Naomi KLEIN is absolutely fascinating and I loved listening to her presentation. I also loved Max's take on how to talk about this grueling time with others who don't see things the same. As always, I love listening to Jon's contribution to every segment....he is the best of the best!!
Something they maybe could have gone further into, was the mention of the pandemic breaking the minds of many people. Thing is, even before the brain-breaking over virus precautions, many ALREADY had been having their minds broken over the pace of scientific/technological advancement. That trend just further resulted in the conservative response to MRNA vaccines. (and once again science showing it can actually do what religion can only promise, saving people from illness)
If I had to point somebody who had never heard this podcast to a single episode to give them a sense of what it's about, I'd pick this one. Great episode.
I’m a Communist and I’ve been a Pod hater for a long time but I’ve admired Naomi Klein since I read Shock Doctrine during the pandemic and watched the interview because I watch every interview with her. Since, the interview the Pod constantly gets autoplayed. Now I listen and kinda giggle at how Beltway Brained they are. It’s goofy.
Thank you Jon for consistently being a voice on I/P discussions that reassures me that in fact, I am not insane. You express my own feelings into words far more articulate than I could ever manage, and the discussion of how discussions are really about feelings, not facts, was really enlightening, and it's something I noticed applies to a lot of other areas of my life as well.
When I heard Biden wanted to work on AI policies I was happy because its needed before it's too late, but you look at how morally corrupt the tech industry is and honestly it doesn't matter what any government passes because a lot of companies and their greedy investors just want to "break stuff" and rebuild the world in their own images. So they'll see being the first to advanced levels of AI as the way to control future profits for all business, which is way too big of a carrot for anyone who is even slightly corrupt to ignore when they get whacked by the stick. It doesn't matter what we do, big tech violates laws all the time and a few thousand dollar fine for cheating laws when they make billions doesn't change any behavior. Start charging percentages of incomes for punishment and see if the rich stop breaking so many laws, again thousands of dollars in fines means nothing to billionaires.
@@steviec1156 it bugs me that so many people just trust big business not to hurt all of us when we see the long term results of blindly trusting corporations in things they knew the dangers of like PFAS, benzene exposure from gas stoves, and even things like lead paint where they ignored public safety to make as much money as possible when their scientists knew for years of dangers. Corporations have no fiduciary reason to work to protect consumers or the world as a whole, infact its more profitable for them to break things then drag out fixing their problems so they can milk profits from problems they created originally.
@@superclaymaster there is always more we can do in every field, the question is what do we focus our limited resources on? AI has the power to change our lives and exponentially increase our standard of living much like cars, electricity, refrigeration, fire, antibiotics, vaccines, and many other discoveries humans have made over our time on his planet. It has the power to destroy many types of jobs and careers, but also to create whole new fields of jobs and careers we never imagined before. Like I refered to originally I just don't trust greedy tech guys who have little care for the consequences of their actions, and Musk claiming his new AI chatbot is rebellious shouldn't be a marketing ploy it should be terrifying. It's hard to enforce much on Big companies because they have so much power in our current system, big tech especially because they can turn into a real problem if they happen to control posts on social media accounts which means they control the propaganda voters see too...
It's far from just "big tech" that does that, though. Ohio's trains, Texas's electrical grid, big pharma, big oil, big tobacco, and so on all also treat fines as just the "cost of doing business". Fox "News", smacked with billion-dollar lawsuits, is STILL peddling the same nonsense through the likes of Hannity and other hosts even after cutting Carlson loose as someone who became a liability for them.
As a leftwing journalist, it does kind of boil my blood to see my work ripped off and not sourced, but that is the internet for you... and on a long enough time line I now write for an outlet I once send a cease and desist letter to. That admittedly is way different than someone saying they posted a Twitter take first.
I hope you’ll address what’s happening at Microsoft; how they’ve gotten rid of all of their editors, and using AI for their news page. It’s pretty terrifying if it’s true.
I actually think it's a good thing that people are getting more personally engaged in the Israel/Palestine issue. For the last 30 years or so, we've lost interest in it, allowing Israel to do whatever the hell it wants. The public outrage at this latest round of ethnic cleansing and "mowing the grass" is forcing American politicians to be a little less stridentl in their support of Israel. And the old trick of shouting "Anti Semitism" whenever someone criticises Israel's policies ain't gonna fly no more.
Thank you BTC for your sage advice on how to listen. It is much needed advice for this old lady. I've had this sense of forboding since the conflict 26:38 began again. As it has gone on and the disproportionate response gets more unbelievable every day. At one end of my block is a mosque at the other end is a synagogue. I have friends of both faiths. I needed to hear how to listen!
One thing I have been avoiding for several years now to keep my emotions as level as possible when looking at the Israel-Palestine conflict: I avoid the emotional triggers, especially the gruesome footage of innocent victims. I really know where I stand on this, I don't need to escalate my emotions because it steers me away from hoping for peace. To me, ANY innocent victim is a tragedy and an outrage. Sometimes, it feels like people who are not in the middle of it watch the footage to crank up the outrage, and that brings NOTHING to the debate.
For those who went looking for the mention of the interview at 54:30, on youtube the sound clip is titled "Author realizes her new book contains gross inaccuracies on live radio"
"The discourse" is not even close to being the most important thing. But for most people engaging in discourse is the only thing they can do that will have any effect; as tiny as that effect is it still feels better than doing nothing.
Re: Naomi Wolf being called out for a huge error in her book--It would be so much easier on a person to recognize the mistake, admit it out loud, and say, 'I will do better next time.' Turning yourself inside out into another person entirely is the much more difficult reaction, harder on yourself and harder on everyone around you.
Yes! At 1:25; I need this network now. I’m slipping through cracks instead of being a valuable contributor to solutions because there ISN’T a system like this in place for me to utilize.
I think part of why the online discourse of Gaza does focus on language and word choice wasn't spoken to-this discussion of language is sparked in many ways by the mainstream media's bias in favor of the Isreali's radical far-right government. When our State Department is advising government officials on what terms they should not use (such as "deescalation"), isn't this policing of language something that is inevitable to replicate itself in the counter culture? From my POV a lot of the fervor about word choice is an attempt to establish admission of the desperate situation at hand and truly recognize the atrocities actively unfolding that are paid for with the aid of our tax dollars. It's an attempt to wrestle control of a narrative that is introduced through a pro-war lens, especially now as the IDF is approving the reporting of its journalists that it is bringing into Gaza (such as CNN).
As someone who works with AI in genetics research, I should add that a big part of the concern here isn't policy, it's enforcement-which I wish we had more honest discussion of
I would love to see an episode on China's surveillance state. Specifically, where they are compared to where the US is. What kinds of technology would move us closer to the systems they have in place. Another fantastic show. Max was missed. I'm happy he's feeling better and back with us. 😊
I've read Klein's "Doppelganger" and it's one of the most insightful looks at what's been happening since, oof, maybe 2014? I think it moves the conversation forward in crucial ways. It's a very readable journey through a very strange landscape filled with irony, with a witnessing of good people doing weird things, of a realization that wanting things to change has a hundred different repercussions inside different people. I too have been feeling my way in a sort of similar territory. I think it's crucial that people start to look critically at what this constant celebration of "alternative media" actually helps cultivate, it's not all rosy. What her book constantly makes clear is how good intentions, honorable impulses, can misfire in the weirdest, most terrible ways if you haven't cultivated other values and principles -- intellectual honesty, for one, and journalistic ethics is another; two things "alternative media" and all these indignant podcast hosts often don't have. It's all about the "we're the alternative to the lamestream media / culture" feeling of the thing. And that's simply not enough to make the world a better place. Klein also makes the point that a lot of energy is wasted, a lot of attention is misplaced, away from actual healthy change, when so many people focus on the strange fever dreams of conspiracy culture, following a kind of pied piper away from hitting the proper bullseye with the illusion of a bullseye. As she says here: "What people are able to do with these platforms is something we haven't fully unpacked." I think an even deeper analysis is necessary around how the internet has shaped our society, has shaped us, has shaped kids, teens, young adults, adults and the oldest among us since the mid 90s. We just take the internet so much for granted that we're unable to look critically at how it's modified human life since then. People, especially generation Y onwards, don't even take the time to critically look back and see how it's shaped THEM and how their personalities formed in interaction with it since they were kids. None of this deep introspective work has been done. And yet we've been running this weird experiment on ourselves for decades now. And I think it's crucial that it is discussed. Klein's book doesn't quite get into that, but I'd say that's the next step. Klein's recent conversation with Douglas Rushkoff is also really, really good. It's two people who helped generate a lot of excitement for a lefty change, but looking back at how so many people took it in such a weird direction and trying to understand why. It's a super necessary conversation.
Big Tech: We are your friends! Also Big Tech: Oh hey what's that, worst autocracies in history? You want all our monitoring tech and face recognition software? We'll sell it at a discount.
I had never heard of anyone you've been talking about. I'm a Medical Professional. After retirement, I posted an Art sight with many genre's. It was Covid-19 that perked my ear outside of my bubble of Healthcare and the Arts. Nice meeting you.
I also confused the two once. But Naomi Wolf made it very clear very fast that I confused her with someone else by answering one of my comments online.
You hit the nail straight on. All lives matter. Arabs Jews Ukranians Russian. When innocent civilians are just that. No one lufe is more or less. I am a Jewish Athiest. Religion to me IS the problem. But none of that matters when a baby is blasted by a bomb. When children are kidnapoed and terrorized. When women are still considered war spoilage. The anger sometimes outweighs the reasoning brain.
46:08 Such an interesting thought, how public figures suddenly lost their rooms full of people listening/responding to them were affected by the pandemic. This fits with all the standup comics suddenly becoming online content providers, often dispensing a lot of misogynistic, homophobic toxic nonsense, and in turn developing a whole new audience hungry for the return of their demographic supremacy. I had never made that connection before. Question: Not to oversimplify but, now that we can have our live gatherings again, will this phenomenon diminish or is it here to stay? I'm really enjoying hearing from Naomi today, thank you.
I'm no longer a listener of NPR, or as I call it--National Petroleum Radio. Instead, I get my knowledge of national and International geopolitical news and views primarily from the Pod Save America crew. They have become the 'Corn Flakes' of my daily news diet. On this channel, you will hear the most insightful, in-depth, and intelligent discussions of current affairs, along with the brightest, smartest, forward-thinking academics, advisors, activists and authors and progressive thought leaders like Naomi Klein presented in this episode... In a media landscape, thin on substantive, intellectually honest journalistic enterprises, PSA is one of the bright spots in an otherwise bleak terrain. Thanks for all that you do!!! 👏👏👏
I'd like to highlight Max's point about how discussions online are often not about facts, but about feelings. This applies to so much... about Gaza, about the pandemic, about identity politics, about our own families and personal relationships... You _know_ it's true when two people independently come to the same conclusion.
Sometimes this show seems in a bubble to me, maybe it’s the lack of urgency when things are so unhinged, all the time. You don’t want extremes, but say what the worst thing is, say the truth, like Biden’s age and now the conflict are going to impact his re-election. Idk, AI makes me anxious as, they opened the lid then slammed it shut again.
On a gay website I visit sometimes there's a conservative troll who will often start his posts with "as a gay man..." as though that gives him some kind of cred on a site aimed at gay men.
Excellent show, thank you! Thinking about what you and Naomi were talking about, I wonder if there's an aspect of the inherent loneliness in a large online forum that drives people to want to be more "in crowd" with "I thought of this idea first." Maybe that's the way feel they can gain recognition as one of the valued members of the forum/group/whatever.
Yeah, that Matthew Sweet interview on the BBC totally ENDED Naomi Wolf. It was painful to listen to. How the hell the manuscript got to the publication stage is beyond me, but the absolute humiliation Wolf felt live on air obviously broke her brain ...
cellular tracking. .. maybe in a few decades: opensource (LineageOS? or GrapheneOS? CalyxOS?)? With phones that default to (public mesh) wireless. There's much unused broadband in cities and suburbs. Fallback to cellular towers when in rural and far from major roads.
It’s interesting that for the second time on this podcast someone talking about understanding how people feel about the conflict in Palestine comes across as incredibly unfeeling. I mean if your fears mean you think what Israel is doing is okay, that’s a you problem, and if your child indulges that, they need therapy. If you get angry at hearing Biden is complicit in genocide, tough, he is. Inherent in both those examples is the feelings of those supporting Israel are more important than the lives of those being killed in Gaza. That’s restricting empathy to people who are like you. Maybe it’s because of the type of people I follow, or because I understand protest movements better than either of the hosts, but I haven’t seen many people trying to win arguments. Most people are trying to share information, both about the situation on the ground and about ways to protest. I see people trying to find what humour there is, like Macron trying to tell French people they can’t protest, or Irish people dunking on Irish Americans. The only people I see trying to win arguments are democrats who don’t understand why people are refusing to support Biden after this.
There were some tech entrepreneurs in Africa who were surprised at American pessimism. Why are Americans so pessimistic about a technology could be improving people's lives? More and more, I am convinced that the next half century will be the rise of Africa. As long as there is infrastructure and stability, the technologies that shape tomorrow will come out of the places without entrenched interests lobbying for stagnation. We've already seen how India's digital payments system is better than in America. There is no way that American credit card companies will give up their sweet 2% tax on transactions, whereas in India a vegetable vendor can readily accept digital payments through a national infrastructure with no fees, as easily as they can accept cash.
1:55 cozz-play, buddy; COSplay = _costume_ + _play._ Does anyone say "cohse-tume?" - I mean, seriously, which words★ start with "cos" that you pronounce like "cohse?" Bill "Cohse-bee?" All the stars in the "cohse-mos?" ★ _not_ including "s" words + a "co" prefix, (e.g. cosine, cosignatory, costar) which are all essentially just missing the optional hyphen between "co" and [word]
I’m finally getting fond of Max. He was annoying when he was new and I guess somewhat nervous cuz he interrupted his cohorts too much. But he’s not doing that anymore. Glad he’s back! Great show on the next week’s 11/12 Offline. Made me come to the older Offline casts, was that good.
I hate trying to put this in every discussion, but I keep thinking about the core trans theme: how do we become more human as we become less human? Transgender is a concept which is the most visible, but in a way, we are all finding out just how made up all of these things are that we take for granted: culture, gender, _humanity_ ...
I appreciate the discussion. I'm trying not to post my way thru these times but, I don't know, I've always thought 'genocide vs not genocide' is something we should be talking about?
For me, it's bikeshedding because the other issues are hard and make you sigh. There are a lot of hard pills to swallow in this conflict, and when people are talking about "is it genocide", it's a bit of a motte-and-bailey because genocide=worst possible crime and it becomes a game of moral whack-a-mole that makes one side or another a secular kind of devil and the other side a saint for fighting the devil. Obama himself said it best. Both sides have blood on their hands. Can we just pry these two nations apart and put them into the time out box?
The Favreau confusion reminds me of a story I heard from the head of a US government agency, who was psyched for an impromptu meeting with who he misheard as Joe Montana, only to disappointedly meet Joe Mantegna. Personally I'd rather meet the latter, but hey, it happens.
I spent half a decade trying to get ahead of the thing she's talking about in the intro blurb, and even went so far as to build a social media platform intended to be a counterpoint to the mess we had. Elon knows about it. Nobody else is anywhere near my approach and that's very concerning and frustrating because the stuff that's on the table isn't enough. In most of our lifetimes the outcome of our AI efforts will result in the creation of artificial life and the total transformation of our civilization and lives. There's hardly mainstream science fiction that's close to where we're going.
Steve Bannon isn't nearly as well understood as he should be. I enjoyed this conversation about him. He's key to so much that went wrong with the world because he's worked harder than anyone since Kissinger to implement his ideology on everything, and he was lucky enough to be successful due to his associate with Cambridge Analytica. Clearly his efforts since then shows that he's no savant. This was a really excellent conversation. The intro bit with the tech news is a nice touch.
1:22:32 Suggestion for new book title, "The End of Us" America is no longer a homogeneous entity where an existential threat to the nation can bring us together. The pandemic and insurrection showed us that the nation is more divided than any time since the civil war. The two sides can't talk to each other because they exist in separate realities, one based in science, facts, reason and compassion while the other is based in WTAF.
I'd have to disagree if you follow the economist that's not an online culture but one that has not focused on the impact of the war against people. There are dozens of their articles that have danced around the importance of what is happening because they want to avoid the core issues.
I'm lost in this content. I read a book with similar content, and I was completely lost in its world. "Reclaiming Connection: The Journey of a Digital Detox" by Joshua Ember
Could you do a show on who the Biden Administration really is? Like Joe Biden isn't making rules about AI, oreven the economy. So who is? In other words, who are we being asked to actually vote for? I think that's what they should be putting out to the electorate, not this old guy who is just the face of it but who is the great team is doing so much great Progressive stuff?
Sorry....I can't stand hearing the word "like" spoken in EVERY sentence. It would be good for commentators to become more aware of their use of "like" where it doesn't belong.
NK: "We're all on [F]elon Musk's platform" 1. Felon certainly didn't create twitter, though as certainly, Felon is chewing twitter into debris. 2. Many people have gone to Mastodon (servers).
I think you guys are bringing an extremely millennial "feelings" approach to a place where it doesn't work, where the useful take, as distasteful as it might be, is Kissingerian. Because the events are Kissingerian and not therapeutic. Beyond that, Ben's take on his friend Kelly's mom struck me as deeply patronizing. In bad times, synagogues are in fact where Jews get killed. The Tree of Life synagogue is in a lovely neighborhood. I really don't think it's for him to decide whether or not she's in actual danger.
Curious, wehere is the outrage for all the Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia. Or all the Ukrainian civilians continuously being attacked and killed by Russia?
The only way AI can be sold is when you first sell it to China or Russia, allow them to use it in your country, ét voila, now you have to use the AI because the enemies are using it. Business well done by playing over both sides.