PodLand SuperNova: September 6, 2024: Joe Rogan / Mike Baker, Chris Williamson / Eric Weinstein, Tucker Carlson / Mike Benz
Hi, everybody, and welcome to the inaugural episode of Podland Supernova, and thank you for joining us. I'm your host, Joe Scott. Let me, let me take a minute to explain the podcast purpose and the format. Okay? This is the first of what will be, I really believe, an enlightening, maybe controversial, always entertaining, but always honest account of what's happening currently on the most interesting and or listened to podcasts in the entire world today.
Speaker 1:Now to be clear, this is what I consider to be the most interesting. But the most listened to part, well, that's not my opinion. That's according to the charts. But, you know, regardless of what the charts say, let's be clear. I cherry pick what I find compelling across a variety of podcasts in terms of topics and guests, grouping those conversations into overall themes, and that's important because there are a lot of themes.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of continuity between what you hear out there. You've gotta connect the dots. So let's further define all of that. You are unlikely to find pop culture here. K?
Speaker 1:This is not, Entertainment Weekly. But you might find a little bit. You're unlikely to marinate in the foods or fabric of the day. But you might find a little bit. You're unlikely to find sports chatter here.
Speaker 1:But I do love sports. Still not the main topic of what we're gonna cover. What you will most certainly find is a hint of science, humanity, culture, economics, policy, history, politics, can't avoid it, and other topics in the zeitgeist. You know, my intention is simple. Every episode, I intend to bring you highlights and my own commentary on the best of what's happening in podcast land, And podcasts really across the open Internet.
Speaker 1:It's this entire group that I call pod land. In doing so, I hope to amplify the educational, suppressed, and enlightened ideas that you may not see or hear or don't have time to dig through. In a very real sense, everything I'm doing here is to the benefit of the listener in terms of aggregation and informing all of you. Now I need to make this comment. All opinions are my own.
Speaker 1:I have no business affiliation with any of the podcast that I'm commenting on, hosts, or guests. So once again, sincerely, welcome to Podland Supernova, first of many first of many with your host, Joe Scott. Let's get going with episode number 1. Okay. For this episode, I have picked 3 recent podcasts to analyze and share my thoughts, with all of you.
Speaker 1:3 popular podcasts. Number 1, Chris Williamson hosts a podcast called Modern Wisdom, and he had on one of my favorites this week. Eric Weinstein, a prominent physicist physicist, excuse me, and former managing director of Teal Capital. He's a frequent podcast guest, used to have his own years ago, and he's a part of what is affectionately known as the intellectual dark web. He even coined the term many years ago.
Speaker 1:Joe Rogan had a conversation with Mike Baker, who's been on the podcast a couple of times. He's a a former CIA officer and security expert, technical advisor to the entertainment industry, TV commentator and host himself in his own right. And then lastly, Tucker Carlson who wasn't a big fan of, when he was on Fox, but, you know, he does have some good guests on, his, newly launched podcast. Mike Benz, he had on recently. He was a former state department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology, matters.
Speaker 1:Mister Binns founded the foundation of freedom, which champions digital, freedom, and he focuses certainly on what is distributed online. Now, the first theme I wanna discuss is the influence of globalism and the state on our upcoming election and international politics. And so the brilliant Eric Weinstein posits the following idea early on in the modern wisdom podcast. I'm gonna play this clip.
Speaker 2:I don't I don't know whether I don't know whether Donald Trump will be allowed to become president.
Speaker 1:Woah. I mean, that is a hell of a way to start off, the podcast or nearly the beginning of the podcast. Now context is king, and that's my job is to bring you context. And in Weinstein's last interview with Chris, in February, he alluded to the fact that Joe Biden may not even be the nominee, and he and he did so in rather in rather stark terms. He talked about, you know, the chance of Biden dying or 1 in 20 on any given day.
Speaker 1:So I think that there is reason to believe that we should trust Eric with some conviction on this issue. Now, here's how, Weinstein followed up on Chris' prodding. He said this, and I'm gonna quote here. There is something that I think Mike Benz just referred to as the rules based international order. It's an interlocking series of agreements, tacit understandings, explicit understandings, clandestine understandings about how the most important structures keep the world free of war and keep markets open.
Speaker 1:And there has been a system in place whether understood explicitly or behind the scenes or implicitly. It says that the purpose of the 2 American parties is to prune the field of populist candidates so that whatever 2 candidates exist in a face off are both acceptable to that world order. Now think about that for a minute. Acceptable to that world order, United States parties. Weinstein went on to say that this is a magician's choice in the primaries and that, you know, there's an acceptable duopoly in the general election.
Speaker 1:Effectively, the idea is that the world order cannot be left to the people. Essentially, the world order is maintained by a small group of people. And Donald Trump's election, therefore, was unacceptable. Okay. So let let's let's add some detail to that concept, wine Weinstein's concept.
Speaker 1:Mike Benz, remember, former State Department official and free Internet advocate who was on Tucker Carlson, podcast, just last week. He was on in the wake of the arrest of the Telegraph founder, a man named Pavel Durov. Now we don't use Telegraph here in the United States very much, but it's an encrypted end to end app, a bit like WhatsApp. But without getting into the whole Telegraph story, it is something that has recently been used by Russia in part to coordinate their their war effort. I mean, there's a whole story there.
Speaker 1:Telegraph had been used by more of the sort of western allies before, and now the Russians are using it. So Durov got arrested in in France. He did get released, but this was a politically motivated arrest in France. That that's that's Benz's entire hypothesis, and I think it's pretty reasonable if you look into the details. But but but the real interesting part of Benz's appearance is his take on statecraft and how Western governments use technology, the Internet, like using Telegram for their own purposes, and then, you know, attacking them when an adversary like Russia is using it.
Speaker 1:They use this to to uphold world order, this this control. And, related to this example, he believes that the US government sponsors censorship, and more recently, it has shifted to begin suppressing free speech. Doesn't sound very American. And they do this as a way to control the narratives in countries where, the US has an interest or even in the case of using lawfare in the United States to combat populism, I e, Donald Trump. Listen to this exchange, that he had with with Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 3:Free speech has been an instrument of statecraft since for for for US diplomacy, military, and intelligence purposes since 19 forties. Free speech around the world has been something we've championed in part because we believe it, but, in part in large part, I should note, because this this is how you can capacity build resistance movements or political movements or paramilitary movements in countries that the US State Department seeks to attain political control over. If there's no free speech, then there's no political movement that you can capacity build to regime change the government or to maintain elements of control over the existing government.
Speaker 1:I mean, really, really striking stuff. Now Ben's goes on to explain that Internet censorship, free speech, suppression, and the like are are global initiatives led by, quote unquote, the blob to combat populism abroad and at home. So let me give you a definition of the blob. Here here's how he defines it. It's, the US policy establishment.
Speaker 1:Okay? Which is primarily concentrated within the US State Department, the US intelligence services like the CIA. The third is the Pentagon, USAID, and the soft power swarm army that we have through our non government organizations, NGOs, and state department. CIA USAID funded by civil society institutions. K?
Speaker 1:So basically, the apparatus, the the the, governing bodies within the bureaucracy. So back to Donald Trump and the Weinstein comment where he said Donald Trump will not be allowed to become president. Now I'm I'm asking you to think about that comment in the context of global institutions and this blob that Bens is talking about. Weinstein said this about democracy and specifically what might be the current version of democracy, in the United States. Let let's play this clip from Weinstein on modern wisdom.
Speaker 2:The other idea of democracy is that democracy is about institutions that sprang from democracy once upon a time, and that those institutions have to be kept strong. Those are 2 completely different concepts that are overloaded to the same word. Under that circumstance, we have a a paradox, which is how do we keep the electorate from overturning the, you know, the the type a democracy from overturning the type b democracy. And that's the unsolved problem that they will not bring in front of the people. So what you have is a situation in which I believe that there are many people in Washington DC who think that Donald Trump cannot become president because he can now go for broke.
Speaker 2:He's also not going to try to run for reelection.
Speaker 1:Okay. So by go for broke, of course, he means, you know, a lot a lot of different things, but he definitely means pursuing the populist America first agenda, that he sought to implement in his first, go round as president of the United States. Now additionally, Mike Benz on Tucker Carlson introduced the idea which Weinstein reiterates that that basically says that the blob, has actively worked to redefine democracy as the consensus of institutions. So anyone that supports the US foreign policy establishment and its transatlantic partners rather than the consensus of the people, of you and me. So it's all it's all very terrifying and not democratic.
Speaker 1:So Tucker clarified that in this case, there are about a group, about a 100000 people as a guesstimate, running the United States as a part of this blob. There's 330,000,000 in the US, so that's not representative.
Speaker 2:Going to. How how should we think about this election? As World War 2 unraveling, the order that has produced the illusion of peace for this length of time. Imagine that you were, let's say, in the 2000 that you had this thing called the great moderation. There was a story that we had finally banished volatility from the markets.
Speaker 2:None of that was true. What you were doing was you were going farther and farther into a regime without understanding that sooner or later, the Jenga tower has to collapse. The the order that was put in place at the end of World War 2, none of its architects are still alive. Very few pieces of information were passed down about what it actually is or how it functions because it's secret. And I think what you can say is that, we are now living on the fumes.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is really weighty stuff, the fumes of the end of that war and, apparently, this election is gonna be a, statement on that. To to put the world order on the back of a single election is is is no small matter. I I think that the questions that most Americans need to ask is, is this a version of the world order still serving Americans? I mean, that is the question that really should preoccupy us, more than it is. Now some folks, you know, 10 years ago, as you said, NATO is a problem.
Speaker 1:You you would have been ostracized. And, and I still think that there's reason to believe these institutions are important. But we've gotta figure out how it benefits us. So moving on to related, albeit slightly less terrifying theme, maybe. As many of the panelists segued into a conversation about media bias and disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.
Speaker 1:And the definition of those things are nuanced and important. So here's, Mike Benz talking about the difference between those terms. And and I really think is a good grounding for the next part of our our conversation. We're gonna play Mike Benz on, Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 3:Misinformation is something that is false, but you you know, it was an innocent mistake. Disinformation is just wrong, but you did it on purpose. Malinformation is it's right, but it still undermines public faith and confidence in something that's more important.
Speaker 1:Alright. Now let let's introduce Mike Baker who I've not gotten to yet, former CIA on, Joe Rogan experience. He and Rogan pivoted away from a discussion on the Trump assassination. And when they did that, you know, he he started talking about how, all of this fit together in terms of, the level of disinformation.
Speaker 4:It's it's the level of disinformation and misinformation right now leading up to November is astounding. Astounding. And it's becoming more and more difficult because of, you know, generative AI and and just a willingness to kinda disappear down a rabbit hole and believe whatever you you wanna believe. Right? Nobody's questioning all this shit.
Speaker 4:So but it is whether it's coming from, outside influence and, you know, we know the Iranians are very active right now. The, obviously, the Russians and Chinese are always interested in screwing us up. So but, you know, people, if they don't do it themselves, you know, it's not as if, you know, this idea that the government is going to, you know, tell you what's good and what's not to read is amazing.
Speaker 1:Rogan and Baker expanded the conversation around mis, mal, disinformation to include COVID and its ongoing impact. For example, they brought up, you know, this this idea that Kamala Harris once repeated this misinformation that 220,000,000 people had died of COVID. She did this more than once and routinely was forgiven by various fact checkers for the error as a slip of the tongue. So Rogan and Baker were were chatting about this. And and Baker pointed out that even the fact checking headlines on this topic were really misleading.
Speaker 1:For example, they would say, Harris misspoke versus Trump lied about x, y, and z. I mean, that's typically the way that this is covered, in popular media outlets. So, you know, shocker, there's a bias. We we we know that. But then there the the conversation around mismal and disinformation and AI's contribution to that was brought up.
Speaker 1:And, Baker made the key point that defense will always trail offense just like in, in the military, and in this regard. So, you know, we we see that in cyber generally and in in other places. So determining what is authentic, when there's bias out there and there's technology out there to support, easy dis mal and misinformation is important to understand. All of this conversation, comes on the heels of of meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg making a statement that the Biden administration had in fact pressured the technology giant, I mean, any surprise here, to censor COVID, COVID content during the pandemic. I mean, here here this is crazy.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think we knew this was happening, but to hear him say it, here's a portion of his letter. He says, in 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID 19 content, including what was known to be humor and satire and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was posted, you know, by the by the judiciary committee. You can see it on its Facebook page. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it, he wrote.
Speaker 1:I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we would not have made today. Well, that's very nice of you, Mark, to to come out and say that. Look. Those of us that have been paying attention know this was likely. The Twitter files come to mind.
Speaker 1:But it's it's still a shocking admission, but not an unsurprising fact when you reflect on the government statements at the time. I mean, Biden said Facebook was killing people. Okay? He said they were killing people by allowing the spread of misinformation. Really?
Speaker 1:Or or okay. I mean, check the messenger here. There were also the Twitter files I mentioned a second ago, came to light in late 2022 proving the Biden campaign worked with Twitter to suppress damning information about Hunter Biden's laptop. Hunter just, plead guilty yesterday to some tax charges. And, you know, in today's environment, it's hard enough to even find the truth.
Speaker 1:And a gen a world without the government or campaigns perpetually colluding with the media, of course, this idea is not new. It's just we once thought the Internet was a free and open. Binns and Baker and Weinstein prove it's just not so. With Musk buying Twitter and X, you know, I think there's at least a chance to regain some truth. Maybe.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're out to get him. Alright. Our third and final theme for this, inaugural episode of Podlands Supernova is related to the first two, and it's this idea that conspiracies are real by definition. Yet conspiracy theories, it's important to remember, are just theories by definition. Knowing the difference can help us find the truth, which is the goal of this podcast.
Speaker 1:So I I I really think I mean, the man is so brilliant. Eric Weinstein speaks eloquently on this point, and I I wanna play this clip.
Speaker 2:I mean, in other words, of course, there are conspiracies everywhere. We found a 1000000 conspiracies. I could tell you, you know, various operations, Operation Condor, operation, sea spray where they we sprayed bacteria on all of San Francisco. We all know about the Tuskegee medical experiment, operation Northwoods, operation Mockingbird, operation Ajax in Chile. We know the conspiracies are the lifeblood of the world.
Speaker 2:Every trade group is a conspiracy. The the Twitter files are about conspiracies.
Speaker 1:So clearly, conspiracies become facts once they're known. I mean, that's Weinstein's point. The world truly is all the stage and and we are bouncing back and forth between the perception of reality and reality itself. I mean, this is my my concept, but it aligns closely with this idea that Weinstein's talking about. At this point, many people think and talk about the JFK assassination as an obvious conspiracy.
Speaker 1:So I was curious, and I looked up a recent, a recent poll. You know, a majority, according to this 2023 Gallup poll, believe that there was some sort of conspiracy involving his death. 65% of people do.
Speaker 2:I mean,
Speaker 1:I I actually can't find many people that don't, but we'll take 65%. So in fact, if if we learn something definitive in the future, Trump says he'll release the files on this topic. We'll we'll see. Then, you know, if something definitive comes out, this will tip from conspiracy, although a strongly believed one, to fact. So that's a classic example.
Speaker 1:Eric Weinstein goes on to to bring up the idea of preference falsification in which people have 2 sets of preferences. Number 1, are the preferences kept at home? And number 2, there's another set of preferences. Sorry. 2 sets.
Speaker 1:The the second set is the preferences that you show the world. It's when the the home preferences overflow in in unison across the majority when you have a real change or chance for revolution. It's the idea of a silent majority, you know, leaving out the popular Nixonian example. Let's talk about modern day silent majority. It's this concept, that can be right or left depending on which masks are being worn and by whom.
Speaker 1:So now there is a final consideration to think about. Weinstein asked the question, and I quote, what if the idea is that an outbreak of truth and democracy would destroy NATO and the world order, he says. Let's imagine that would be, case in point, the markets will become undone, that it would spread nukes. What happens if ending the control of social media means that we weaponized anthrax plants, and plans could be spread frictionlessly. Scary stuff.
Speaker 1:Does this world order protect us from those ideas, or does it continue to contribute to a decline in living standards? I mean, that's my idea. Are living standards declining in the west? Is this order protecting us? What about in the United States specifically?
Speaker 1:Is there a middle ground solution? Ideally, it's the people that decide, not our aristocratic shepherds who have a financial interest and certainly not this blob of a 100000 people. Now to tie this all together, is this a US election about world order? Is Trump a threat to democracy or is democracy, as it's currently being practiced, a threat to us? Which of the preferences is going to be on display publicly in a world where the truth is so often mismal or dissed out of existence?
Speaker 1:There is a tiny booth in which all Americans and undoubtedly some illegal constituency will stand in this November and cast a vote. We can only hope enough people have been able to see through the mismal and disinformation and leave their masks at home. As Eric Weinstein said I love this. You're in the magic show, baby. So I ask you all to think it through.
Speaker 1:See you next time. Thanks for joining me on the first and not first, and hopefully not last, Podland Supernova. I'm your host, Joe Scott. Be sure to share, like, subscribe. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:Be good to one another everybody.