My friend's dad is a Holocaust denier now

Today, we’re doing something a little different. Grant asks Ryan to step back from being host, and instead to step in as a social worker for people who fall for conspiracy theories. The person in question is Grant’s friend’s dad, who read a recent “report” saying that the Holocaust “actually wasn’t as bad as they say,” and it’s tearing his family apart. We’ll get into what causes people — especially our Boomer family members — to fall for these theories, and whether we can help them. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for just five bucks at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Engineer: Rebecca Seidel - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 02

  Hey, Ryan.

• 0:31Ryan Broderick?

  Hello, Grant.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  We're doing something a little different, so let me know if you can hear this.

• 0:38Speaker 04

  There's no question you can ask me that's gonna make me feel comfortable right now.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  I'm gonna put you at ease.

• 0:43Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I'm hearing you talk to someone who's very nervous.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  That's right. You're hearing correctly. Let's keep listening. Which of the following options is gonna be the reason why your wife leaves you?

• 0:59Speaker 02

  All right, all right. Let's talk about your dad being a Holocaust denier.

• 1:02Ryan Broderick?

  Yep, I heard that, and I have lots of follow-up questions.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  So I interviewed my friend Matt, which is not his name. Today, he's an extremism researcher, but I've known him since I was 14, which means I've known his dad since I was 14. But I wasn't too surprised to find out that his dad has some questions about the Holocaust.

• 1:43Ryan Broderick?

  Sure, many such cases right now, apparently.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  I'm Grant Irving. This is Panic Road, a show about how the internet warps our minds, then our culture, and eventually, reality. Joining me today, the host of the show, a guy who just has some questions, Ryan Broderick. Hi, Ryan. How are you?

• 2:01Ryan Broderick?

  Are we sticking with that as the new tagline? I feel like I just memorized the last tagline.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  I like it. We can talk about this later. We have other things to discuss.

• 2:11Ryan Broderick?

  Our Patreon patrons can tell us if they like that new tagline. Hello, thank you for having me on my show.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  So you just hinted at it, but how many dads do you personally know that now have questions?

• 2:22Ryan Broderick?

  In general, I know a lot of dads.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  That's because you're old, because I do too.

• 2:28Ryan Broderick?

  I'm a millennial. I don't know any millennial dads. I know three, I think.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  How many dads do you personally know that now have questions about how many of my ancestors were killed?

• 2:37Ryan Broderick?

  How many Holocaust denying dads do I know? Probably none, actually. The type of conservative men that I'm familiar with, okay, I don't know how to like, put this like delicately. Their reactionary politics are not that traditional. The guys that I know, like the Joe Rogan guys that I know, are not there yet, or maybe will ever be there.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Sure, but as you said, this is the thing that is going around right now.

• 3:05Ryan Broderick?

  Well, Holocaust, yes, it is, it is going around, yes.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  This is personally the first, the first dad I know, and I know him really well, who, who has the...

• 3:15Ryan Broderick?

  This is the first ever dad you know?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Kind of. He kind of became my surrogate...

• 3:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, like other dad.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  To be real, he kind of became my surrogate dad, and now he has some questions about the Holocaust.

• 3:26Ryan Broderick?

  I'm going to assume here that he's not Jewish.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  No, he's not, and...

• 3:31Ryan Broderick?

  Where's he from? Can I ask that?

• 3:33Speaker 02

  The same suburb of Pennsylvania I grew up in.

• 3:36Ryan Broderick?

  Sure, Pennsylvania, of course, yeah. I feel almost like a social worker for conspiracy theories. Like I have, if I could sit down with his dad, I could figure out what's going on, I swear.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had very similar questions. I wanted to sort out my thoughts about it. So I forced him to talk to me on microphone instead of just incessantly texting me when I'm trying to work. So today, I want to play for you what happened to Matt and his dad, and what theory that led us to about this problem in the world now. So, uh, does that sound fun?

• 4:04Ryan Broderick?

  As fun as a podcast about Holocaust denial can be. Let's get into this family's slow motion implosion.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  So, my mom is currently reading a novel about three sisters who survived the Holocaust. And my dad says something to the tune of... Well, you know, it might not have been as bad as they had originally reported. She hears this and it's like, what are you talking about?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Do you want to guess what he says next?

• 4:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, please don't make me guess like Holocaust denial stuff. Just give me the, give me the cursed bullshit. Let me listen.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  He's like, yeah, there was some documents came out recently about how it was only 1 million Jews, not 6 million Jews. And like the side note being like, so is 1 million an acceptable number? Like, what's the, if we're gonna talk about?

• 5:04Ryan Broderick?

  They were exaggerating.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:07Ryan Broderick?

  I think we have to, for my own protection, you have to say right now that you're Jewish.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  I am, I am 100% the chosen people.

• 5:15Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, fine. If we can start on the phrasing that Matt used, which I think is important, which is that he said like a report came out recently. Which is like such a Facebook dad thing where like they're receiving new information. There's like an assumption around baby boomers that like there's gonna be a new thing happening or coming out every day. Cause there has been for their, like they're atomic age, right? Like they grew up in this world that has like never been the same ever from day to day. And I noticed like a pattern when they talk about the misinformation that they're consuming, that a lot of the stuff they're falling for really heavily is like mimicking that and saying like, well, we've just discovered, we've got a new take on the Holocaust.

• 5:57Ryan Broderick?

  Like you'll never believe like what's like, and they also, this is not inherently antisemitic, but they use this phrasing that they'll be like, they're saying that like the Holocaust wasn't as bad as we used to think it was. And I, and I just, very simply you just go, who's they? Who is saying that? Growing up in peak TV, they just sort of assume that the media is this institution that's going to be delivering them safer information. And now that we no longer exist in that world, they still think that that's what's happening. So like if they see a post online, they assume it's part of the like apparatus that's been feeding them information their entire lives.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  That's absolutely right. I asked Matt the other day if he thinks his dad knows who Nick Fuentes is. And he said, God, I hope not. And I was like, I think like, so. As of three weeks ago, when we were texting about the Phils, I can confidently say Matt's dad does not hate Jewish people. I shouldn't have read this, actually. It's a joke.

• 6:57Ryan Broderick?

  Is the Phils, the Phillies?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:00Ryan Broderick?

  Is that what you're talking about?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  I've gone on vacation with this family. They let me put an old mattress in their basement. They won't let Matt do that because they like me more. Like, I am very close with this man and this family. I've experienced zero odd, like, thought towards Jewish people, full stop. I don't think he knows who Nick Fuentes is. And I was like, I think if he knew the hatred this was coming from, he might feel different. But because it's just presented as news, it reaches him downstream where somebody isn't like saying, "I'm a proud anti-Semite." I thought that you are anti-Semitic and then you doubt the Holocaust.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  And like, you could apply this for whatever. I thought you like hate gay people and so you assume that like, whatever thing. I didn't realize it like now kind of works in reverse.

• 7:54Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, in fact, actually, so I built a model for this for a conference years ago. I was invited to Salzburg, Austria, to the Sound of Music Mansion to give a presentation on like how fascism was evolving online. The way that I used to describe it was like a pyramid that goes both ways, which I guess if you line that up, is that a Jewish star?

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 8:19Ryan Broderick?

  Anyway, so don't think of it that way.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Think about it.

• 8:23Ryan Broderick?

  Instead, just think of two triangles going in different directions next to each other. And so it was a triangle and I was like, "Look, it can go up and down." So like, you can have a bunch of people sharing stuff and they don't understand like how ideologically it fits into anything, but they're just like, "Oh, that's interesting." And as it goes up the pyramid, it gets aggregated and condensed and clarified by more and more extremists until you get like, you know, Nick Fuentes at the very top. But it also travels the opposite direction, which is like Nick Fuentes can post something and he can watch that slowly actually become less and less extreme until you have the average person sharing it. It's a two-way street.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  So that was the first thing that truly caught me off guard. But then the details he referenced, to me, they feel inherently insulting and hateful.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  But to him, this man, again, I really know as not hateful. They just seem like factoids, I guess. Let's, uh, let's take a listen.

• 9:22Ryan Broderick?

  All right. Uh, yeah, let's, let's, let's, let's get into it.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  He brought up like the swimming pool and like the library and like some of these other amenities at amenities, quote unquote, at Auschwitz. And my mom was like, the swimming pool was so they all had to bathe together. Like, it wasn't there for fun.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  So then your dad was like, yeah, it was basically like an Airbnb. And like, you know, like a million of them got pneumonia, no big deal.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  You know, to be honest, there was 24 hours where I thought my mom was gonna divorce my dad. And I didn't necessarily think that was a bad thing.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Have people hit you up at Ryan@garbage day.com and said, uh, what should I tell?

• 10:13Ryan Broderick?

  Email, dot email.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Dot email and, and said like, what should I tell my friend, my, my dad, my mom? Now that this person is saying like this, like crazy shit.

• 10:26Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, it happens. People ask. I mean, I've been fighting this, my own battle with misinformation inside of my family for years and years. Um, and I've tried different tactics. I, I was really into fact checking. Um, I was really into arguing about it. I have a new tactic, which is partly for my own benefit, uh, but it does seem to kind of work a little better, which is that I just laugh at them. There is probably no right way to address this because you're dealing with someone that is gonna start to double down as you unpack this, because no one wants to, especially older people. They don't want to feel like they've been duped. They don't want to feel stupid.

• 11:07Ryan Broderick?

  And so when you have someone who like Matt's dad, who seems to have like very genuinely read some bad posts online and is now saying that Auschwitz had like an Olympic sized swimming pool that everyone got to like relax in. That kind of stuff is really hard to untangle. The cognitive dissonance is gonna set in if you start to fact check it. You can't really like be open and like conversation with them about it. Because like, what if they mentioned this at a party or something like they're, they don't realize that they're dealing with something super radioactive. And it's really sad. Like, it's a really sad, weird process that is just, I think, I assume at this point, most American families have someone in their family who

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:51Ryan Broderick?

  And it's not even just like white families either. Like, it can happen to any... And when I was in Brazil, like, I knew families that were super into Bolsonaro and their kids weren't. Like, it's a... It doesn't have a boundary, it doesn't have... For every culture, there's a version of this.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Not to sound super NPR, but like, I don't think we're having the conversation about what this means now that this is a problem for all families. So, next, I want to play you a bit more about what Matt's mom did after receiving this and like, and like reckoning with its severity, but then I want to talk about like, what that means for what all of us should be doing, because we all know somebody. It's just a matter of degrees. But, uh, first, let's go to ads from our presenting sponsor, X.com, where you can always trust the community notes. Let's go to ads.

• 12:42Speaker 00

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• 12:45Speaker 01

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you.

• 12:50Speaker 05

  You're having a midlife crisis.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  I'm not ready for that.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  He's back.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  I'm older. I'm wiser.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  And sharper than ever.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

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• 13:42Speaker 02

  Where we left off, Matt thought his parents' marriage was about to implode. So, so let's pick up there.

• 13:48Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, okay. Yeah, let's take it. Let's take a listen and see how much worse things are getting here.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Was your mom saying she was gonna leave him?

• 13:57Speaker 04

  The words that she was saying were, "This is not the man that I married." And I told her, like, "Look, if you were one of my friends and you told me this, I would tell you to leave them. You don't have to go to divorce, but like, at minimum, like, take a weekend and think about what's happening."

• 14:20Speaker 02

  So it's probably obvious that this was a long time coming. And I think for a lot of people, it is a long time coming. It's not like a overnight, this is where they end up. Like, the feeds have to build on each other. If you had to guess, where do you think this started for Matt's dad?

• 14:37Ryan Broderick?

  Do we know? Okay, that's great.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  I do know.

• 14:39Ryan Broderick?

  Great. So...

• 14:44Ryan Broderick?

  This, I would not put this in the same camp as like even like voting for Trump, honestly. I don't actually count this as like the same sort of level of, um, brainwashing. Like, so I'm trying to think like where you would casually encounter Holocaust denial material.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna stop you there because I, I think what's shocking about this is how anodyne this starts. Matt's dad was a real big, "What happened to JFK" guy.

• 15:11Ryan Broderick?

  Sure. Okay.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  So like, his household, uh, most of them are now sober, but Matt's dad isn't. But like, they're all big drinkers and like, at some point, they'd start talking about like, "What do you think was happening with the umbrella guy and the crowd?"

• 15:27Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  It was like this fun.

• 15:29Ryan Broderick?

  It is fun.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  He was really into, um... The Shining conspiracies.

• 15:35Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, the Stanley Kubrick, fake the moon landing stuff. Yeah, no, absolutely.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  It started off in the most boomer dad. You're just drinking IPAs, talking about steak, and you're also talking about like, pretty harmless conspiracies.

• 15:50Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  What do you think comes after JFK?

• 15:52Ryan Broderick?

  Area 51?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  So, back when Ashton Kutcher was on everyone's Facebook saying that, sex slavery was happening in every basement in the country beside yours. Do you remember when Chester Bennington of Lincoln Park died? What was going around?

• 16:08Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I actually just saw this the other day that Chester Bennington and a bunch of other like alt rock guys who all died were part of some sort of documentary about like sex trafficking and they were killed before they could like release the documentary or something.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 16:23Ryan Broderick?

  That's a weird, Chester Bennington is a weird one because

• 16:28Ryan Broderick?

  I think when he did kill himself, there were like a lot of reports coming out about his history with sexual abuse as a victim of sexual abuse.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 16:38Ryan Broderick?

  And it is one, I think it is unfortunately one of those like purple monkey dishwasher events where you really cannot talk about that stuff online without it spinning out into like really conspiratorial spaces. So like, yeah, that makes sense. I could kind of see how his Facebook feed would would start to like populate that kind of stuff for him.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Right. So this wasn't ideological. It was just conspiracies are fun. And for a long time it had basically no ramifications. These things evolve and Matt's dad ended up here. So I'm going to play you what happened next now. Okay.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  I end up leaving work early because like I'm freaking out and the next morning I talked to my mom and she explains that like they sat down together, I think to her credit.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  She did something that you are supposed to do when someone this close to you starts to express extremist ideas, which is like engage with them sincerely, ask them questions and like you can do a little bit of refuting, but also digging in as to why they're attracted to these ideas is almost more effective. And he is like, you know, I just, I feel like we're being lied to about what's happening in Palestine right now. And we've been lied to about so many other things by the US government. So like, I question everything as a matter of course.

• 18:04Ryan Broderick?

  Sure. Classic.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. After this conversation, it became I have questions instead of facts. And then they did the thing that all families do when they don't want to confront a truth, which is they both felt hurt enough and they let things go blurry. And they decide to not press it because if they press it, the whole house could fall down.

• 18:25Ryan Broderick?

  I would say this family is taking it pretty seriously compared to almost any other family in this situation I've ever spoken to.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  It wa- I mean, it was a long time coming, but thi- but this is how how Matt reacted once, once he was told this.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Whether or not my dad actually like now believes that the Holocaust 100% happened or not, like, I don't know. But like, it sounds like he realizes that at least there are social consequences to expressing certain ideas. And he's also like, he doesn't leave the house, even if he thought the Holocaust wasn't real. He's a retired man who mostly watches sports and like, wants to hang out with his family. He doesn't leave the house a whole lot.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  For Matt, this has been like a slow boil for years. They've been like stifling it down. Obviously, it got much worse during the pandemic. And Matt was getting married in 2021, there, but this was still pre-vaccines. So it was really small. And we were all obviously required to test before going. And his, which made his dad very uncomfortable.

• 19:44Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  But, you know, he relented. And, you know, it just got more extreme from there and it's affected the relationship more and more.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  I knew it started to become a problem when he took me aside and was like, listen, they're coming out with vaccines. I'm asking you as your father, please don't get the vaccine. I like sort of laughed it off and I was like, oh, Dad, I'm gonna get the vaccine.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  It's kind of crazy to look at how slow, but also how fast this ramped up. After COVID, I think we all just thought this would magically go away and maybe it has for some people. But for, but also for the people I know, it's just gotten worse.

• 20:29Ryan Broderick?

  I feel very bad about it. The vaccine is a really fascinating one where like my, my dad is going through like a measles thing right now. He doesn't have the measles. He's just like very into like the idea that you can cure them by just getting them. And

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 20:44Ryan Broderick?

  Like I under, yeah, it's like

• 20:48Ryan Broderick?

  it's, he's also stopped wearing sunscreen lotion because

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:53Ryan Broderick?

  He said that that gives you cancer. It's not that the sun gives you cancer. It's that sunscreen gives you cancer. I don't agree with the people who are like, this is illogical. And it's like, no, it's clearly logical. You can see the thought patterns here. I don't know enough about Matt's dad to like do the mental map of like how he reached this point. But like from what you told me, it seems like he was already kind of like conspiratorial and like anti, uh, anti-government in a way that was like, you know, tolerable and like maybe a little kooky.

• 21:20Ryan Broderick?

  And recent events, perhaps like in Palestine have started to make him reconsider like other things that he understands, right? So do you say what or who is lying about Palestine? Like that, I feel like that's a missing piece here.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  No, of course not. It's what comes across his feed. But like, I mean, we've talked about this on the show, like it is completely dissonant from like what you would see in mainstream news.

• 21:42Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  It is totally reasonable to be like, I think they are lying and covering something up, like

• 21:49Ryan Broderick?

  Hold on, don't, don't fall for that trap. Who is, who is li, who is they?

• 21:53Speaker 02

  I think it, I think it's totally

• 21:55Ryan Broderick?

  You know what happens? When you, when you use they enough, it just becomes the Jews. That's, that's literally what starts to happen eventually.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  It is totally reasonable to look at how Palestine has been covered.

• 22:07Ryan Broderick?

  By the mainstream media.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  By the mainstream media and feel you are being lied to.

• 22:13Ryan Broderick?

  By the mainstream media.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  By the mainstream media.

• 22:15Ryan Broderick?

  And I think, I think most of the time you are, actually.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Right. And Kat Abdu, in the episode where we discussed this, had this point. When there's valid criticism, it is not illogical to jump to like, well, so what else? And, and, and that brings you to a bad place. But what stuck out to me that I hadn't really, I kind of imagined that everyone who was like a vaccine denier was like really excited to like, go to the ER when all of us are dying from the magnet vaccine and tell you, tell us I told you so. But like, I hadn't like sat with, and maybe you experienced this with your dad, is that like, Matt's dad was like, like, he loves his son. And he's like, was like fucking worried about his family. Like to him, oh, all of my family is going to die because they're falling for this poison. That's really isolating.

• 23:02Ryan Broderick?

  My dad, when he got kind of like weird about vaccines, I found a little workaround that got him through the worst of COVID where I'd just be like, look, you can just admit you're scared of needles. Like, it's okay.

• 23:16Ryan Broderick?

  And I've found that that worked, you know, enough. But the, the isolation with the internet, while it, while it isn't new, it is definitely more pronounced. And I think, uh, older people have a problem with sort of forgetting that the rest of the world around them isn't in those same spaces. Like you and I, if we look at too much TikTok one day, I think you or I would be like, oh, man, like my feed is like delivering me a lot of really crazy stuff. My experience with older people is that they sort of assume that we're all looking at this together. And I think it's.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  It's really true of Fox News.

• 23:56Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And that's what Fox News does. Like Fox News is actually telling them like, we are a, so, and this is actually something where I would not blame the internet. I would actually blame the limitations of the television for training a generation of people to think about the news and reality this way. So like, You're only seeing the sausage. And once we transition into the internet where like it's a free for all and people can argue all day long and information's constantly changing. Now you're seeing the sausage get made. But you're still think like you're looking at the guts that go in the sausage casing and you're like, that's the news.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  I think that's broadly true. And I think the other side of that for people like Matt's dad is they're like, well, now I see how the sausage gets made and I'm questioning everything. So I, um, I asked Matt, as someone who works in extremism, how will he make sense of what his dad gets out of, you know, asking all these edgelord questions? And like where that leads him personally? So this next clip is a bit long, but take a listen.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Putting on my professional hat for a second. Um, one of the reasons why conspiracy theories are so attractive to people is because this idea that you are getting secret knowledge or receiving information that nobody else has, has an intoxicating effect on your brain. It's literally a meme at this point, but like you're scrolling and it's like, the one thing doctors don't want you to know, or the like, here's the one trick to huge shoulders in the gym, or whatever it is like, people frame it that way because on it, it hits you on an emotional level.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Do you feel like it is now too late to do something?

• 25:41Speaker 04

  I think about this a lot.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  If.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Come back to the mic.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  I was, I was thinking, I was relaxing and having a think, Grant. For me personally, I just want a meaningful relationship with my father.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  And short of that, I will take a pleasant relationship with my father.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  When somebody's like an active alcoholic, it's possible for like a day.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  You're like, it's possible to have like a good, a good interaction.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  What the conditions are, right? But like on the whole, you're never going to think of the relationship as like.

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Pleasant.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  That's not on the table when you are in different realities.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's the thing that I've really come to terms with. It can suddenly turn. There's truly stuff around like food. I try not to linger too long on conversations about food because then my dad will say something like, oh yeah, because you know, they want, they want to put. All this bad stuff in our food to keep us sick. Or like, it's fucking exhausting. Like, it's just exhausting to be having a conversation with somebody. And then suddenly, we're talking about a cabal. Or, we're not talking about it, but I can see it in his eye, that he is holding back on talking about it. And I know that there is

• 27:09Speaker 04

  this massive unseen wall between us. And it's just fucking depressing.

• 27:16Ryan Broderick?

  To say, okay, they're like an alcoholic. Yeah, one, it means like, they have to accept that they have a problem, and then they have to deal with it. Which happens. People fall down rabbit holes all the time, and then they realize that they're acting like a crazy person, and they get some help, and they figure themselves out. But, I'm not really sure, there's like, a recovery structure for misinformation that way. I don't know if you can really... I don't know. I, I, it's a, it's a, it's an interesting concept.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, there, there's no easy solutions. And after the break, I want to discuss where that leaves us with these relationships, and like, and what we need to do more broadly. But first, I, I think what people really need are more ads.

• 28:04Speaker 00

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• 28:07Speaker 01

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• 28:12Speaker 05

  You're having a midlife crisis.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  I'm not ready for this.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  He's back.

• 28:16Speaker 01

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• 28:20Speaker 00

  And sharper than ever.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

• 28:29Speaker 00

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• 29:04Speaker 02

  So, right before the break, you were saying you don't know if there are solutions, in the same way that like, there are complicated solutions with addiction. So, I asked Matt that.

• 29:20Ryan Broderick?

  Alright, yeah, let's, uh, let's take a listen.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Does it feel like you're fighting a terribly uphill battle?

• 29:26Speaker 04

  No, which is actually kinda nice.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  For the last like, 20 years, this field has been about identifying ideological extremists and arresting them. And, that was not effective. Things like digital literacy and social and emotional learning are effective at helping young people understand how to navigate online spaces without falling prey to misinformation.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Uh, but the boomers are fucked.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  I...

• 30:04Speaker 04

  Professionally, I will never say that.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Have you thought a lot about why you got into this field?

• 30:11Speaker 04

  I am sure that there was like, subconscious engagement there around like, oh, if I can, if I can fix this in the real world, then maybe I can fix it within my family too.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Which, you know, mileage may vary there.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, what do you think of that now?

• 30:30Speaker 04

  Uh, I think I can help create a better world that will arrive in like, 10 to 15 years.

• 30:42Ryan Broderick?

  There's like, a, there's like, a feeling I've had for many years where I do wonder if like, part of this stuff would actually go away if, if we just like, stopped taking it seriously. Like, the, the contrarian in me is like, okay, we've spent a decade taking this stuff so seriously. And now, obviously, the academic research on this stuff is that like, you get in a really scary spot where like, you know, especially bad actors, they like, they love, uh, unenforced boundaries. Like, a Nazi walks into a bar, kinda stuff, right? And it becomes a Nazi bar. Now, I want to exclude that because like I do think that is true and real. But I do wonder if your dad is at the table and he's saying some crazy shit and you're just like, "You're being fucking stupid. Shut up."

• 31:25Ryan Broderick?

  Like, I do wonder if that is a better path here. Like, I have tried the compassion path. I've tried the fact-checking path. I've tried the, like, even going no-contact path. And I'm beginning to think, like, I think my new path here is to just tell him to shut up.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  I think that you can say to your dad or your family members, "Shut up, you're being weird," and they're, like, mostly willing to do that because, like, they don't want to offend you is, like, primarily important. And I think it's important in Matt's dad's case, too. I feel really bad for him that he seems so miserable because he doesn't know what to say, but he really doesn't want to offend.

• 32:03Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, even if Matt's dad is spending, like, three or four hours a night alone in front of a computer or a phone absorbing, like, the weirdest, darkest shit on the internet,

• 32:14Ryan Broderick?

  you can't stop him from doing that? Yeah, I actually don't even think you have to. Like, I actually don't think it matters to a degree. Because if that person then goes outside and spends the majority of their time in a situation where it is unacceptable, like, you can't, like, be at the bank and be like, "Oh, this doesn't add up." The same way it doesn't add up how many people died in the Holocaust. Like, you can't do that. People don't like that. And, like,

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:45Ryan Broderick?

  You know, it gets worse as you get more isolated.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  I don't even think this is just older people.

• 32:50Ryan Broderick?

  It's everybody.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  I had a friend who got long-term COVID. She was isolated and she felt sick and she got real into some, like, now she's worried about 5G.

• 32:57Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  And I really thought that, like, once she feels a little bit better and she's, like, out back around her friends, she will just snap back to herself. It's kind of true.

• 33:07Ryan Broderick?

  She might.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  She, like, knows, she knows things to avoid to say now.

• 33:11Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  But it's still kind of ravaging her brain.

• 33:15Ryan Broderick?

  It's essentially what we've done. And my friend talks about this a lot when he, like, went through, like, an incel phase and after, like, a bad breakup with, like, a really toxic woman who...

• 33:27Ryan Broderick?

  Sort of made him feel isolated and he started gravitating towards these guys that like started to like give him like very early red pill theory stuff and put him on the internet and like show him where to find more stuff that would like feed into the like hatred, self hatred and isolation that he was already feeling. And he eventually pulled out of it. And now he actually, he researches extremism and he teaches about it. And like, he's married to a human woman that he seems to like as a person and it's good. What we've sort of done with the death of mass media and the rise of like, user generated content media being the primary thing that most people are staring at all day, is create a situation where there are a million, 2 million, 10 million different extremely niche cults that exist.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  I can see on your face, you want to be talking about the printing press and about how every major tech advancement makes us go crazy. And then a major event happens to try to form a monoculture again. That is where you are leading this. Am I wrong?

• 34:27Ryan Broderick?

  Dude, it's so hard to have these conversations and not start with when Gutenberg made the Bible. But yes, media becomes cheap to publish. Everyone starts publishing media and we all go psychotic, which does happen. But then there's a second part of this that typically happens as well. You sort of get the advent of like, large institutional Protestant churches, same after the printing press, same idea. The printing press obviously causing the Protestant Reformation. And then you get the rise of like the Church of England and stuff like that, right? You get the, people started to go like, enough. We are unfortunately in that in between phase where we have not hit the next wave of this. Unfortunately, and like, I don't want to make everybody angry again, but like, one model for why AI might actually

• 35:12Ryan Broderick?

  catch on is this, because the chaos of the social media age has been so extreme, that there is clearly like a desire for a shared set of facts, a shared set of reality again. Uh, we just don't know what's gonna come and, and, and provide that in the internet age, or replace the internet. But there's kind of nothing we can do. Not, not on a, not on a scale that matters. And like, not even really on a personal scale. Like, I'm in the same place as your friend Matt, I have given up. And honestly, the other part of me is like, if anyone's dad like says something so extreme that like it ruins their lives, like I know a dad who voted for Trump, put a Trump sticker on his car and got his car keyed. Fuck around and find out. Like, I, I, at a certain point, they're a human being.

• 35:56Ryan Broderick?

  They're allowed to think whatever they wanna think. And if you wanna express those thoughts, like, you should know, like, what's gonna happen. And so like, if your friend's dad is at a barbecue and he talks, he starts rambling about how like, the Holocaust wasn't that bad and someone knocks his lights out, like, there's nothing your friend Matt has to do, actually. Like, it's not his responsibility.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, there, there's not really anything he can do besides decide how much to engage with his dad, which is, uh, how we sort of ended our conversation.

• 36:25Ryan Broderick?

  Do you have a cutoff point?

• 36:29Speaker 04

  I think the things that are directly connected to hate are my cutoff points.

• 36:39Ryan Broderick?

  Where does Holocaust denial fall?

• 36:41Speaker 04

  It's, it's there. Like, it is there. So, based on the conversation that him and my mom had, it sounds like he's walked it back. But like,

• 36:52Speaker 04

  this is, like, I've already pulled, like, I've already pulled away. Like, it's gonna take, it's a system level problem, so it requires a system level answer.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  And where you decide to stop engaging is an entirely personal question that whoever you are, you'll need to ask yourself.

• 37:18Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think baby boomers are cooked. I just think that the way to fix it is not

• 37:26Ryan Broderick?

  We haven't figured it out yet, but I think we will. I am, I am actually quite hopeful we will.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  A societal problem has been created and individually, we can't save them or convince anyone otherwise. And so like, I also hear this in the other way where it's like, how do you still talk to a family member who voted for Trump? And I'm like, that seems, that seems spoken by somebody who has lots of family, just personal op ed here as somebody who doesn't have a lot of family. Like, you, everyone should make the decision that like, makes living better for them. You not talking to somebody is not going to make them see the error of their ways, and you staying in their life is not going to save them either.

• 38:12Ryan Broderick?

  If your husband or your wife like spins out of control on the internet and like crashes out in Q and on stuff, and you want to divorce them, you're totally in your right to do so. Like, that's fine. If you're a friend, yeah, fine. You can also go no contact with your family. If it is really horrible, you can go no contact with your family. But also, they're your family. You don't really choose them. You just end up there. If you want to just like, live in like a, like a sort of detente with them until they pass on to the big internet in the sky, the big Facebook comment section in the sky, that's totally fine too. But like, maybe just try telling them to shut up.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  So personally, like, uh, my dad killed himself 10 or 11 years ago. And the last thing he talked to me about was he tried to goad me into like an argument about global warming.

• 38:56Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, I think you've told me this. Yeah, yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  For him, he was really bitter and fucked up in his own life. And so, politics became the reason of his victimization. And like, if I was just like, shut up dude, you're being weird, he would have not spoken to me for months on end. So I guess like, everyone needs to make their own personal choice, but like, it is like, it is so steeped into... Your own family dynamics. So I would really, I would argue to everyone, like, ask yourself, where's this coming from? What is it making up for? If you're on the fence about like, do I want to continue this relationship? This is a scenario where intention really matters. That's my two cents. As somebody who like, doesn't talk to some family.

• 39:42Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Well, thank you, Ryan. Actually, one last thought. I think this is all honestly Matt's fault.

• 39:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I do too.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  The only solution is if you hadn't quit baseball and you'd become a professional pitcher, we wouldn't be here.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  I could have done it. I could have done it, man.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Oh, go Birds.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  Go Birds. Love you, man.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  In seriousness, I think Matt did a very brave thing. And while he is always annoying, I do appreciate him and my life would be worse without him. Thank you for coming on the show.

• 40:19Ryan Broderick?

  Thanks for having me on my show. Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbage day dot email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our deranged logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com/panicworld. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude@multitude-production ads. For any other way you would like to give us money or work with us or promote us or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful panic man, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at [email protected]. And one piece of advice from me to you, chill

• 41:03Ryan Broderick?

  out, touch grass while you still can.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Which of the following options, and I want you to hear all the options before you choose, is going to be the reason why your wife leaves you?

• 41:21Speaker 02

  A, too much nautical apparel. B, external processing. C, the smell of your energy drinks.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  D, your inadequacies in bed. E, RFK is gonna make creatine illegal and you become small.

• 41:43Speaker 04

  No, she will leave me either for the constant smell of energy drinks, which I was literally late to the recording because I needed to run to the corner store. Or the external processing, for sure. It's gonna be one of the two.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

• 42:03Ryan Broderick?

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  You're having a midlife crisis.

• 42:10Ryan Broderick?

  I'm not ready for this.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  He's back.

• 42:12Ryan Broderick?

  I'm older. I'm wiser.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  And sharper than ever.

• 42:17Ryan Broderick?

  Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  Dexter Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.