Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed

Zoom and other platforms have made virtual meetings very convenient and allow people in different locations to gather together in one place. Still, virtual meetings can be inefficient and can waste a lot of time if people aren’t aware of some common don’ts. This episode starts with a list of things not to do or say that can streamline those meetings. One thing that sets us apart from all other animals is our ability to speak and communicate with a complex language. So, we talk. We talk to each other, to ourselves and to no one in particular. The process of creating speech is complicated and it turns out it does more than just communicate our thoughts. there are a lot of benefits to talking out loud and to ourselves. We need to talk according to my guest Maryellen MacDonald. She is a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology and language sciences at the University of Wisconsin−Madison. She is also author of the book More Than Words: How Talking Sharpens the Mind and Shapes Our World (https://amzn.to/44VKNZ5). You often hear the term – “brainwashing” but what is it really? How does it work to get people to join a cult or believe some fringe theory that most people think is crazy? It’s interesting that we only think people have been brainwashed if what they believe differs from what we believe. Here to help us understand brainwashing is Rebecca Lemov. She is a historian of science at Harvard University and author of the book ok The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion (https://amzn.to/3Fw8Pzn). Price optimization. It’s a term that describes why you may be paying more for car insurance than you need to even if you’ve been a loyal customer to your existing car insurer. Listen and you could end up saving a lot of money. https://consumerfed.org/testimonial/consumer-federation-of-america-sends-letter-highlighting-opposition-to-price-optimization/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! CARAWAY: If you have been eyeing their internet famous 12 piece cookware set, now is the perfect time to buy! Enjoy fast, free shipping, easy returns, and a 30-day trial. Plus, if you visit Carawayhome.com/SYSK you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase. Caraway. Non-Toxic cookware made modern. MINT MOBILE: Ditch overpriced wireless and get 3 months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://MintMobile.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://FactorMeals.com/something50off⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ROCKET MONEY: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://RocketMoney.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠ QUINCE: Elevate your shopping with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: Introducing the new Dell AI PC . It’s not just an AI computer, it’s a computer built for AI to help do your busywork for you! Get a new Dell AI PC at https://Dell.com/ai-pc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, what not to say on a Zoom or conference call. Then, talking. It's something we all do and need to do because talking has so many benefits.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  To talk and specifically name what we're feeling clarifies our emotions for us. Therapists ask, "And how does that make you feel?" Because the act of naming the emotion is beneficial to the talker.

• 1:57Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why you really should shop around for car insurance and a look into brainwashing, what it is and what it isn't.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  I think the temptation is to lob the word "brainwashing" as an insult, to say, "Oh, those people over there, surely they're brainwashed." I mean, it often ends up as the end of an argument. Like, "I have no way of further talking to you. You're surely brainwashed."

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

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• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  What not to say on a Zoom call or a conference call? That's a good way to start this episode. Hi and welcome to Something You Should Know. Conference calls, or Zoom meetings, have become a standard part of the workday for many of us. And the fact that everyone comes to these meetings but is actually at a different location can really drag down the effectiveness of these meetings. So here is some great advice regarding things not to say on a Zoom call or a conference call where multiple people are present from different locations. The first thing not to say is, "Are we all on?" No one person can answer that, so everyone will talk at once.

• 5:07Mike Carruthers?

  And of course, the people who aren't on can't hear you ask if we're all on, so there's really no point to that.

• 5:16Mike Carruthers?

  "Can everyone hear me?" Again, no one person can answer that, so everyone will talk at once. "Did everybody get the agenda?" Again, no one person can answer that, so everybody talks at once. "Let's keep this short." Well, that makes it sound as if the meeting is pretty unimportant and maybe unnecessary. "Let's do a quick roll call." I've heard that one. Well, why do a roll call? First of all, you can see who's on a Zoom call or a conference call, and no one really cares who's there or who isn't. It's just a waste of time. And who hasn't heard this? "We'll just wait a few minutes for everyone else to get here." Why? They're late, let's start the meeting.

• 6:00Mike Carruthers?

  And then, when someone who is late shows up, they interrupt the meeting and say, "Sorry, I'm late." Well, why would you interrupt a meeting to announce that? If you eliminate these phrases from Zoom meetings and conference calls, things can move along much quicker. And that is something you should know.

• 6:23Mike Carruthers?

  Of all the creatures on earth, we humans have one special ability that truly sets us apart: the ability to speak, to communicate with a complicated language. And so, we talk. We talk to each other, we talk to ourselves, we talk to inanimate objects, we talk. And as it turns out, talking does more than just communicate. Interestingly, talking is hard work. In fact, we can understand speech 50% faster than we can create our own speech. That's how hard it is. And all the things that go on in your head that allow you to speak, spill over into many areas of your life.

• 7:07Mike Carruthers?

  Here to tell you about this is Mary Ellen McDonald. She is a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology and language sciences at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And she is author of a book called More Than Words: How Talking Sharpen's the Mind and Shapes Our World. Hi, Mary Ellen, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Hi, Mike, it's good to be here.

• 7:30Mike Carruthers?

  So when you think about it, talking is a pretty special ability. It allows us to communicate and form relationships and communities and societies. And which is very special, but help me understand what else it does beyond that.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  What we don't usually recognize is that talking has some very interesting, very positive effects on the person doing the talking, which actually have nothing to do with communicating with other people. So, talking sharpens our attention, the talker's attention, regulates the talker's emotions, helps us pursue our goals, and more good things. And you don't even have to be talking to someone. You can get these benefits by talking to yourself, writing it down, or just talking in your head.

• 8:19Mike Carruthers?

  And how do you know this?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Well, we know this because we scientists who study talking have looked at how talking works and why it has these effects that it has. And we get these benefits from talking really because of the way that talking works in your brain. So suppose you want to say something like, "It's really important that I finish this report today." Now, we have a pile of about 50,000 words we have stored in our memory. And to say this particular sentence at that particular moment you want to say it, we need to find those specific words: "report," "today," "important," that sort of stuff.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And only those words. We don't need a bunch of other words gumming up the talking. It's a really tall order to get just those words out of our 50,000-word haystack of memory. And the way we do it is to concentrate very hard mentally, even if you're not aware of this concentration, concentrate on the idea we want to convey. And this concentration makes it possible to find the relevant words for talking. The consequence, the additional consequence of you concentrating on the idea is that it then helps you maintain focus on it. Having said that this crucial report needs to get finished, you're more likely to buckle down and work on it.

• 9:50Mike Carruthers?

  What is the difference between talking to yourself inside your head and talking out loud to someone else?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  People have actually studied, it's a very hard thing to study, but researchers have studied what goes on when people are talking in their head. The first interesting thing to know is that some people report there is no voice in their head and there is no talking in their head. And we don't know quite what's up with that because the vast majority of people report that they can hear a voice in their head when they're thinking to themselves or when they're reading to themselves. But for those people who do report...

• 10:34Speaker 01

  That there's a voice in their head. We can detect tiny muscle movements in the mouth that suggest that, in fact, they're doing part of the process of talking up to but not including actually having the articulation of the words come out of their mouths. And there's also really fascinating research studying patients who have strokes and other kinds of illnesses that keep them from being able to talk anymore, where scientists are trying to turn brainwaves into a computer voice talking, where the patient's talking in their head

• 11:19Speaker 01

  drives the electrical signal connected to this computerized voice so that the person who can't physically talk themselves anymore can generate some messages. And there's no way that that's going to work unless there's some talking in your head that is driving that system.

• 11:40Mike Carruthers?

  It seems to me that when I speak versus when I talk to myself in my head, when I speak, there's something more permanent about it. It's stickier. It's not just a fleeting thought, but it's, you know, said out loud. The world has heard it. And there's something more permanent about it.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Right. So I would say there's, you've identified two out of the three kinds of levels of talking to yourself. There's the possibly fleeting one in your head. There's the talking out loud to yourself that, as you say, sounds more important and maybe lasting. And the third one that researchers have identified is writing it down in a journal, in a letter to yourself, in a letter to somebody else. The act of writing is slower, more deliberative, and has even more of this sticky, long-lasting feeling. You can probably make your even talking in your head feeling

• 12:46Speaker 01

  more like talking out loud by really concentrating on it and trying to do it. Strongly, in a way. And in fact, in sports psychology, athletes are coached to talk to themselves, usually in their head, but out loud if they feel like it, to boost their attention, squeeze out more focus, more determination, better performance in whatever athletic endeavor they're doing. And the coaching helps them take that fleeting thought and be more deliberative about what it is that they're saying to themselves because they don't really have the opportunity to stop and write it down in the middle of whatever athletic thing they're doing.

• 13:31Mike Carruthers?

  I want to go back to something you said, and maybe it just is what it is, and there's no story here. But you said people, there are some people who report they have no voice in their head. So when they read, what's that, what does that look like for them? Because when I read, I hear the words in my head. That's how I, that's how I read.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, most people do. And little electrodes put on people's mouths while they're reading for most people show just slight activation of, for example, your lips or your tongue as you're reading, even though you're not a person who's reading out loud. Apparently, and this is a really new area, there are a subset of people who say they don't have a voice in their head, either when they're thinking or when they are reading. And the people reading who don't hear a voice in their head seem to just get to the meaning of what they're reading. And those of us who do have a voice in our head are probably

• 14:36Speaker 01

  getting to the meaning and the sounds of the words. So it seems to be possible that readers can sometimes just get to meaning without having a conscious awareness of sounds in their head when they're reading.

• 14:50Mike Carruthers?

  You know what's interesting to me? Children are always talking to themselves. If you peek into a child's room while they're playing, they are narrating everything they're doing.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  That is absolutely right, and child development researchers think that that internal, that external talking to themselves is kind of the on-ramp to being able to talk in their heads. So, to the extent that we understand this in little kids, you're right, they talk all the time, they are like narrating the play-by-play and the color commentary of their day or what they're doing, and that little running monologue, eventually, age five, age six, something like that, starts to become more internal and less external talking.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  And, for the most part, internal talking is more efficient, it runs faster in the head.

• 15:50Mike Carruthers?

  People will point at, make fun of, people who talk to themselves, but everybody talks to themselves out loud. I mean, when you're home alone, you'll talk to yourself. There's nobody alive that doesn't do that.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  We're often not totally aware of the behaviors that we do, and I can easily predict that muttering to yourself when nobody else is around is a behavior that some people believe they never do, but actually do, do, yes.

• 16:20Mike Carruthers?

  And you know what, I think people do it as a, just a knee-jerk reaction, like if you're, so say you're walking down the street all by yourself, and a bird comes and like hits you in the head or something, everybody will say, "What the hell was..." They'll say, they will say it out loud as a knee-jerk reaction to that, and there's nobody listening, they're saying it to themselves, for reasons I don't necessarily know, but it happens all the time.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yes, I think that particular talking is an outgrowth of a, of a kind of vocalization that we have, and in fact, many, many other animals have. It's a surprise reaction to a stimulus, or like a bird hitting us, like, "Ah!" And that is involuntary, and it's very adaptive, because if anybody else is around and you scream, "Ah!", somebody's gonna come help you, or see what's the matter, and...

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Ah, what was that? That's sort of both the involuntary and a little bit of, yeah, talking out loud that's not communicated, but is just basically expressing the surprise of the situation.

• 17:37Mike Carruthers?

  I like the way you say "ah!"

• 17:39Speaker 01

  I could do it more.

• 17:41Mike Carruthers?

  No, that's okay. Well, yeah, go ahead. One more time.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  No, no, I think we're good.

• 17:45Mike Carruthers?

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• 21:10Mike Carruthers?

  So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk. So Mary Ellen, when you study people who talk to themselves, how does, if at all, the language they speak to themselves in change anything?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  There's some suggestion... That thinking or talking out loud while problem solving in your native strongest language versus your second language, even if you're still fluent, it's not as good as your strongest language. There's some suggestion there that problem solving works somewhat differently. In that, people who are talking in their second language are more logical than in their native language. I'm not really convinced about the explanations for this,

• 22:13Speaker 01

  but the most popular explanation is that people are more emotional in their native language. It's what they grew up with as a little kid. It's where their original family ties lie. And so there's more emotionality in thinking through a problem, speaking in their native language. But for those who have a second language handy that they learned a bit later in life, they don't have that many emotional connections and they're able to more home in on just the most logical aspects of the story. That's the best explanation that exists right now.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I think it's a kind of new effect and it needs a bit more checking up on.

• 23:00Mike Carruthers?

  One thing you talk about that I find really interesting is about kids. Kids spend a lot of their time being talked to. But you say, or well, you explain it, but about the importance of kids talking out loud themselves.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  So because talking is so important to the person doing the talking, it follows that a kid's talking is really important to their own cognitive and language development. I think this is an important message because parents have heard a lot of messages about how it is so important for the parents to talk to the kid. And they haven't heard the message that actually the kid's own talking and the amount of back and forth real conversation that parents have with their kids, the kid's own communication is

• 24:01Speaker 01

  At least as important as the amount of language that the parent is spreading out in the environment to the kid. And that is not only interesting, but it has consequences for parenting today. If a parent thinks, well, language input is important, they could talk to their kid, great, or they could hand their kid a tablet to listen to a story on YouTube for kids, or they could hand their kid their phone to listen to somebody talking on the phone.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  And all of these media all have input if they've got some language in them, but what they don't have is the opportunity for the kid to talk back. And a lot of parents are passing phones and tablets and TV to their kids at increasing rates these days, at the same time as the National Association of Pediatricians are advising that little kids should not be having this kind of media. And a primary reason why they shouldn't be having media at young ages is because the kids need to be talking themselves.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  When the kid's watching something on a tablet, the kid's not talking and the parent's not talking to them. And that's a big impact on parenting and understanding that kids need to talk is a really big thing that I want people to understand.

• 25:38Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you, okay, and I get that. It sounds logical, but, but kids need to talk because what happens when they do? What's the benefit of doing this? That's what I think I need to hear.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So earlier, we talked about how when you talk, you have to get the right words out, which requires a lot of concentration, and kids need to have that exercise. So.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Educators talk about certain kinds of lessons in school being a "desirable difficulty." It works the kid's brain hard and it has desirable consequences. Their brain gets a workout and they get better and learn more and more skilled and so on, so on. Talking is a desirable difficulty for little kids. It's got all that concentrating to get the words. It's managing the back and forth of conversations and turn-taking. It's planning out what they want to say.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  It's the exercise of turning some internal idea into their actual speech. And all of those have a desirable difficulty that tunes the kid's perception and ability to concentrate and what's called executive function, their ability to regulate their emotions and plan ahead and so on.

• 27:14Mike Carruthers?

  You know, that's really interesting because you don't hear that message much, but it makes total sense that if kids aren't talking, then they're not developing the skill of talking. They're just having to listen or passively watch a tablet that just doesn't engage that whole part of the deal.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  That's right. And then they get to school and school discourages talking. And there are all sorts of studies that show that talking actually boosts learning. There's pretty much nothing you can't learn better if you're talking about it. And yet, our school situation is such that, with very few exceptions, children are told to be quiet and listen to the teacher and don't talk. And all this wisdom we have about how talking benefits the talker really runs up against not only those misapprehensions in parenting about why it would be okay to hand your kid

• 28:21Speaker 01

  a tablet, but also all these misapprehensions in the education system where people think that the ideal form of learning is to sit quietly. And it's not. It's to engage by talking.

• 28:35Mike Carruthers?

  What about the idea of talking and emotions? You know, we hear, and the reason people go to therapy is to talk about things, to talk about their emotions. What's the connection from your perspective?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  When we're in some intense emotional state, we don't often know exactly what we're feeling. We might be able to say upset, but that could be lots of things. It turns out that doing the work to talk and specifically name what we're feeling clarifies our emotions for us. Therapists ask, and how does that make you feel? In part because the therapist wants to know how the client is feeling, but the therapist is asking that question because the act of naming the emotion is beneficial to the talker themselves. So when

• 29:30Speaker 01

  you're feeling upset, try to stop and say to yourself or to somebody else, or write it down, exactly what it is you're feeling. Is it that you are disappointed about your brother? You're angry? You're worried? If you have to, go through the possibilities and try to home in by talking about it, exactly what it is that you feel. Studies show that people who name their emotions are better able to cope with whatever it is that is making them upset.

• 30:09Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I've never talked about talking this way before. It's an unusual way to look at the topic, and I appreciate you joining me. I've been speaking with Mary Ellen McDonald. She is a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology and language sciences at the University of Wisconsin. She's author of the book More Than Words: How Talking Sharpen's the Mind and Shapes Our World. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes.

• 30:36Mike Carruthers?

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• 33:28Mike Carruthers?

  now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. When you hear the word "brainwashing," you probably think of cults or kidnappers who manipulate people into thinking or believing something, which is true, that's brainwashing. But brainwashing is more than that, and it's usually a negative term in the sense that we often say people have been brainwashed, but only because they believe something we

• 34:10Mike Carruthers?

  don't. You aren't brainwashed, and people who believe what you believe are not brainwashed. Only people who believe something different. The other thing about brainwashing is that we all like to believe we can't be brainwashed. Really? I'm not so sure. Here to dive into this topic is Rebecca Lamoche. She is an historian of science at Harvard University and author of the book "The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper Persuasion." Hi Rebecca, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Thanks so much, Mike. It's great to be here.

• 34:48Mike Carruthers?

  So, we hear that term "brainwashing" a lot, and I'm not sure I know exactly what it is, if it's a real thing, or if it kind of describes persuasion in a different way. What is brainwashing?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Well, one, I mean, there are many definitions of brainwashing, starting in the 1950s, but I think a cognate that I like to use, which is two words, kind of gets to the heart of the dynamics of brainwashing, which is coercive persuasion. And that reminds us that brainwashing is a combination of coercion or external force with persuasion, which is something that works internally. And there has to be a combination of both.

• 35:27Mike Carruthers?

  But is brainwashing, I think of brainwashing, not knowing much about it, is basically bombarding you with something so much of the time, so often, so many different ways, that you come to believe something that is not true?

• 35:45Speaker 02

  That could be one definition. I think it has more to do with not so much learning to believe something that's not true, as finding yourself in a situation where you're capitulated either to save your life, or one capitulates, or to, I mean, a famous case of brainwashing would be Patty Hearst, who said, who was kidnapped by a guerrilla organization and held in a closet and, you know, bombarded, as you say, by tracts of information, but also by brutal treatment, and ultimately rape, and various forms of degradation. And in the end, she said, "I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs." And she

• 36:28Speaker 02

  had made a choice to survive in that situation. And she, for that time, she came to accept other beliefs than were her own originally.

• 36:41Mike Carruthers?

  So Patty Hearst is a good example to illustrate my question here. Did she come to actually believe what she says she believed? Or did she pretend to believe in order to survive?

• 36:54Speaker 02

  I think the latter. I think one of the confusions is she was truly converted and she would say that herself or has said that in interviews. She said, "For that time, I was truly a soldier in their army and I had to be..." She had to believe it herself and she had to become that in order to make them believe it because they didn't want to think they had brainwashed her. It's actually quite a tricky dynamic sometimes. But I think one of our mistakes in trying to understand the either/or of that is that people can be genuinely converted, but it's not a permanent state necessarily.

• 37:25Mike Carruthers?

  So Patty Hearst and other examples that you talk about are pretty extreme examples. Is brainwashing by its definition extreme? Or can you kind of lightly brainwash somebody?

• 37:39Speaker 02

  That's a great question. This is what drew me to the topic is that I thought if I look at these extreme cases, could I learn something about the seemingly banal or ordinary circumstances in which we're mildly coercively persuaded each day? Or so I was feeling when I embarked on this research that even going through a shopping mall where each of your senses is sort of targeted by sensory stimuli in a very deliberate way, could that constitute a form of mild brainwashing? And could the extreme examples shed light on the ordinary circumstances? And I came to believe through my research that they do.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  And this includes our increasingly pervasive digital environments.

• 38:25Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I would think we're essentially all being brainwashed to some extent all the time. I mean, most of what I've come to believe isn't through rigorous research and analysis. It's affected by what I saw my parents believe or what I saw my friends believe or what teachers taught me in school, that all of that is a form of brainwashing. But we don't use the term "brainwashing." Brainwashing is a negative term. Like, you aren't brainwashed to believe what I want you to believe. You've been brainwashed to believe what I don't believe.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I do make that argument because I think the tendency or the temptation is to... Is to lob the word "brainwashing" as an insult, to say, "Oh, that group is brainwashed, or those people over there, surely they're brainwashed," or just to simply, I mean, it often ends up as the, you know, the end of an argument, like, you know, "I have no way of further talking to you, you're surely brainwashed." But what I suggest and recommend as a result of my investigations and my personal experience with it is that it's actually an invitation for self-investigation, that I think we are all being, to whatever degree, affected all the time, and that to the extent we're unaware of it, these programs

• 39:44Speaker 02

  or messages and the dynamics by which they operate, then we're more vulnerable.

• 39:50Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting what you said about, you know, it's the end of a conversation that, "Oh, you're just brainwashed because you don't believe what I believe," is the rest of that sentence that doesn't usually get said. It's never, "We're all brainwashed in this together."

• 40:05Speaker 02

  That's never been spoken, except that I guess I would encourage us to start thinking that way.

• 40:11Mike Carruthers?

  Can anybody be brainwashed?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this, so one interesting area to look at this is in cult recruitment, and a lot of the similar dynamic happens with cults and with scams as well, where we often, you know, there's a, there's a great popularity of cult documentaries and also articles that detail people who fell for, you know, online scams or various schemes in which they were deluded or deceived, and often the dynamic is, "Oh, that happened to them," but as I follow along, I always try to find out, "Well, this is one I wouldn't have believed that," or "I never would have thought that cult leader was handsome," or "I never would have signed over my, my savings to this person," or, you know, it becomes

• 40:54Speaker 02

  a distancing, an end of a conversation, or just a feeling that I'm safe. But I think that, I think that if you actually look at the history of cults and people who becomes involved in them and talk to people, really, any of us is vulnerable. Any of us can be susceptible at a certain moment, in a certain time or place. So some of it has to do with happenstance, some of it has to do with, you know, your own personal history, but it's certainly true that there's, I can't think of anyone who's not vulnerable.

• 41:25Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it would seem, I mean, we all have to have a position on something some of the time, and how we got to that position could probably be argued as brainwashing. I mean, Republican or Democrat, one thinks the other's been brainwashed.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Well, we do find ourselves in that circumstance right now, in an extremely polarizing way. So, just to step aside from that for a minute, I do think you're on to something deeper. And one of the reasons I write about brainwashing is to discuss the, you know, a deeper dynamic, which is not the same as brainwashing, but is kind of an infrastructure to it, you could think of it, which is the processes of sociogenesis and psychogenesis, which is how are we made up psychologically and sociologically as human beings, because each of us comes from a particular context and has experiences. And one thing I became interested in is how do we, there's a sociologist named Norbert Eles in the early 20th century,

• 42:26Speaker 02

  and he wrote about, well, how was it that people started to, you know, mold and shape their behavior among other human beings in Europe in the 17th century? And he looked at all these old etiquette manuals from the 1700s, and he found that these manuals were full of advice such as, please never blow your nose into your, using the tablecloth, or you should never use your hand to blow your nose and then pass the meat to somebody else, or please try to relieve yourself in the stairway and not in the corner of the room, or things like that. A gentleman would never do this. And this was advice given to adults, but over time, as he read these manuals, he saw that gradually, people just

• 43:09Speaker 02

  incorporated these standards, these modes of behavior, and they were only given to children eventually, and then they were eventually incorporated into the behavior that was expected. And I think, and then so he used that to identify what we think of, that we're all incredibly shaped by the assumptions and styles of our time, but we don't realize it, we come to think of them as natural. And I think it's that sense that we tend to forget the extent to which we're malleable and molded, that allows us to be somewhat blind to the way brainwashing works.

• 43:49Mike Carruthers?

  The idea, though, going back to the cults, that people would say, "Well, I would never fall for that. I would never believe that." Does that happen? Do people get recruited into cults and go, "This is crazy. I'm getting out of here," and they don't fall for it?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  That is true. I mean, there's a great story I came across in my research. So there was a man named Ray Connolly, who, when he was 17 years old, kind of joined this cult. He didn't even know the name of it, but he'd just come off of a bad breakup with his girlfriend. He was searching. He was full of angst. And so he joined this group that ultimately found out it was called the Children of God. And he talks about the recruiting process, which was quite deceptive, but it also, you know, took advantage of his own state of mind, which was very confused at the time. This was around 1969. But he also describes

• 44:46Speaker 02

  other people were swept up in the same process of deceptive recruiting and love bombing and thought-stopping and all the procedures that cults use. But some of them slunk away in the first day, and some of them escaped that same week. But the people who were left a couple of weeks after that, like himself, he ended up staying for like 35 years and having 17 children, and then finally leaving.

• 45:14Mike Carruthers?

  And so the people who are more likely to be brainwashed, why is that? What do they have in common that makes them more susceptible?

• 45:23Speaker 02

  No, that's a great question. And sometimes when you hear stories about people's recruitment or how they came to end up in a cult, there's so much accident in it. And I think, looking back, they feel misfortunate. But I think there are stages in your life that make you more open to it if you're going through a transition. Also, young people are more easily lured into cults because they may have less to reality test against. Or, you know, there are times when each of us may be more or less open or, as I said, vulnerable. So I think there are a range of factors. And the more I look at it, and the more I hear people's

• 46:08Speaker 02

  stories, the more I feel that you can't completely guard against it. But the more that you understand the dynamics, the more protected you'll be.

• 46:19Mike Carruthers?

  Do people who have been brainwashed like a Patty Hearst, and when they get out of it, do they ever say, "I have no idea why I fell for that"? Or are they aware of what's going on and fall for it anyway because they just seemingly have no choice?

• 46:38Speaker 02

  That's a really good question. I think it's a combination of both. In fact, one of the profound stories I heard was of a French physician who was working in China right before the revolution, so around 1948. And he felt that he was of so much use to the Chinese people that he would never be arrested. He would just be allowed to continue his work. But ultimately, he was swept up by the incoming communist government and sent to a re-education camp and labeled an enemy of the people. And he said that, you know, first, they put chains around his wrists and ankles, and they forced him to eat out of a dog bowl on the floor. And because he was chained,

• 47:21Speaker 02

  he couldn't even unzip his pants to urinate. So he had to rely on the other cell members to do this. And he was reduced to a state of utter helplessness. And he was also interrogated and sleep deprived. And he said, after a while, he came to believe his own confession, which initially he knew was false. And at the same time, so he simultaneously believed it, but he sectioned off the part of himself. Some people call this the pseudo. He almost developed a pseudo self, which believed it. And then another part knew that it was wrong. And later, when he was released by the Chinese government after three years, and after he was declared perfectly reeducated,

• 48:05Speaker 02

  they sent him back to Hong Kong. And he said, "I can still move between the two. I can still..." And he was quite psychologically damaged by this whole experience. So when Robert J. Lifton interviewed him on his release, he said, I can stand in the people's standpoint, or I can stand in what I take to be your standpoint, and I can see the truth of each.

• 48:30Mike Carruthers?

  Is there a line between persuasion and brainwashing? Or are they two different things? Or one is just an extreme version of the other?

• 48:38Speaker 02

  I think there is a line at a certain point. It's probably a continuum, but there's nothing nefarious about persuasion. We all, it's of the essence of being human to try to persuade each other and even to try to change each other's minds. The cult expert and exit counselor Steve Hassan writes or argues that there's a continuum, and that only at a certain point does persuasion become pathological, and there are identifiable features to that. So I don't think persuasion itself is on the pathological continuum. But but once you've reached a certain point where coercion is involved, where there's

• 49:21Speaker 02

  deception, where there's an extreme hierarchy, where there's a penalty for leaving, where one is alienated from one's family sometimes, or there are certain features that can indicate something is either an abusive cult or involves a great deal of brainwashing.

• 49:42Mike Carruthers?

  So brainwashing, so when people throw around this idea that, oh, you've been brainwashed because you're a liberal or a conservative or whatever, that's not really brainwashing. It's just that's what you believe, but it's not destroying your life and your family doesn't speak to you anymore. I mean, it's just, you've got to believe something, so you believe that, and you're entitled.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  I suppose that's true. I think that the it's more the dynamics. It's maybe the dynamics of um the way brainwashing operates as a device that separates people that causes this extreme polarization to happen. And that actually does destroy families sometimes because we all know that that can happen in an extremely dichotomous political period like the one we're in. But I don't think the belief itself is the problem. I think it's our emotional underpinnings and the way that we interpret interpret them.

• 50:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I would think that that it's less what you believe as to how you got there that is brainwashing or not brainwashing. It's what happened to you to get you to the point where you now believe what you believe.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  I think that there's something to that.

• 51:02Mike Carruthers?

  And so do we need to be on guard that people are trying to brainwash us? Or is this really much more of an extreme thing than, you know, unless you're walking into a cult's front door, this is not really something to concern yourself with?

• 51:20Speaker 02

  I actually think we should all be very concerned with it. And one example is the recent the release of digital AI digital companions or chatbots, which are which were first released as separate products, but are now being built into most platforms, including Google and Meta. And these chatbots have sort of, I mean, the thing that's concerning about digital brainwashing is that it's hyper-targeted. And I mean, if you compare it with mass media where everyone would see the same, be exposed to the same advertisement or show or broadcast or some program, and then have your own individual reaction, perhaps it would shape your beliefs or persuade you to whatever degree.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  But it's social media, these can be sculpted individually using your the data that you give and as you're tracked across platforms. But with AI companions, these can be shaped even more intimately. So that now you receive your own message that's shaped just for you and your psychological type, and you're also providing feedback to this companion. So we've already seen some extreme.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  I don't know if I want to call this example brainwashing, but there's a terrible tragedy where a 14-year-old boy committed suicide at the behest of his AI companion, who he had named Daenerys after the television show Game of Thrones. And he had this intense relationship with this chatbot. But I think there's potential for tremendous alteration of people's psychological and so states of being through these interactions. But even even on a day-to-day level, I think we all need to be aware of the areas where we do have freedom. We're extremely malleable. And maybe especially if you think only other people are,

• 53:15Speaker 02

  you should be concerned. But we can do well to pay attention to the bodily sensations and cues that we're always getting, but often ignore when we're, for example, interacting with social media or digital chatbots.

• 53:33Mike Carruthers?

  You know, for so many people, I think the idea of being brainwashed is hard to fathom. Like, I can't believe someone would come to believe that or fall for that or join that cult. So it's interesting to get some insight into this. I've been speaking with Rebecca Lemov. She is an historian of science at Harvard and author of the book, "The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion." There's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. And Rebecca, thanks.

• 54:05Speaker 03

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• 54:31Speaker 04

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• 55:01Mike Carruthers?

  Thanks for explaining all this.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Thanks so much. It was an interesting conversation. I appreciate it.

• 55:10Mike Carruthers?

  If you've had your car insurance for a long time, you might think your loyalty is rewarded by a lower premium. Often, it is not. In most states, there is a practice called price optimization. Essentially, it is a practice the insurance industry uses to get more money out of customers who are not likely to shop around. They use software that tracks your spending habits, like what you buy at the grocery store, how often you change cable providers, and they use that data to set your rate, according to the Consumer Federation of America. Basically, if you think you're not going anywhere, they'll take the risk of hiking up your premium, knowing you're not likely to leave.

• 55:54Mike Carruthers?

  Groups like the Consumer Federation of America have fought this industry practice for some time, and now 18 states and the District of Columbia prohibit price optimization. If you are in a state that still allows it, and you call your insurance company and tell them that you want a better rate, you're still not likely to get as good a deal as if you shopped around. So at least when it comes to auto insurance, loyalty can be very one-sided. And that is something you should know. If you listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, they have a share button, a share link thing on the app, and you can share this episode or any other episode of this

• 56:37Mike Carruthers?

  podcast with someone you know, and we would appreciate it if you would do that. I'm Micah Rathers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.