more divisive than Bernie, AOC, and Trump? The Russians aren't to blame. We are. Also, why Informational Education programs aren't coming, the simple and cynical reason our for-profit media outlets and political "leadership" won't help us immunize ourselves from foreign propaganda, and Walter Lippmann on free speech and why Facebook must eventually take the fall for our unwillingness to tell truth from falsehood. Includes a quick refresher on 2016's multi-pronged disinformation/partitioning campaign as well as a recap on Jacques Ellul's agitation propaganda material regarding the unleashing of hatred. Introducing: The Rant Alert!
Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/
Don't settle for imitations! Make sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
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.
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
Saturday Feb 01, 2020
#59 - Conformist Suicide
Saturday Feb 01, 2020
Saturday Feb 01, 2020
"Imitation is suicide." How independent thought gets smothered in infancy, the need to belong: why standing apart from the impaired herd is not only hard, it runs against our social and evolutionary grain. Also, collective and self-delusions protecting us from unpleasant discoveries that might destroy our notions of being special, divine, or even "good."
ALSO:
-Tending to personal and commercial attachments
-How political and marketing swine manipulate attachments via identity
-Meditation and Buddhist philosophy as tools to disconnect
-Blank Slatists: Beware
-Emerson's Self-Reliance: read it.
-Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
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
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
Monday Jan 13, 2020
#54 - Apocalypto and The Red Star of Moscow
Monday Jan 13, 2020
Monday Jan 13, 2020
Happy 2020! Are we ready? After a 2-month hiatus spent illegally hunting rhinoceros and snipe in the wilds of the West Michigan wilderness, Todd welcomes the 20's with a quick episode discussing apocalyptic thinking, the coming electoral season, where to find balanced news coverage, and the rarely-used technique of actually listening to "opposition" media simply to understand where they're coming from. Eureka!
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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net www.escapingthecave.com
Thursday Oct 24, 2019
#52 - Presidential Anarchy, Goebbels & Advertising, A Prayer
Thursday Oct 24, 2019
Thursday Oct 24, 2019
Trump's not actually retarded, is he? Pray with me, won't you?
Also:
- Quitting smoking: it sucks
- Nicholas Carr and the "influencer"
- Goebbels ❤️'s Bernays
- My poor defenseless podcast is attacked by a zombie
- Happy Halloween?
- Fu*k Twitter
*Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net www.escapingthecave.com
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
#51 - Pinching The Impeachment Loaf
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Wednesday Oct 09, 2019
Are you stuck trying to build a well-reasoned, impartial, and detached impeachment snowman from competing piles of steaming cable news shit? Yeah. Me too. The only lens that works: the wide-angle agitation propaganda lens. First, a virtual colon cleanse in the form of a micro-pod.
ALSO:
- Fcuk Twitter
- Twice
- Hard
*Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't absolutely suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net 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.
* Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* 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.*
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
Thursday Aug 29, 2019
#44 - Propaganda: Agitating the Inner Ape
Thursday Aug 29, 2019
Thursday Aug 29, 2019
Agitation and Integration: two often closely related but very different types of propagandas: one used to provoke internal conflict the other to shape members of a population into a mold. Agitation: The propaganda of insurgency and revolution. Includes how internal enemies are used as scapegoats to manufacture then exploit hatreds as means to an insurgent's end, Mao's view on "the enemy residing in every man" and fitting him into the "Socialist Mold", Hitler's internal agitation, spontaneous volunteer propagandists, and how facts and "truth" are irrelevant to the person burning with primal hatred.
ALSO:
- Agitation propaganda during the American Revolution
- Triggering revolution by provoking hate? It's easy!
- Exploiting hatred and the path to genocide
- Hatred: small investment, high return
- Agitation and Integration can be used simultaneously
- Utopia is totalitarian
- Intellectuals: More susceptible to integration propaganda than dolts
- Intellectuals and self-bigotry
- "Can I hate you?"
- Justification, rationalization and stampeding enraged elephants
- Agitation to Integration: extremely difficult
- Successful Agitation + Failed Integration = Mob Rule
- Winter Is Here
- Yep. It's a doozy.
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Thursday Aug 22, 2019
#42 - Propaganda: Contradictions, Agitation Media, Typhoid Mark
Thursday Aug 22, 2019
Thursday Aug 22, 2019
Propaganda's ambiguity and contradictions including: creating tensions while relieving others, the Outrage Media Complex and introduction to the companion propagandas: agitation and integration and how they overlap; self-justification and imposed guilt; attachment and ostracizing oneself to join the "enemy; politicization and privatization; "Why die for Danzig?' and how political orphans benefit extremists and authoritarians.
ALSO:
- Andrew Sullivan on the boomerang
- Post-Truth hatred and division: a bigger threat than climate change
- Don't blame the bartender for getting you drunk
- Twitter, Facebook, and Typhoid Mary
- Atomic Ping Pong
- Our personal broadcast stations
- The Russia investigation saved the Democrats
- Setting up your triage tent
- Forget the mob; save yourself
- Information or Propaganda? Can you tell? Does it even matter?
- The Matrix & Propaganda
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 & www.escapingthecave.com