Escaping The Cave
Toddzilla X
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*An anti-woke podcast focusing on the invasive collectivist species and the widespread confluence of money, boutique ”news” propaganda, psychology, and hyper-connective tech: The Social Media Disease. Toddzilla X @ YouTube.
Available episodes
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Aug 28, 2023
#127 - The Power of Patriotism, Cannibal Leftists, Our Badass Ancestors
Orwell wrote that international socialism is powerless against the power of simple patriotism. It's a simple concept that radicalized leftists are helpless to understand. Before the secular Cult of Wokentology can erect American temples, patriotism must be crippled. This is why basic American pride has been under systematic agitprop attack for decades. Traveling the third world: Todd articulates how, rather than creating another liberal "global citizen", it instead ignited his steadily building, and unexpected, patriotism.
Also:
* How conservatives could easily win over Latinos
* Tribal politics and collectivist globalism are mutually exclusive
* Identity politics and the American Indians' demise
* How failing to unite against the clear and present threat both doomed Native Americans and led to Hitler
* Wokentology's narcissistic time bomb: a rare message genuine of anti-woke hope!
* Communing with the ghosts of my colonizing ancestors at Ft. Michilimackinac
* Fragile souls sent spiraling into a mental health crisis by "misgendering" pronouns and uncomfortable ideas demand that we be ashamed of, and apologize for, our very badass ancestors? Ha! No.
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Aug 23, 2023
#126 - On Tribalism: Unity Via Division, Vichy Whites, Being the Lone Chimp
As with propaganda, Todd's thoughts on tribalism have evolved in the last 9-years. It's a trait, not a defect. Evolution burrowed tribalism deep into the human psyche for a reason and it's going nowhere. That makes it a potent force that needs to be more clearly understood.
Segment 1:
* Sebastian Junger and his book Tribe
* Tribalism and social evolution
* The doe eyed folly of "anti-tribalism" splinter factions
* Unity Via Division, huh? Go home, you're drunk
* The Fantastical Cult of Utopian Diversity: do diverse super societies have a shelf life?
* Vichy Whites: Wokentology's moneyed bourgeois assuming they'll be judged as "one of the good ones"
* Careful of those reprisals
Segment 2 (30:00)
* Tribalism offers the protection of the herd: physical, ideological, even rhetorical
* The accidental consequences of actually being a lone independent thinking chimp
* Tribal politics, agitation and integration propaganda, and "revolution"
* Collectivism vs Individualism: The invasive species attacking the foundational and cohesive myth
* Revolutionary destabilization is the goal
* Extremist Roulette: the scapegoated majority choosing their own tribe's self-interest
Mention this episode and receive half off any anti-depressant! Thanks, Dementia Joe!
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Aug 21, 2023
#125 - Institutional Hospice & The Death of 9/12
In this short episode, Todd discusses the near complete loss of trust in American institutions, particularly the media, and the result: informational anarchy. What filth is left free to slither into the trust vacuum?
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Aug 15, 2023
#124 - Where’s Rock Bottom? Killing The Come Together Fairytale
Starting with a discussion about painfully reaching rock bottom and its role in addiction and recovery, Todd applies it to the dopamine drip of technology-driven tribal politics and how he and others wrongly assumed Donald was the tribal floor. (13:52) The Left's application of Newton's Third Law of Extremism: the Green Tea Party and how, with the media's deification of The Holy Counterfeiter, it mutated into an invasive Ideological Insurgency using scapegoats to aggressively attack American history, institutions, and core values. To colonize anywhere, you must first exterminate foundational myths and cohesive narratives, the established religion, in order to replace it with your own. There’s a reason Latin America is Catholic, after all.
Also:
* The Sopranos as social anthropology
* What if there is no floor and rock bottom instead hits like Chicxulub?
* In the failing era of Unity Via Division, selling unity knockoffs is a good dollar
* Can we just dispense with the infanitile "Let's Come Together" stuff?
* No? Show your work!
* The "need to believe" is the death of reason
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Aug 9, 2023
#123 - Inappropriate Honesty, Truth Riders, That Which Must Remain Unsaid
In the continuation of the last episode, Todd re-explores his oft-ignored Path to Empathy, the DIKW pyramid, and data Overload before exploring religion's real purpose and offering our pompous atheist friends the back of his rhetorical hand. From that joyful and uplifting summit, he moves on to question how woke parents can sacrifice their own children to a foreign ideological god.
Also:
Introducing The Desert of the Why!
We know what legislative riders are. What about "truth" riders?
The one thing in news, information, and tech that must remain unspoken.
Why climate change hysterics are misguided and a waste of time.
How the stupid cliques we form as kids flare up like herpes for the rest of our lives.
Todd's new Gatekeeper disconnect.
Chasing Che.
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Aug 7, 2023
#122 - Intellectual Tribalism & Gladiators in the Virtual Coliseum
After a brief introduction to metacognition, Todd delves back into how people are born as storytellers, not rational truth seekers, and how the storytelling ape probably evolved out of a need for simple explanation and meaning. Also, why are experts in detecting the "enemy's" bullish*t but so bad at sniffing out our own team's? After reflecting on the Facebook Wars, have we become organic pieces of agitation propaganda ourselves? Worse, can innate tribalism be exploited by agitprop-fueled hatred? Last question: gee, ya think?
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Aug 2, 2023
#121 - The Authoritarian Mind #2: Puritanism vs The Right Not to Believe
Mr. Sunshine delivers another cheerful monologue on our deep and persistent strain of authoritarian thought! Book those children's parties now!
Subtopics:
America's puritanical tradition began on the Mayflower. Why totalitarian cultural eugenics might do more harm than "good." Agitprop and authoritarianism are conjoined twins. Can a true Democracy even defend itself? The generational tyranny of tradition; each new generation has the right to rule itself free from the yoke of their dead ancestors. Is authoritarianism, like deceit and self-deception, an inherent trait rather than a character flaw? Is it democracy's self-destruct button? A brief introduction to Harold Lasswell. And finally, if you suddenly find you lack the freedom to NOT believe, you're living in a theocracy. Stand up. Push back.
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Now on Discord.
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Jul 31, 2023
#120 - The Authoritarian Mind #1: The Facebook Files, AI-Generated Agitprop, The Gatekeepers
Your feral host is suddenly prolific? In the first of at least two episodes, Todd talks about how the Facebook document dump confirmed what most people already knew yet will only play to the messenger's choir. Trust: it matters. Also, what will happen when AI begins churning out endless supplies of effective algorithm-targeted agitprop? (hint: nothing good) Then comes a surprising, albeit half-hearted, defense of The Gatekeepers seasoned with a not as surprising dash of I-told-you-so.
Part two drops in a day or two.
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Now on Discord.
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Jul 30, 2023
#119 - Inherent Deceit & Self-Deception: Our Wonderful World of Make Believe
After another extended hiatus, Todd's back with another sparkling hour of uplifting inspiration!
(8:40) How does a person enthusiastically produce a podcast when the subject matter and outcome is completely devoid of basic hope?
(9:41) "Fix" the for-profit media complex? Good luck. "It's the people." Tiptoeing into how pre-programmed deceit and self-deception are major parts of the how and why.
(30:45) Deceit and Self-Deception. The opening salvo.
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Now on Discord.
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Mar 17, 2023
#118 - Propaganda: Inseminating Zealots & The Religious Mind
Taken from two episodes released in 2019, I begin laying the 2023 foundation for a return to my unfinished series focussing on Jacques Ellul's book, Propaganda. This episode focused on how propaganda severs the individual from themselves, robs them of their intellectual autonomy, and "crystallizes" inseminated thoughts, opinions, and agendas, inside the propagandee host. It then uses slogans, symbols, stereotypes, agitprop, and the warm glow of tribal fellowship, to turn them into malleable proselytes and militants always awaiting their righteous marching orders. More of what’s covered: a preview of what’s to come and having the real Courage to be Disliked as opposed to surrendering to fear and social momentum to avoid the pain, and punishment, of leaving a group.
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Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747
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Mar 12, 2023
#117 - Propaganda, Trust, Coronavirus, and You: 3-Years Later
After revisiting the March 2, 2020 episode recorded at the dawn of the pandemic, Todd uses 3-years of hindsight to explore ( 60:00 ) how much further trust in government and media institutions has eroded and the effects. Data overload, trust apathy, and monetized tribal agitprop leads nowhere good. Also, is a liberal democracy capable of defending itself against an illiberal insurgency without destroying itself in the process?
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
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Feb 16, 2023
#116 - Guns, Balloons, Trains, Unworthy Victims
After spontaneously eulogizing his friend, Todd tries euthanizing our cliche-and disingenuous-gun "debate" addiction. Again (10:00)
(18:00) Isn't it funny how the balloon and the ensuing UFO "mystery" distracted everyone from Biden's classified documents scandal? How about some MORE healthy rabid skepticism?
(30:00) Your host got the inside poop on Ohio's train derailment. While the cause seems obvious, who's to blame? Is it corporate greed, the ongoing labor shortage, or worse, DOT incompetence?
(45:00) East Palestine, Ohio: in the culture wars, poor whites have become what Chomsky called unworthy victims. How would the response have been different in Ann Arbor, Portland, or Gary?
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Jan 27, 2023
#115 - It’s Still The People
As the podcast approaches the 5-years mark since its return, Todd revisits his Media 101 episode and further explores why the for-profit media sucks. (Hint: see the title!) Also, how personal attachments corrupt an already frail sense of basic reason, why emotionally compromised victims (and others) should never be consulted, and how a supposedly idealistic cultist "morality" eventually seeks out and crucifies its traitorous blasphemers & heretics, like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.
Segment 2 starts (27:30) with an overdue return to Joan Didion's essay (and handy extremist test!) On Morality, transitions toward the Woke Book of Shouldism, Haidt's elephant, and steers into Toddzilla's plea for Sausage Party Hope in segment 3 (1:02:40).
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Jan 22, 2023
#114 - B for Boomerang
Studio 4 opens with a new episode and a new live stream on Twitch! This week at Davos, an official of the EU Taliban's Morality Police wants everyone to know that European hate speech laws "are coming to the United States." Do liberals realize that they've become exactly what they used to hate? Grab Chief Wahoo gear while you can! Also, Biden destroys whatever credible self-righteousness Democrats had left, and thanks to BLM, performative reparations legislation, and far left bigoted preaching about the inherent evils of "whiteness," the cultural boomerang has begun its return journey. Finally, where tech and agitprop converge, the Great War of the 21st Century will be fought during Propaganda's Golden Age. An oblivious species with no self-awareness has no chance of surviving that as free men. Everyone supposedly demands "accountability" these days, so whose fault will it really be?
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Nov 22, 2022
[Micropod] Our Great War
Over information & reality itself.
From #112 - Storytellers, Truth, and The Great War of the 21st Century
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Nov 22, 2022
[Micropod] Social Media’s Ministry of Truth
In an exploding state of informational anarchy, who gets to decide what's "true?" Who can you believe?
From #112 - Storytellers, Truth, and The Great War of the 21st Century (11/8/22)
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Nov 17, 2022
#113 - Our November Surprise, TikTok, and Rocks From Uranus
Reflecting on the rather shocking midterms and Trump's uninspired announcement. Was he pouting after being robbed of his triumphant return? Or worried about investigations?
Segment 2 (16:02): The changing social media landscape and TikTok posing an obvious data-driven election threat from China.
Segment 3 (22:12): Mankind at its best: Artemis finally lifted off sending Orion to the moon!
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Nov 8, 2022
#112 - Storytellers, Truth, and The Great War of the 21st Century
Todd's back for the midterms and starts off by blasting the populist Poor Media Victim attitude, exploring whether propaganda and media literacy even matter, discussing informational warfare, and the finer points of navigating ideological drift and its extremists.
Segment 2 (23:00): the Democrats' abortion debacle, The Sham-Wow Guy vs. Fettergump, and how the '22 midterms are a sure sign Idiocracy is here.
Segment 3 (39:00): There were no blacks on the World Series rosters. So?
Segment 4 (58:20): Elon's Twitter drama, his inevitable choice between free speech absolutism and truth ministers, euphemism warnings, then returns to The 21st Century Informational War and how human self-deception is converging with technology to trigger a battle over reality itself.
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Aug 23, 2022
[Reload] Iceberg Ahoy! Validation Junkies & The Chosen Ones (9/10/19)
From 2019:
Social validation, dopamine, and social media's Walter White; 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 bi-weekly apocalypse and their "chosen ones"
* Progress's Myth and becoming organic
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Aug 19, 2022
[Reload] Story: The Propaganda Paradox (5-9-20)
From #79, this episode dove in to storytelling, a central theme in the quest to not only understand but hopefully fight propaganda's mind hack. Also, the relationship between stories, hope, and both kinds of religion: theological & ideological. What's the major distinction and why I believe traditional religion deserves its pass...on ONE ironclad condition.
Watch YouTube for new video from July's scrapped episode! A flood of fresh audio is coming!
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Aug 16, 2022
[Reload] All You Need Is Doubt (1/4/21)
* This is the first of what will be weekly reloads highlighting ETC segments from the first 111-shows.
From #97, this episode featured uplifting topics such as: why it's not necessary to conquer a democracy when a just little doubt'll do ya. Also, how can a nation avoid inevitable conflict when each half of the country functions according to different rules of factual physics? Is there a relationship between likability, deplorability, & disinformation?
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SocMed: ToddzillaX
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Aug 9, 2022
#111 - Tribal By Nature & The Invasive Species
The one where Todd finally plants his flag! We're tribal critters who are bound by self-serving fictions; these stories are called cohesive narratives; national myths. And, in this country at least, the collectivist fairy tale of socialism is the antithesis of individualism; the "prepare the road for the child" mentality is mutually exclusive with our established American principle: meritocracy. Collectivist socialism and its "equity" cult is, therefore, an invasive species. Wokeism is an ideological insurgency. But from where?
#111 also features the details of a lengthy and dramatic tribalism re-think, how data overload & its existential chaos push people toward idiocratic political cults, and foreshadowing hints about finding propaganda's Rosetta Stone! Answers are finally coming! But are they the ones you think you want?
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May 3, 2022
[Micropod] Murrow to FOX & CNN: From News to Monetized Propaganda
Selling blind confirmation bias back to us.
A whole new podcast made of old episodes!
Find it wherever you found this or here: https://toddzillax.substack.com/
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Dec 28, 2021
#110 - The Cost of Courage & The Limits of Anti-Vax Empathy
Todd's back from sinus purgatory and joined in the studio by Cory! He's un-vaxxed and endured pre-omicron covid, so the show hits its crescendo with a frank, honest, and nuanced chat about responsibility, personal choice, and the ethical limits of anti-vax empathy.
Before that, they explore why no one believes politicians, what it would take to regain any trust (it's authenticity, stupid), whether there's anyone worth believing in and, if so, would they have the courage to speak truth to the mob? In a society increasingly based on the philosophy of Unity Via Division, is it such a shock when whites vote for their advocates, too? Also lawyers: practitioners of the Dark Arts of Rhetorical Bullshit, and Anger+Activism: Self-Righteous Erotica.
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Dec 7, 2021
#109 - Backdoor Reparations & Unity Via Division
The podship begins slowly changing course as Todd discusses his new Rumble channel, propaganda-by-omission, my-team blind spots, and how his favorite podcast exposed itself as woke. The signs were always there! Also: the special interest boomerang, avoiding exposure to re-articulated ideological scripture, D.I.E. = r.e.p.a.r.a.t.i.o.n.s., the stupidity of scapegoating majorities, and the naive No Tribe Follies. Storytellers, not truth seekers. Memorize that.
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Dec 4, 2021
#108 - My Team Bullsh*t: Private Lives & Public Health
After nine months Todd finally births another episode! In the return, he discusses his new video focus on YouTube, the year that's been, his wedding & vaccine-related informational anarchy costing him his mother, and how one is both free to exercise their vaccine choice and subject to the decisions others make in response. Also, "My Team" Bullsh*t has effectively neutralized the government's ability to respond to another public health crisis.
Music: Ryan Miera & Yellow Pills: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7rDvBzvGcNPV3BYZ1n5VdZ
SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
More Shows: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Mar 1, 2021
#107 - Social Media Avatars: Crazy, Stupid, or Full of Sh*t?
Trump's CPAC appearance marks the start of the 2024 campaign, barely a month into Biden's term. Will we survive this? After other contemporary messages of heartwarming fellowship and hope, Todd continues phoning his shows in, this time "reimagining" episode #64 which discussed performance-based validation addiction. Recorded at the beginning of the pandemic, other topics include how collective critical thought is impossible. You're not the Elephant Whisperer and their switch is internal. You can't "save" anyone! A timely reminder in the Age of Q. Also, leaving the vanquished a path home to save your own casualties.
MORE: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Feb 22, 2021
#106 - Political Cults & Mobs 101
After a 2021 open, your friendly virtual Toddzilla mines early episodes, from 2014 & 2018, as a foreshadowing refresher on ideological religions and the Holy War being fueled by their proselytizing zombie hordes. Remember kids, mobs: they're f***ing stupid! Ask your doctor if intellectual autonomy is right for you! (RE27)
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Feb 18, 2021
#105 - Exploration, Evolution, Death of a Propagandist
People are storytellers not truth seekers. And we're explorers to the core. If you're looking for something positive, exploration brings out the best in us. Good luck today, JPL! How do we become more sophisticated informational consumers? Loved him? Hated him? Either way, Rush Limbaugh was probably the best and most influential for-profit propagandist ever. Also, finding the line between honesty and aggression, how the pandemic complicates a digital detox, and the relationship between money and exploration.
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Feb 15, 2021
#104 - Leaders, Puppets, Boils, and Show Trials
Why aren't impeachments argued before the Supreme Court instead of pre-decided partisans? What better time to revisit the ridiculous idea of Mob Wisdom and the Plague of Democratized Opinion? Are the intentionally misinformed qualified to sit on a We The People's Court Jury? And, if "the people" are going to metaphorically kidnap and blackmail their representatives, should "news" outlets be subject to perjury laws? Also, the weird thing that happens when abstractions come alive!
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Feb 8, 2021
#103 - From Moralist to Tyrant or The Fanatic's Imperative
What about the inevitable Iron Fist of the Collective and the short path between one's idealistic morality and political fanaticism? The batsh*t political poles have shifted apart again! Since no quarter is found between the cults' compounds, Todd asks once again: where's a legit centrist supposed to go? Also, a refresher on narratives, a quick introduction to Sowell's "constrained" and "unconstrained" visions, a very human NEED for propaganda, understanding why many Trump voters just hate Democrats, and our great crime against humanity: self-advocacy!
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Feb 1, 2021
#102 - The Other Insurgency & Where's Our Hashtag?
In this sprawling and questionably improvised episode, your slightly medicated and possibly menstruating host discusses everything from subject-matter-futility to contemporary colonizers attacking native temples. How is life in the jungle different from the zoo? What happens when propaganda is simply met with boring ol' truth? Social media is propaganda's plutonium. What's the relationship between moral imperatives and political violence? Enjoy the silence, Trump: The Second Season starts soon. And what about that search for lost or missing significance and meaning? Is there something more to it that we shouldn't ignore?
More: https://toddzillax.substack.com
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Jan 25, 2021
#101 - Post-Trump Stress Disorder & Tech's Theocracy
Joffrey's banished from Twitter and exiled to Florida while a traumatized and twitchy nation begins adjusting to something "normal." How has The Mad King's term eroded government legitimacy within our own borders? No inauguration day riots? What are those brave revolutionaries up to? A: trying to get each other banned from Twitter! President Biden's a reality. How long will Trump continue to set the standard and serve as the excuse? Also, last week's Woke State Media display was the fusion of big tech, pop culture, corporate media, and Green Tea Politics. It introduced us to our freshly exposed left flank and the future of Ideological Theocracy: technological totalitarianism. Where's the centrist supposed to pitch his tent? (RE27)
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Jan 18, 2021
#100 - American Zapatistas, Saboteur in Chief, The Lone Boogaloo
With troops flooding DC, Trump's term ends in two days time. Why doesn't it feel certain that it will? Was a nation of "patriots" suddenly afflicted with insurrectile dysfunction on Sunday? Is Donald Trump a foreign agent? Who cares? He performed like one. What lies at the confluence of technology & idiocracy? Also, letting escaped cultists find their way home, When Stories Attack: factional storytelling is propaganda, and Toddzilla stalks Telegram! How did this thing make it to 100? (SM7B)
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Jan 15, 2021
#99 - Trump's Rebellion & The Need to Believe
Waiting for 2021's Inauguration Day storm to arrive, I intended this to be a quick repost of a segment from 2019's "Iceberg Ahoy!" episode but it took on a life of its own. It covers everything from QAnon and the Religious Mind's need to believe to the responsibility coming with our contemporary tech capability to our eventual (and deserved) loss of free-range free speech. But the core of the episode is this: it's the people. It's always been the people.
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
For Future Reference: https://toddzillax.substack.com
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Jan 11, 2021
#98 - Trump's Rebellion & The New Gatekeepers
Trump's insurrection and the religious mind: why are so many Americans committed to faith before facts? Were they rioters? Protesters? Activists? Terrorists? That's decided by propaganda's very peculiar perspective effect. Is this the end of Trumpism or the beginning of something even worse? When it comes to free speech, where's the line between "liberty and license? If people ignore free speech's responsibilities, should social media accounts be licensed? Should Silicon Valley be in the gatekeeping business? Also, what's the relationship between likability and demonization? (RE20)
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
For Future Reference: https://toddzillax.substack.com
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Jan 4, 2021
#97 - All You Need Is Doubt
Fresh off his first motivational speaking tour, Todd returns to the podcast to discuss uplifting topics such as why it's not necessary to conquer a democracy when a just little doubt'll do ya. Also, it's been relatively quiet on the streets lately. Is The Trump Militia all hat and no cattle or is something else at play? How can a nation avoid inevitable conflict when each half of the country functions according to different rules of factual physics? Is there a relationship between likability, deplorability, & disinformation? What's with the December Dead Zone? And, your host's persistent sense of existential hopelessness an argument for ending all digital political "discourse." Book those children's parties now!
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
For Future Reference: https://toddzillax.substack.com
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Nov 22, 2020
#96 - The Medium, The Message, & The Horizontal Bop
Todd & Brian begin with some obligatory "analysis" of Trumptown's post-election conspiracy orgy including more conversation about why both Trump and down ticket Democrats had their electoral posteriors handed to them: has the Moderate Majority finally reclaimed its place at the wheel? Or, will it again be shouted down by loudmouth extremists? Also, what's Trump's post-term role with his increasingly unstable base and how will that affect the new Resistance™ party? Is something even more dangerous than Trump coming? Around 34:00, the conversation pivots wider to "institutional terra incognito", the point at which history stops rhyming, comfortably habitual thinking, and Marshall McLuhan's classic phrase: "The medium is the message." Is the important issue our new technology or how we use it? The answer isn't simplistic; the simple act of writing provides an instructional example why!
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More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Nov 15, 2020
#95 - Demagogues & Prairie Dogs
The afterglow is now the aftermath. Essentially two episodes in one, Brian and Todd begin by reflecting on how the vibe has changed since Biden's victory speech then touch on fundamental social psychology. What happens when cognitive cliches begin breaking down and we're forced to explore unfamiliar ground? Is too many choices as bad in the political and informational marketplaces as it is on Netflix? What's the relationship between age and wisdom? Around 53:00, the conversation pivots. Why do Democrats seem to always lose even when they win? Bill Maher offered a very familiar answer! Is the Moderate Majority in danger of being surrounded and marginalized by the loudmouth extremist minority? What happens if they're forced to choose between competing demagogues in 4-year's time? Will an increasingly fragmented boutique news help social media make that possible? Book your Toddzilla Children's Party before it's too late!
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More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
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Nov 9, 2020
#94 - The Election Afterglow, The Moderate Majority, The Social Media Disease
The Moderate Majority spoke! Todd, Brian, and millions around the globe are relieved and indulging in the afterglow of relieved liberation and overdue hope. Enjoy it while it lasts! We discuss how the podcast's overarching topic, the Social Media Disease, is going mainstream, how both extremes were repudiated in the same election, the art of changing one's own mind, and erecting bridges: everyone's individual responsibility if we're collectively serious about The Great Coming Together. Also, this "stop the steal" silliness and how does someone as personally vile as Donald Trump still get over 70-million votes? Oh yeah! We begin with a late eulogy for Eddie VanHalen.
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More: https://www.escapingthecave.com
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Nov 2, 2020
#93 - 2020 Election: The Nero Referendum & Defending The Electoral College
Todd & Brian reflect both on where we've come from and where we're going as this electoral reality show finally ends. We explore the side effects of direct democracy's mob rule and why the Electoral College is absolutely essential. Also, how do we "rehumanize" ourselves and each other? What's the best case scenario to avoid post-election chaos and violence? Is it inevitable? How will our various factions perceive President Harris if Biden wins only to resign? What are the wider effects of our burgeoning "no compromise!" culture? Pre-election anxiety and fatigue: is it universal outside the fanatic's camp? What's the relationship between one-issue voters and Haidt's Elephant? Our media celebrities and influencers: are they simply clever fiction writers and talented performance artists? Winter: is it finally here? We'll know in a week.
The "Safeguard" documentary: https://www.amazon.com/Safeguard-Electoral-College-Trent-England/dp/B08H6KH9QV
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
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Oct 26, 2020
#92 - Addictive Outrage, Empathy's Path, A Nation in Heat
Todd & Brian return discussing the direct parallels between ideological and theological religion and what Dan Carlin calls The Heat: trivial outrage manufactured to manipulate media consumers for advertising profits, and how it affects us as a society. And, does it matter if our outrage triggers are fake? Is social media contributing to a literal devolution and destroying eons of self-domestication? How do we reclaim our human empathy? Are we returning to naked barbarism as we become slaves to emotional impulses that just "must" be expressed/inflicted? Also, fertile revolutionary soil and how it's the suffering who are susceptible to Snake Oil Demagoguery, Manchurian propagandists, the Electoral College, and Mencken's disturbing concept of irredeemably. What if there is no solution?
Dan Carlin's "A Recipe For Caesar": https://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-319-a-recipe-for-caesar/
MORE ETC: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
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Oct 12, 2020
#91 - The Whitmer Plot, Michigan's Militias, Socialism's Facade
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?
Like it? Share it!
MORE: https://www.escapingthecave.com
MUSIC: The Limbos & Paul Vernon
RE20
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Oct 5, 2020
#90 -The Trumptober Surprise; Leo Ryan & The Dennis Doctrine
Todd's a bit cranky this weekend,Trump has the virus, and we all "wish him well." Do we? Do we really? The trustpocalypse: it's telling how many suspect the dramatic diagnosis may be part of his reality show's season finale. Todd also discusses our unprecedented institutional meltdown, his chronically "angry" tone and the distinction between honesty and truth. He also pays a personal tribute to a childhood idol, Bob Gibson, and shows how Leo Ryan's Jonestown example adds texture to the Dennis Doctrine and the firm belief that fanatical sectarians should be exiled not engaged: "the switch is internal."
Also: Trump's social momentum, applying the Useless Shit Epiphany to turning 50, and Toddzilla's Tribe: where exactly is it?
Like the show? Share it!
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
(SM7B)
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Oct 1, 2020
On Morality & Fanaticism; Conformist Suicide
"When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it... we join the fashionable madmen, and then...the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there." -Joan Didion (1965 ) --As a follow-up to the last episode, this trimmed and updated re-post connects Didion's fanatic test to the moral certitude manufactured by propaganda and its architects using social media as a delivery super weapon. Also, public vs. private opinion, the Cradle of Reason, how propagandees can respond to competing propagandists, and keeping the you in you. Like it? Share it!
Watch The Social Dilemma!
Music: Yellow Candy & Paul Vernon
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
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Sep 28, 2020
#89 - An Invasive Species Gazes Into The Abyss
Todd & Brian discuss whether the "divine" human species is in fact both bipolar and invasive, the difficulties that come from gazing into the Abyss, and moral imperatives vs. self-righteousness: how narcissistic morality becomes naked authoritarianism. Also, where solutions to the informational anarchy crisis must begin, when the ends smother the means, how a species can summon both altruism and barbarity, and let's kill Rousseau's Noble Savage once and for all. Yes! More easy social dilemma listening to help you escape the world's troubles! Like it? Share it!
Music: Paul Vernon and Yellow Candy
More: https://www.escapingthecave.com/
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Sep 21, 2020
#88 - Steinbeck, Murrow, and The Social Media Disease
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.escap…
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Sep 14, 2020
#87 - The Social Dilemma: War of the Virtual Worlds
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/
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Sep 11, 2020
#86 - The Illusion of Knowledge & Democratized Opinion 2.0
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
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Sep 10, 2020
#85 - Cyberspace Monkeys & The Boiling Caldera
Former radio personality, psychologist, and current PR guy, The Professor joins the show as perhaps the perfect co-host discussing propaganda and hyper-connective technology's unknown effect on an oblivious public. Todd then chats about mail-in voting and the looming post-election storm, a minor kancel kultur attack and the ensuing process of deciding whether to continue a "Singing For Helen Keller" podcast, and what it's like being ahead of the curve then watching people slowly catch on. Thanks for your patience, subscribers and new listeners. Like it? Share it! Then prepare yourselves. ;)
More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Aug 19, 2020
#84 - Intellectual Populism, Enemy of the People, The Humanovirus S**tshow
Detailing the gloriously organic results coming from a month of social media, news, and podcasting detox. Also, boutique "news" & democratized opinion's relationship to mob rule: Ibsen's Enemy of the People, the humanovirus and its ubiquitous invasive species traits, the Dennis Doctrine, and podcasting without Sausage Party Hope and with a severed validation stream leaves one pesky unanswered question: "why the f**ck am I doing this?"
More Drew Michael: https://www.youtube.com/user/drewmichaelcomedy/videos
More Me: www.escapingthecave.com
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Jun 19, 2020
#83 - Discourse? Or Just Waiting To Talk?
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
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Jun 18, 2020
#82 - A "Real Conversation"? Allow Me to Retort...
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
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Jun 16, 2020
#81 - Activist Media, Dogma as God, Marrow of Humanity
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!
Like it? Share it.
More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.facebook.com/EscapingTheCave
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May 19, 2020
#80 - The Stalker Militia, A Hydroxy Hardon, Woke Youth
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
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May 9, 2020
#79 - Stories, Hope, and The Propaganda Paradox
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 --Be sure you're subscribed to an genuine and authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
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Apr 29, 2020
#78 - Social Media Disease: A Cacophony of Nothing
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
--Be sure you're subscribed to an genuine and authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
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Apr 28, 2020
#77 - The Blacklands Abyss
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.
--Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingthecave.com and www.toddzillax.com
[CEP2]
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Apr 27, 2020
#76 - Hot Pockets & Lysol
"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.
--Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Apr 24, 2020
#75 - Seekers, Preachers, The Covid Reality Wars
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!
--Make sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Mar 28, 2020
#74 - Detroit, Intellectual Distancing, The Glowing Antichrist
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.
--Make sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingtheccave.com
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Mar 24, 2020
#73 - Incompetent Negligence and Economic Eugenics
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.
--Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Mar 20, 2020
#72 - Informational Anarchy In A Pandemic
A potentially catastrophic stress test as the healthcare system drowns inside a divided country who chose informational tribalism over preparation. Detachment is essential.
ALSO:
- Media exhaustion & anxiety
- Governmental malpractice
- Trillions in revenues sacrificed to a "hoax?" Really?
- Coronavirus & 9/11
- You can't be in a play and watch it at the same time
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
https://toddzillax.substack.com
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Mar 11, 2020
#71- The Primaries: Noise Makers vs. The Majority
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.
--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Mar 11, 2020
#70 - COVID Media: Crying Blitzer, Aftertruth & The Religious Mind
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
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Mar 6, 2020
#69 - "Insurgent Drag Queen" Or "Go Be a Snake"
The Michigan primary is here. Which will it be? The invasive ideology or the country? An extremist biopsy and how they're using our own poorly guarded institutions and exploiting hatred to hijack the political parties. "The fascists seize power to forestall the communists; the communists seize power to forestall the fascists": choosing between authoritarians and totalitarians means we all lose. Also, "Lizzie was sunk by sexism!" Was she? Was she really?
--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--More at www.escapingthecave.com
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Mar 5, 2020
#68 - Insurrection, Resurrection, and The Rubicon
Super Tuesday Politics Dump. How did Biden revive himself? It's simple, really. Fighting extremism with extremism is suicide. Also, fanatical ideological religions, the UK canary in the colony's coal mine, our own wokeflake tumor, the Youthquake fantasy, and your righteous revolution: who's actually buying?
--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!
--Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
--F*ck Twitter!
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Mar 2, 2020
#67 - Propaganda, Trust, Coronavirus, and You
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
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Feb 29, 2020
#66 - Authentic Courage vs. Crying With The Pack
"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
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Feb 27, 2020
#65 - Conform Or Be Cast Out
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
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Feb 26, 2020
#64 - Social Media Disease: The Dopamine Drip
"Whoever owns social validation..." Performance addiction and how the masses have become junkies gorging on validation's dopamine stream. How various influencers, including podcasters, have monetized validation in the name of "brand building". Propaganda, validation, dopamine, and Ellul's "conditioned response." How social momentum works: Tony McAleer on Your Undivided Attention. Also, how ideological boldness is a surefire sign of a propagandee.
Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/
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
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Feb 23, 2020
#63- "Vladdy Loves Bernie?" Or "It's The Destabilization, Dummy!"
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 imitati…
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Feb 21, 2020
#62 - Authenticity, The Mask, and The Beast Unleashed
On independent thought, authenticity, social momentum, and permitting redemption. Also, You're not the Elephant Whisperer, let Dumbo feed! Detecting doctrinaires, the Warm Glow of the Herd's Fellowship, manipulative monkeys dancing for their lunch, and a mask, the core, and the id walk into a bar.
A format change is underway. Make sure you're subscribed to an Escaping The Cave feed!* More at www.escapingthecave.com.
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Feb 11, 2020
#61 - Unimpressed Sobriety & Sanity’s Touchstone
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
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Feb 6, 2020
#60 - The Wokeflake Follies
The Iowa Boner, The Rips Heard 'Round the World, and impeachment fails. All by Wednesday. This is the alternative?
ALSO:
* Scripture, agitation, and The Herd Mind,
* Democracy implodes without the public's consensual trust,
* The means, ends, and Salem Witches,
* Romney, Amash, Manchin, and the Principled Pit of Hell,
* Howard Dean says Democrats will challenge November's election,
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck. * Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
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Feb 1, 2020
#59 - Conformist Suicide
"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.
www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
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Jan 28, 2020
#58 - Independent Thought vs. The Need to Belong
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
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Jan 23, 2020
#57- Hilerpes; Bernie & The Suckerfish
Hilary's flared up again, this time on Bernie's groin while Tulsi sues to find out if Valtrex is right for her. Also, It's time for the Democratic Socialist's Red Tea Party to get off the DNC's guest couch, pack their stuff, and find their own place. Go be a dragon, Daenerys.
Also, Toddzilla didn't kill himself.
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck * Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
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Jan 21, 2020
#56 - Richmond: The 2A and MLK
Wokeflake Twitter was apoplectic when the Richmond pro-gun rally turned out to be peaceful while the rest of world asked, "What? No Antifa? Do they not believe in their holy crusade against Fascismo de Naranja?" Not really. No one asked that. I discuss Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, how it affected Gandhi and MLK, and how that's an unexpected and possible path for gun advocates to reclaiming the narrative.
Also:
* The Invasive Species has a name
* The Democrat's fracture has gangrene
* Daenerys and the Utopian Teet
* Don't call a backdraft a boomerang
* F**K Twitter
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
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Jan 15, 2020
#55 - Snakes, Survival, & Sabotage: The Need to Feel Alive
Todd discusses collective human boredom in relation to the need for a sense of purpose, struggle, and the addictive rush of just feeling alive. How a dormant survival instinct comes alive during a crisis and how, absent that, we'll manufacture one just to have something to endure, battle, and survive. Also, some some predictions for the 20's. Book those children's parties now!
Also:
* San Agustin, The Special Tour, and an evening with Pablo Escobar's "chemist"
* A naked man kills a fer-de-lance
* Men, middle age, and the power plant
* Healthy anxiety vs. fear
* This election won't matter
* The tyrant is in the eye of the beholder
* The Titan Tragedy
* Podcasters: they're spammy and slimy.
* ^They call that foreshadowing
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck. * Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net * F**k Twitter
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Jan 13, 2020
#54 - Apocalypto and The Red Star of Moscow
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!
*Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net www.escapingthecave.com
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Oct 30, 2019
#53 - Disinformation '16, Weaponized Truth, Hillary The Halloween Zombie
This episode focusses mostly on disinformation and interference in the 2016 election and includes selected audio clips from the Your Undivided Attention podcast episode "From Russia With Likes" (#1) featuring disinformation expert Renée DiResta. Her expertise connects incredibly well to my Propaganda series. Topics include: the seemingly innocent methods used by the Russians exploiting personal identity to create online communities that can be manipulated via agitative identity politics later on, The Call to Action: The Manchurian Propagandist, more on the propaganda dopamine connection: validation, attacking trust in political institutions and the media, anger and apathy, exploiting freedom of speech, and the silliness of the "Global Public Square. Listen to Your Undivided Attention here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/
ALSO:
* Hillary: probably right about Tulsi Gabbard
* Hillary: definitely right about Jill Stein
* Hillary: absolutely a Trump asset
* Americans subsidize E…
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Oct 24, 2019
#52 - Presidential Anarchy, Goebbels & Advertising, A Prayer
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
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Oct 9, 2019
#51 - Pinching The Impeachment Loaf
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 *Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team. *Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't absolutely suck. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net www.escapingthecave.com
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Oct 1, 2019
#50 - Agitational Dysfunction & Revolutionary Hatred
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.)
*Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team. *Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't absolutely suck. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
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Sep 27, 2019
#49 - Propaganda Blindspots & The Constituent Mob
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. *Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team. * Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't s…
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Sep 26, 2019
#48 - The Internal Narrative Trojan Horse
"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
*Like it…
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Sep 24, 2019
#47 - Wokeflake Comedy: Sociological Propaganda
A rare ETC podcast: one topic. The stage that was once the playground of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and even Andrew Dice Clay has been stormed by a mob of Social Vengeance Warriors hell bent on using comedy as a delivery mechanism for textbook sociological and agitation propaganda, complete with its own version of the Ten Commandments (now in print!) and a handy scapegoat Satan. When does the "Thank You, Comrade!" showcase start?
ALSO:
* Controlling speech is controlling thought; Speechcrime is Thoughtcrime
* Unless Nickelback is your standard, nothing great has ever come from timid conformity.
* "Unanimity requires compliance" and defiant creative independence
*Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
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Sep 18, 2019
#46 - Newton's Third Law of Totalitarian Messiahs
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.*
*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
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Sep 10, 2019
#45 - Iceberg Ahoy! Validation Junkies & The Chosen Ones
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
*Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
*Like the pod? Share it ! You are the "marketing" team.
*More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Aug 29, 2019
#44 - Propaganda: Agitating the Inner Ape
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-bi…
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Aug 28, 2019
#43 - Monetized Agitation, Unleashing Hatred, Poking Crackerbears
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 *Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
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Aug 22, 2019
#42 - Propaganda: Contradictions, Agitation Media, Typhoid Mark
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-Ell…
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Aug 17, 2019
#41 - Propaganda: Drunks In Denial
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 w…
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Aug 15, 2019
#40 - Propaganda: Righteousness & Simplicity
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
*Like the pod? SPR…
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Aug 10, 2019
#39 - Wanted: Wokeflake Demagogue, Dignity And The Useful Idiot, Tyrannizing The Vanquished
Todd, Chris and Rich discuss the Dayton shooter's leftist leanings being swept aside, poking the Crackerbear and how a real conflict between Woke Island and Trumptown might resemble an episode of "Lambs to the Wolves", Los Tíos Tom Blancos and their own dignity, informational chum agitating swarming ideological sharks, how suppressing a defeated ideological Holy War enemy might look in the 21st century, and we revisit "reparations" just to, you know, lighten things up. (Send the bill to Boris!) The Propaganda opus continues next time.
ALSO:
* Chris & Rich educate Todd on "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo"
* The PMRC and the new Left
* Corey Booker's "community"
* The Dragon, Kraken, and your own self-interest
* The absurdity of expecting a Matriarchal Utopia
*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the marketing team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
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Aug 8, 2019
#38 - Informational Anarchy & Deadly Insignificance
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
*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the marketing team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
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Aug 6, 2019
#37 - Propaganda: Intellectual Autonomy & Banishing Fabricants
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
*Like it? Share it.
*More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Aug 2, 2019
#36 - Propaganda: Rationalization & The Religious Mind
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 *Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the marketing team.
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A 5*
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Aug 1, 2019
#35 - Propaganda: Inseminating Zealots & Vicarious Atonement
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!
https://toddzillax.substack.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
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Jul 30, 2019
#34 - Propaganda: Manufacturing Proselytes & Militants
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/039471…
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Jul 28, 2019
#33 - Propaganda's Mindcrime
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…
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Jul 25, 2019
#32 - Spinning Mueller & The Sacred Cows
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
*Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com
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Jul 22, 2019
#31 - Humanist Puritans, Wokeflake Jesus, Manchurian Crusaders
The extreme left's totalitarian purity test and its search for Utopia's messiah; self-righteous moral certainty and the narcissistic narratives of the secular humanist religion. Then, agitation propaganda creates armies of proselytes and militants while unleashing an uncontrollable and destabilizing primal hatred for "the evil other." No one's immune; would you even know if you're devouring propaganda?
ALSO:
* Silent Collaborators
* The Sunday School of political insemination
* Political missionaries always rapping at the smart phone's door
* Being right vs. "looking" right
* Ignoring history
* You're solely responsible for protecting and maintaining your own mind
*Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team. *Also check out https://toddzillax.substack.com/
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Jul 19, 2019
#30 - Renouncing Patriotism And The Nationalist Boomerang
Todd, Chris, and Rich discuss how the left always inadvertently triggers heated nationalism with its self-defeating renouncement of patriotism and Zinnification: exploiting idealistic naiveté; how Zinnified agitation propaganda attacks national unity by destroying symbols and cohesively fictitious myths. Also:
* “Racism” isn’t a "white thing" nor exclusively an American trait
* The ridiculous notion that propaganda-farting fleshbots are “changing minds”
* The slow crawl of social progress
* Paying Granddaddy’s social debts
* Immigration and "becoming American"
* “Socialism rules!" Then why was there a Berlin Wall?
* Your special personal experience doesn’t matter
* Child Worship? But, children are literally ignorant *Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com
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Jul 17, 2019
#29 - Guidance Is Internal
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
*Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com
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Jul 8, 2019
#28 - Wordknapping, Propaganda's Effects, A Reckoning
"He who defines is your master." More on twisting definitions as a malicious propaganda tool, how institutional propaganda systems affect a population, and where a species oblivious of its own shortcomings ultimately ends up.
Also:
-Communing with the organic dead
-There's no such thing as collective critical thought
-Intelligence as a handicap
-Foreshadowing a Walter Lippmann re-think
*Like it? Share it! F**k The Zuckerbeast & Typhoid Jack. YOU'RE the marketing team.
*Subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.escapingthecave.com
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Jul 5, 2019
#27 - Propaganda: Agenda + Journalism
Definitions, journalism as a euphemism for propaganda, Amash goes rogue, Antifa gets played by Patreon's punching bag, I have a creative reparations solution, FOX gets savvy and begins filling a void. Part two coming soon.
Also,
-What happened to our Nuremberg rally?
-More on these ridiculous Democratic debates
-Justice isn't real
-Is the extremist worm turning?
*Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com
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Jul 3, 2019
#26 - Broken Beasts of Intellectual Burden
A digital detox update and re-connecting with the organic world, Trump's 4th of July spectacle and the predictable "outrage", why I'm rooting against the US women's soccer team, the ridiculous debates, and half as many young people consider themselves "gay allies." Why? Beware the boomerang!
Also:
-Social media is the new talk radio
-Visceral emotive manipulation and monetized propaganda
-Algorithms as propaganda delivery systems
*Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. *Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com
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Jun 27, 2019
#25 - Convulsive Twitch and The Damage Done
Are we representing ourselves accurately via these one dimensional social media avatars? I update the digital detox progress and talk about my over-amplified virtual projection, Toddzilla, destroying meaningful relationships, how the tweet is in the eye of the beholder, missing a funeral for a friend, and maybe a faint glimmer of not-so-Sausage Party Hope.
*Like it? SHARE IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. You are the marketing team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. Missing one? Tell me! *Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
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Jun 25, 2019
#24 - The Signal To Noise Ratio and A Digital Pretox
How does someone whose life is based online digitally detox? Good question. Let's find out; here's how it's going to start. Should be a hoot!
*Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team. *Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. Missing one? Tell me! *Check out www.escapingthecave.com & www.christophermedia.net
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Jun 21, 2019
#23 - The Social Media Disease - Distraction Sickness, Electronic Eyes, Thought Shaming
Hi New Zealand! Find yourself logging onto to the LaBrea Twitter Pit or Facebook and suddenly you've lost far more time to it than you intended? Me too. More on Digitally Enhanced Avatars, Digital Detox as a treatment for a distorted virtual perception/socialization as well as depression, anxiety, cynicism, and generalized anger.
Also,
-The universal nature of both our inner and shared stories
-Propaganda is a story.
-What happens when conflicting propagandas collide?
-Social Vengeance Warriors moving beyond "justice" and discrimination into thought control.
*Like it? SPREAD IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. Am I missing one? Let me know!
*Check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com
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Jun 17, 2019
#22 - Pick Your Authoritarian Wisely
Wrapping things up with Chris & Rich, we discuss how public relations is, literally, a euphemism for propaganda, manufacturing opinion, euphemisms and twisting words to fit the propagandist's purpose, informational overload creating political non-entities, and partisanship rotting political, cultural and social institutions.
Also:
-Abandoning basic American principles; Patriotism's vicious backlash
-Social upheaval or an authoritarian police state resulting from the governed revoking their consent
-The Great Utopia is not only impossible, its illusion is held together only by chains
-The ridiculous argument that people are voting "against their own interest"
-Morally self-righteous bigotry and Wokeflakes poking the Crackerbear
Like it? SHARE IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.
Check out www.escapingthecave.com
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Jun 13, 2019
#21 - Social Media Disease - Virtue Batsignals, Puritans, Exhausted Majority
Todd, Rich, and Chris discuss the unwiring of social evolution, totalitarian tribes spawning skittish clones, and an exhausted "center" with nowhere to land that's not infested by puritans. Also: the outright refusal to see our own team's propaganda, the "wisdom" of youth, and more on thoughtless opinions and how "branding" affects Social Media Political Influencers.
Like it? Share it. F**k Twitter. You're the marketing team. More: www.escapingthecave.com
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Jun 12, 2019
#20 - The Social Media Disease: Net Rage, Poking the Ape, Unleashing the Id
Cyber Space Monkeys continued. In part 1-of-3, I'm joined by Chris & Rich to discuss the effects of social media on individuals and society as a whole. Propaganda kerosene and the disinformation detonator, the connection between road rage and net rage, much of the IDW: for-profit social media brands and "right adjacent" influencers producing "content" for handouts, Nicholas Carr and how the Internet physically changes our brains, good deeds done solely to post the selfie, and more.
Like it? SHARE IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. You're my marketing team.
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Jun 7, 2019
#19 - Hey, Hilltucky! Reptilian Truth & The Outrage Fever
No Politics! Lots of drilling to the "get the f**k away from me!" meltdown core.
-Bulls**t Jousting
-The truth probably won't set you free
-Sausage Party Hope and the fueling Audacity of Belief
-How & why disinformation works: a first person play-by-play.
More: www.escapingthecave.com
Visit: www.christophermedia.com
Also: www.christophermedia.net
You found it. Now, subscribe, ya jerk. What's the matter with you?
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May 31, 2019
#18 - Propaganda 101: Corrupt Data & Telling Truth From Falsehood
“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.” “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” -Lippmann. At 35:25: The difference between clever & smart and more on the DIKW pyramid and what happens when citizens ignore corrupt data.
The first 35-minutes:
- Justin Amash and the criticism from the left.
- Mueller's fumble and the Democrat's ensuing demand that he star in their 2020 reality show/campaign ad.
- To Impeach or not Impeach: just do it or STFU!
- Democrats are politically impotent to stop anything Trump does. How does that "protest vote" look now?
More: www.escapingthecave.com
Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play
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May 23, 2019
#17 - The Social Media Disease: The Illusion of Knowledge & Democratized Opinion
Technology enables, and social media perpetuates, informational anarchy and prioritizes the cheap appearance of knowledge over fostering knowledge itself. Also, how the Internet changes cognition and the abandonment of expertise to the holy opinion: "my ignorance is equal to your knowledge."
Also:
-The DIKW pyramid and drowning in data.
-The Id on Parade, the natural state of man, and Leviathan.
-What happens when reasonable voices abandon the public square to mindless mobs of roving avatars?
-When avatars attack
-A classic full-frontal Toddzilla rant salvaged from The Lost Episode about Twitter, and more.
Elias Aboujaode's Virtually You:
https://www.amazon.com/Virtually-You-Dangerous-Powers-Personality/dp/0393340546
Nicholas Carr's The Shallows:
https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death:
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF…
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May 14, 2019
#16 - The Social Media Disease: Virtual Mobs, Conformity, & External Truth
Unsophisticated media consumers and the failure to take personal responsibility for our own intellectual maintenance. The surrender of the individual's intellectual autonomy to the conformist mob. How mobs-cells no longer need to leave the couch and are now free to anonymously molest & terrorize the "other" via Twitter, Facebook, and their phones.
Also:
* Social Media Influencers and how the Media 101 Model applies to them
* Emerson on independent thought, conformity, and consistency
* The abandonment of external truth and the path to authoritarianism
"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A
https://www.twitch.tv/toddzillax
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May 9, 2019
#15 - The Elephantitis Pandemic; Winter is Here
Haidt's elephant and how it relates to our constitutional crisis, rising authoritarianism, and our likely dystopian future. "Evolution didn't end with opposable thumbs."
* The thin veneer of civilization
* Self-dehumanization
* Extremists v. Moderate
* The Social Media Disease
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May 7, 2019
#14 - Political Orphans & Constitutional Hospice
Parties, their power-first representatives and constituents, fundamentalist ideologues, extremists, etc. are failing everyone.
Government institutions are melting down and the faith of the governed along with it.
Hey! What could possibly go wrong?!?
Need more Toddzilla?
1) Seek help.
2) Click the links. You can listen on your way to therapy.
More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
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May 4, 2019
#13 - The Boomerang Effect: "Hold My Beer"
Confused as to why your righteous demands aren't being met? Behold!
* Narratives, mythology, religion, and how they bind us together
* The Grand Design & Ideological Religions
* Making Enemies of Allies
* Haidt's Elephant
* Intellectual refinement and allowing yourself (and others) to make mistakes and change your mind
* External Truth and Reason
* Authoritarian creep
* No Hitler references!
www.escapingthecave.com
https://soundcloud.com/toddzillax
Use as directed.
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Apr 29, 2019
#12 - Media 101: It’s The People
Are you wondering why every source of "news" and information sucks? It's because everyone from MSNBC to NPR to FOX to Alex Jones to Social Media "Influencers" operate according to the same for-profit model: drawing eyeballs to their product to sell someone else's.
The re-resurrection begins by re-laying the foundation. More on the way.
Need more Toddzilla?
1) Seek help.
2) Click the links. You can listen on your way to therapy.
More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
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Mar 24, 2018
#11 - The Social Media Disease: Cyber Space Monkeys
First Social Media Disease antibiotic treatment. Starting with an X-Pod flashback to 2014, Todd discusses Cambridge Analytica before turning to more recent effects of our collective addiction to social media on society and how a bilateral abandonment of a commitment to basic common facts--in favor of tasty propaganda--is having a dehumanizing effect and rapidly eroding the social contract. Also: cyber space monkeys, avatars showing off for each other in the Matrix, and the digital-organic hybrid: meme belching Cyborgs.
Need more Toddzilla? First, seek help. Second, click the links below. You can listen on your way to therapy.
More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
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Mar 15, 2018
The Demon (2014)
Recorded shortly after Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, this was one of the most popular episodes from the old podcast. It covers many topics Friar Chris and I discussed in the previous podcasts, including the fraud of "normal", misguided identity, the emptiness of success, depression, and the performers need for praise and validation. Some of the early ideas surrounding the Social Media Disease such as personal “branding” and virtual facades are here as well as kernels of things that will become familiar to the regular listener, such as The Marrow of Humanity.
More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
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Mar 12, 2018
Hitchhiking and Philosophy
The final episode of the Friar Chris Series begins with a discussion about the differences between bicycle touring and backpacking then moves on to deeper topics, including (@ 15:45) my experience volunteering on the Gulf Coast in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and the corrosive and corrupting effects of tribalism and dogma in the Disaster Relief Industrial Complex. We then move on to (mostly) explore the fundamental ideas behind why he and I chose hitchhiking and what we learned and experienced while traveling the country as “disposable” vagabonds loitering out on the fringe. SPOILER ALERT: Sausage Party Hope lies within!
Cheat Sheet:
36:40 - Institutional incompetence, the loss of confidence leading to the rage that we found everywhere in 2008-9 which, ultimately, gave birth to Tea Party Extremism.
50:28 - The philosophy/theology of a guiding hand synchronicity operating system, audacity, and the (unresolvable?) conflict between unprovable theology and a commitment to trut…
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Mar 5, 2018
Friar Chris - Walking Savannah to Seattle
In this politics-free second of three, I continue chatting with Chris Dyson about his walk from Savannah, Georgia to Seattle which included enduring a turbulent breakup on the side of US-287 in northern Colorado, getting lost in rural Wyoming, and anecdotes and observations about some of the fascinating people he met along the way. Deeper topics include self-generated baseless fear, choosing existential isolation in the name of personal security, internal narratives, religion & spirituality, restless escapism, travel and aging, and more. (E) More: www.escapingthecave.com Archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Don’t forget to subscribe!
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Feb 27, 2018
Friar Chris - A Gringo in the Andes
The first of three expansive (and nearly politics-free!) episodes with Chris Dyson, we discuss the mystical route leading to his founding of The Hof, his hostel in the Cordillera Blanca range of the Peruvian Andes and the difficulties he encountered in being a gringo outsider trying to integrate into the nearby Quechuan community, including the multiple robberies endured during his six and a half years living in Peru. We also discuss working at an ayuahuasca retreat, "The Personal Peace Corp" and the Dennis Doctrine, tribalism, non-caucasian based racism, apocalypse cultism, the epidemic of human disconnection, the related death of the sense of community, and more.
My photos of The Hof: www.upperworldphoto.com
Subscribe to Escaping the Cave on iTunes and Google Play and visit www.escapingthecave.com for more.
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Feb 10, 2018
Self-Delusion, Solutions in Truth, and A Side of Crow
In this sprawling episode, Todd attacks Quixoteism & "personal truth": the human tendency toward egocentric self-delusion and how the Sausage Party Hope resides in the commitment to observing objective reality. He also discusses artist "activism", content control and the new feed, third party futility, and the need for one political religion or the other to inter the opposing half of the country inside ideological "concentration camps". You're also given the gift of laughter as he dines on his Twitter "marketing" crow. 2018 says, "Never Say Never!"
Subscribe to Escaping the Cave on iTunes/Google Play or visit www.escapingthecave.com #MAGA? #MeToo? #NotForYou. Use as directed.
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Feb 6, 2018
Ideological Religions & The Talking Dead
Laying the foundation for future podcasts, Todd talks about identity politics being mutually exclusive with “equality”, ideological drift, political doctrine as competing and hostile secular religions, cyber mobs, and the zombifying effects of dogma.
NEW FEED! Subscribe: iTunes or Google Play
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Feb 6, 2018
Detecting the Disinformation: Tribal Warfare, Slithering Fascism (2014)
Recorded in 2014 shortly before the first podcast ended, this episode discusses my initial Facebook purges, Trumpism (before Trump), the social damage inflicted by echo chambered disinformation (fake news) on facebook as well as the human inclination toward delusional tribalism. Not recommended for those looking for Sausage Party Hope! Definitely recommended for those wanting to reflect back on the not-so-distant past and reminisce on how we got here. And how things not only haven't changed, but gotten worse.
NEW FEED! Subscribe: iTunes or Google Play
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