Hello, hello, of course Bradsky's late to her own space
Yeah, kind of funny I think she owes us an apology
Man what a day so much stuff going on Elon has a huge shit show to deal with
Probably gonna move out of Delaware into Texas for Tesla. So that's that's interesting. We're covering this actually at the moment
So it's like this. This is the timing of this is
This is her own book where the hell is she right
Hey Brian, what's happening not much how's it going Adrian? Hi Sarah? Hi Alex
Yo, Brian, what's up, dude?
Not much. No, you finished the book yet. I
Yeah, the moment it released I thought they read the whole thing front cover to cover. I believe you Alex
I thought that was the expectation for this space was that everyone on the stage was gonna read a cover to cover by
The time we got up here. I I was I had you think if I should lie or not
But I realized I don't know if the book is actually out yet. So I didn't lie and I just was honest
Cool glad to have you at the book release party Brian
Thanks glad you see everybody here except Catherine, I'm here
Here you are I had some issues
Um, I heard something about Alex reading the book from cover to cover even though he probably if he could have a copy would be
Digital so I don't know how that would work. So I know he's a bald-faced liar, but that is the digital covered in digital cover
Catherine digital covered in digital. What was your favorite part at the end? Oh
Was that where she did nothing but apologize I think I remember that part
Yes, that was a more 42 guy myself, but yeah
Great page great page Adrian. I like I like
Really really good actually, maybe I should do like a thing where we pick a random page and I just like read the I
sentence a random sentence from that page
Let's let's choose a random page and get people's thoughts on it. You want to do that?
I'm gonna have to look it up. Oh
Gosh Catherine if you I found that if you read the book backwards, I
Know it's so much better messages. It's also much better than the original Aramaic
People don't know this but that was the first version. I wrote it in Aramaic and now it's you know in English
There's no shortage of stories of online communities gone toxic
After all, it's far easier for one person to initiate a pile on against a faceless avatar
Than it is for them to do the same against a real human being in real life
It only takes the click of a button. This is all something that
Mara Maria Tuscan has become acutely aware of a few years ago
Tuscan who was part of the knitting community and owner of hand dyed yarn business called tuscan knits
Found herself targeted by a hostile online mob. Geez. I feel bad for her
There's no one on X would know anything about that her crime
defending a fellow knitter by the name of Karen Templar a white woman who was piled on after daring to share her excitement about an
Upcoming trip to India in a blog post in the post Templar compared the trip to being offered a seat on a flight to Mars
What you guys would you get upset do you think that's a racist thing to see
You know to compare India like being able to fly to a faraway planet. Oh
We have now found the online bully from Catherine's book meet Alex Finn people
Yeah, people don't realize but I was actually writing about Alex
He's the one who turned the whole knitting community against this lovely woman named Maria
You know, how could you be, you know a horrible racist if your name is Maria?
Actually, she wasn't even the one who compared
Mars trip to India if she just defended the person who did and
Apparently, that's that's the worst thing you could possibly do
Karen was the one who compared India to Mars surprise surprise Karen
Let's see that suit. That's far too poetic
That is so funny. That is no so Catherine give give the audience a little context. So what happened?
How far did the bullying go?
Was this woman's life in danger? Did she end up leaving her her community? What happened to her?
Well, yeah, this real quick real quick sir. You're the co-host and I'm just a speaker here, but
This is the beginning of the space
Catherine do you want to kind of let the crowd know what the hell's going on here?
And what the hell we're talking about and what you got going on and what you released today
How about let's start with that? I mean that
Yeah, that does seem like a pretty good idea because people seem very confused
They they just think it's a space where people just apologize and say sorry all the time like a true Canadian
But despite my Canadianism Canadianism, I wrote a book called no apologies. It comes out. It came out today and
You know as a Canadian as you know
We apologize for everything if you step on my foot
I'm going to chase you down and apologize to you and then I'll realize you know five minutes later 15 minutes later
Wait, what did I just do? Why am I apologizing? You're the one who stepped on my foot asshole
Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry, I don't know listen, are you correcting my Canadianism?
It's just that's just plain rude. You know, that's racist. Actually you owe me an apology for me correcting you
That's see this is how the world works and this is why I wrote the book it's for people because of people like you
You people it's because of you people that I wrote this
So people don't know but I had my some people don't know too many people probably already do know but I had my own sort
of rub with the cancellation culture and
whole big group of female writers that went after me with pitchforks and
This is you know long story short after the pitchforks and them threatening to
Cancel me and and for me to never work in this town or any town again and and
doxxing harassing me sending me messages with like
pitchforks and torches why because I
Because a woman posted a job opportunity at Fox News
she posted it in my job on my job board in my group and
Everybody started piling up on her and getting really really angry and I just said listen
Let's stay out of politics and let's not personally attack each other and let's come together instead of coming apart
And and they didn't take that
In a positive in the way it was intended and they ended up getting very mad at me
And saying well, you can't take the political out of this group
Anyways, you white supremacists who would just as soon let the KKK
recruit from her job board
perfect sound effect and so I I basically was told that and
And they said well and because it's a group for women
Well, we you can't take politics out of that because that's being a woman is apparently inherently political
I'm gonna open it up to everyone and that's where like all hell broke loose and
Outside of the threats. I was also getting a lot of messages from people saying hey, you know, I I see what's happening to you
It's not right. I feel so ashamed, but I'm too scared to speak up
So that was one category of people and then there were other people who were writing to me and saying Katherine
You know, this is what happened to me and sharing their own stories a lot of people who lost their jobs
Careers who've lost their tribes and just like hearing these stories. I felt like I had to do something
And I ended up writing an article for Newsweek
That was my first sort of way of abusing my voice
I've never really written an op-ed before and I was afraid that my whole life would be just completely destroyed
It was just starting to sort of calm down and it could have probably drifted away and here I am calling attention to myself
I wanted to point out that the importance of free speech and exchanging ideas and treating people
With respect and being open-minded and not bullying people which is what was going on
So I put out the article and actually the bullies kind of went away
because you know, they didn't want to actually act like bullies when they're being called like bullies and
a lot of I ended up meeting a lot of really interesting people and that was the start of my journey and
Then I thought I'm gonna write this book and this book is
You know, I wanted to capture some of these stories and I wanted to show how much this affects people
Within different fields, whether it's science, academia, arts, music, tech and all these different areas
Being unable to speak freely is a huge deal and you know people end up self-censoring
so the book is a collection of sort of case studies of different people who've experienced cancellations and
Or you know silencing mob attacks things like that even you know, even a black civil rights
Activist managed to get called a Nazi or a white supremacist actually white supremacist
So this is the world that we're living in
And I wanted to show the scale of the problem
But also how each individual person dealt with it and how we can you know
Why it's important to speak and use our voices and also how can we do that in and sort of the most?
productive way possible, so that's the book and
I don't know. Do we want to talk about knitting? I
Just I'm curious out of all the case studies
In the end are some of them still suffering the consequences
Yeah, not only so one thing is important to remember first of all the people in the book for the most part
They are people who were more in the public sphere of things. So that's how I've come to know of them
It's not there's for every person that's in the book that succeeded. There's all these people whose lights went out
there's a lot of those stories too, but
But in terms of the people in the book, it's a little bit all over the place
I would say there was a cost to each one
But some of them managed to kind of come on top or find new paths or ways of doing things
But not everybody so for example the very first story. I
Was quite sad because when I first wrote that chapter
So that's the knitting community side of things
when I first wrote that chapter, I
She managed to sort of find her own way to sort of deal with things even though she suffered a lot of consequences and
Financially, it wasn't great
She was able to sort of build a little bit of a different business
And then I found out as I was sort of going through the book and upgrading and and just making sure everything was up to date
Her business actually, you know
It went out of business and that was really really sad and I went on
I think reddit is where I was trying to track because she never even responded to me
Because she well you'll see in the chapter. There's a reason why emails are not great with her
But basically when I was going through reddit like people were just so cheerful about this woman's business
you know failing I don't you know because of all the stuff that happened and
They were just gleeful. They're like she deserved it. It was just very toxic and very sad to see
so yeah, that's that's sort of sadly not every story does have a happy ending and
often people had to sort of even the ones that do everybody's lost something had to readjust had gone through like a
degree of trauma with their
Experiences not every single story by the way in the book is like somebody getting canceled, but certainly a lot of them are I
See that police that I ordered have arrived at your home. Yeah, I have to go to jail now
I'm actually swatting her. I feel like that'd be the most entertaining thing to happen during this space
So you're about to get swatted Catherine. Oh my god
I hear a knock on the door
Give him a copy of your book
Yeah, I'm not apologizing dude, no police officer no apologies
Catherine what was it like writing a book? What's that process like is it?
You how many how many times a day do you tell people hey, I'm writing a book
I'm right in the middle of writing a book. What's that process like?
So as somebody with a dhg
And an extreme laziness syndrome is that like to make it sound more
Listen, if I can get through writing a book, so can anyone
Um, it was I'm not one of these people who's like, yeah, listen, you're I can't talk to you right now because i'm in my
Zone, you know, this is what i'm writing every day at the exact same time every day
It was like I had to force myself at a certain point. I almost gave up
First you start with like I didn't the interview part was quite, you know
Interesting and I had a lot of interviews and just a lot of interesting conversations
But then what do you end up with after these interviews?
massive amounts of transcripts that you need to go through and do
And then you have to shift things and then you have to cut certain things out that you know
Because you can't the book can't be you know
You have to to trim the fat and it just felt like really overwhelming
And sometimes you started heating little parts of it and then you kind of come back to it like no
actually, it's pretty good and
I have to say when I start when I read the book as I was sort of, you know doing copy edits and stuff
Or looking through copy edits
I was like actually I kind of like this
But as a writer you're like super afraid that people won't like it, of course after you spend all this time
writing it but like I said, I almost there was a point where I almost gave up but I
Listen, i've already done so much at so many stories and I had a very specific goal in mind with the book
So I just kind of kept going
Alex um, have you actually read the book or are you?
I'm just sorry. I'm finishing the last book i'm reading i'm reading million dollar weekend by noah kagan
Which came out a few days ago about to finish that then i'm getting into no apologies by uh cap and over here very excited
Yeah, I mean he actually has the book it's interesting because I don't even have the same version that alex does because he has the digital
version and when I looked in my
Physical book I noticed that the page like page 42 is different in my book than it is I guess on the digital side
We should have had you read page 42
Sorry, I I didn't mean to interrupt you go ahead
No, go ahead alex go ahead
I'm just curious from the business side of a book. What's it like getting a book published? Did you work with a publisher?
I did I worked with the publisher. I I definitely um needed a publisher for this book
so I had been lucky to be sort of introduced to a publisher
and I met with the publisher and I had a really good gut feeling
and really liked the person as a human being
and um, he said to me look, I know you're just kind of starting pitching this and um
You know, i'd like to publish it like to work with you and the publisher is called pitch stone publisher and um, i'd like to work with you
You know, I don't want you to feel like you have to say yes
Um, you can feel free to look at other offers
And I felt at that point. I was like, you know
I just feel like I want to
I don't want him to feel like he was in my second choice and I really liked him
I just went with my gut and you know later on I did discover that
a bunch of other possibilities
But i'm still glad and he was very supportive of me telling the story and wanted to tell it
And also helping me sort of shape it a little bit. So
Um, it you know, it is my first book and and i'm really grateful that you know a publisher took
Take a chance on me. Am I allowed to say that this thing that or is that we we haven't known you before we called
That we're probably adrian's gonna get sued. Um, it's funny because not funny not funny ha ha but we have um
ian smiles chong here and ian rails against cancel culture hi ian, um
Capra, you know as you know wrote this book, um
Sort of railing against cancel culture as well
What are your thoughts on people being canceled for simply expressing an opinion?
That isn't harmful to oh, yeah
Yeah, no, that's dumb as hell like people have tried to cancel me because I don't want to cancel blair white
For example, and it's like it's my opinion, right? I mean, they're like, why why do you why do you call blair?
Why to her instead of a he it's like well, that's my choice
It's like no one is pretending that blair white is a male blair white doesn't pretend to be uh, uh female, right? So
It's it's courtesy right and and uh, wait a minute. Can I cut it in here? Can we cancel ian and get him out of here, please?
I think that if anybody needs to get cancelled it is the cancelers right people who spend all their time getting
Outraged and offended that you might like for example taylor swift
They're like, oh you can't listen to taylor swift
It's like what are you doing like let people listen to whatever music they want to listen to like
No one is being swayed by taylor swift into voting in a certain way
I mean if you're from a conservative family and your your parents are conservative and you listen to taylor swift
You're probably going to vote for trump. Anyway, right like who cares like
You're not going to suddenly start voting for biden just because some celebrity told you dude that has never worked. It's silly
You know anytime celebrities and and this is not you know referring to taylor swift at all
This is more, you know, just celebrity culture in general like celebrities overestimate how important they are, right?
I mean the whole we are the world in like the 1980s when they were trying to save africa and they
donated like a few million dollars
Or you know more recently when covet happened and older celebrities made those stupid videos where they were
Singing, you know john lennon's song or whatever, right? I mean no one cares like it's silly like
We I think as a society give too much credence to what?
Celebrities have to say I mean at the end of the day people are just making their up their own minds
It doesn't matter what you know, some big name tells them to do
It doesn't matter if steven cold bear goes on tv or joe rogan says something
Like who gives a shit, you know
You're making your decisions for yourself and if we're trying to cancel influencers for having a certain opinion
I mean if if bill mar once to say something about trump, let him if joe rogan says he supports bernie sanders
So what I mean, what's the big deal?
I don't know why everybody needs to be all up in arms about what you know, like oh this person disagrees with me
Therefore they're cancelled. It's like the only time canceling someone is like
You know justified is if they're trying to groom children or or you know
Seeing that the moon landing is fake
Like shit like that is is like, okay, that's worth calling out
But otherwise most of cancel culture like 99.5 percent of it is garbage
No, I just you know, um some of the podcasts and TV that i've done
I think some of the people got mad at me because I talked about you know, I don't think that
You you there is still a certain responsibility for the speech that you you have it's just that
You know there people might not want to associate with you
For example because of your speech and I do think that they have the right
They you we might just not like someone because you know smells funny
Whatever, right people have the right to uh, free associate
However, there is a difference a when you mobilize a mob to destroy this person in particular when you're trying to take away their
Livelihood as somebody else pointed out to me in one of my interviews. Um, one of the interviews that
The people have interviewed me about the book. She brought up like what's the what's the natural conclusion of this, right?
the natural conclusion of um
The natural conclusion of canceling someone is for them to become
Um unemployed right and then what happens after they're unemployed? Well, how are they supposed to afford their roof?
How are they supposed to live? So is it ultimately like the cancellation is ultimately and I don't think people think this through
But it is to take their life
And that's a scary thing and I think as a society what I want to advocate for is just
More openness more openness to ideas and discourse and not like rushing in which pitchforks all the time that said
It doesn't mean that you can just say anything all the time and there's zero consequences to your speech
Of course, there's going to be some consequences to your speech
But you know as a society, we just need to become
More gracious about allowing people to you know, in our view make mistakes if that's what we believe they're doing
Um to clarify when they're saying something. What do you really mean by that a lot of times?
It's like misunderstandings and when you have a conversation you understand that's not
What this person meant is really not as bad as what I thought they meant
And there's so many like there's a guy I came in contact with recently
Who I would have absolutely put in my book
Uh had I known him earlier and he got canceled over a tweet and this is a guy who's like a progressive
Pretty much just moved his family to seattle and he made a tweet about
like comparing hitler with
And I think the the tweet personally my view is that the tweet was not well framed
But there was nothing that should have been cancelable about it. And in fact, it's an interesting conversation
And what he meant by it was really after because I talked to him
And what he meant by it was like very
it really made a lot of sense actually and um
But the consequences for him that punishment is is so severe and he just has like a young family
They just moved so that that is a really big problem
I don't think you can say
Listen, you can say anything in the world and there's everybody's just going to continue being your friend and being nice to you
And wanting to work with you. That's not I think
A kind of world we can live in but we can certainly practice more tolerance
But sarah, I think you had a question and I think I saw a room
You know, I completely agree with you kathryn. If you don't mind me cutting in sarah. I just
I think that a lot of the time when you see people getting cancelled, right?
If you look at the cancelers, you'll see that they're just not interested in having a debate. They're just there for blood, right?
They're like sharks looking for feeding frenzy
That's all it is and for the most part, you know when you see a person being cancelled you look at their replies on whether it's
It's it's just people, you know throwing out random spurious attacks on the person they don't like and and this is true for all sides
Right where whether it's uh, you know, you're attacking me you're probably going to bring up, you know
Oh, you posted some screenshot five years ago or ten years ago or something, right?
Like it's they're not interested in having any sort of discussion or you know
any nuance there and you see the same thing happening to
politicians like aoc or uh, you know, uh, ted cruz right where you read the replies
The the post has nothing to do with what that person is saying
They're just calling that person out and wanting for him to be canceled or for her to be canceled and it it it's not constructive
It's just destructive and I feel like a lot of people they they put on their i'm a good person hat
And they think that they're doing their good deed by doing something really really bad when really, you know
They're not being virtuous at all. They're just
Signaling their virtue whichever way, you know, uh, they know how to and it's it's not you know
It's not real virtue and I think it's up to uh, you know
Society in general for people for observers to look at that and identify it for what it is
It's not interested in bringing justice to anyone you might as well, you know
Stolen a woman for for committing adultery in in in afghanistan. That's the result of it
I mean that that's basically that kind of behavior. It's a lynch mob
Yeah, and you know, I think it's also interesting to uh
For if you don't mind me and like just to note what like me and ian know each other a few years now
And he kind of encountered each other pretty early in my journey of like being able to speak more freely
You know, we used to do these little spaces but me and ian disagree on like a lot like
We agree on some things for sure, but we also disagree on a lot
But we're still able to like talk to each other and like hear each other out and like
Even like approach each other with curiosity is like, okay. Why do you believe what you believe?
Um, and it's been challenging at times too. I'll be honest from my side
I definitely had my moments of like, I don't know you're really testing my
Do love playing the devil's advocate, you know, I do love playing the devil's advocate sometimes
Yeah, but you're also like able to concede sometimes like when we discuss like if you make a good point i'm able to say
Yeah, you know what? That's a fair point
Maybe it still doesn't align with my values
But good point and you're able to do the same and I think we like need to model that kind of thing
A lot more and we're not we're modeling like division
I was talking to someone earlier today and we were talking about some of the issues that are facing society and this like
Acute division like I think there are certain issues that we could very easily
Come together on and solve but people are just not willing to talk to each other and ultimately
We really need each other like to come together and solve these issues
But just one side yelling at another or another being like oh because they think that we have to think the other way
That's actually causing a lot of the issues to go unsolved. Meanwhile people are suffering
Mm-hmm. I mean not everything needs to be a debate sometimes, right? And that's uh
Uh, what I see is wrong with the world today is that people can take the smallest issue
That shouldn't there shouldn't really be a debate over it and they'll have a debate over it, you know, like off the top of my head
Uh the airline safety thing, right? I mean
You could argue I mean any any common sense person will be like well
If you want safety you hire for you know
The person who is most qualified to be a pilot or to be an air traffic controller
And for some reason some people will say no we need to hire everybody
It's like why do you have a debate about this? It's not a race issue
It's not a you know, it's not an anything. It's just not a political issue. It's just like hey, maybe
You know DEI even if you support it, maybe it's not applicable in this case
Like certain things you just don't fuck around with but for some reason people want to have that debate
Because they see that oh Ted Cruz or Ben Shapiro said something
So therefore I have to disagree with it
You know, like you'll have like your Hassan pikers and your other leftist talking heads who will you know
Misconstrue what the other person is saying and make a a false argument and that seems to be you know
What is happening today like even with the Taylor Swift issue
Most people see the Taylor Swift thing they're like yet Taylor and Travis are dating big fucking whoop who cares?
But some people will turn into a political issue. Like why does this have to be political? Not everything is political
No, you're right, but I will say Ian if Taylor Swift told me to vote for Donald Trump
I probably would just because I listened to everything that Taylor Swift tells me
I have a question for you
Um, how did you find that by telling these stories by writing these stories that people become more?
Anti-cancel culture because they themselves have been canceled
But maybe before it wasn't really something that they cared about or something that they would have
Gone to bat for somebody that's attempting to be canceled. What do you think on that?
Yeah, I think a lot of people honestly just don't think about it
And so until it happens to them, but some people do I will say in my case
I was somebody who was quite acutely aware of cancel culture before it happened to me
And I was sort of speaking out about it
Um, you know not as on the same scale that I am now, but I was um, I it was kind of in the middle
All of this sort of happened while I was already
Becoming aware of like how beaches being suppressed certain policies are being put forth and you're like not allowed to criticize them and
Um, so there I was definitely seeing it and I got to know somebody who was cancelled like really badly
Um over, you know, even if everything that he was accused of was true
I thought about it and I'm like look look this guy does not deserve that level of punishment for what he allegedly did
so I was seeing that in the culture and
I think a lot of people were seeing it but a lot of people were sort of dismissing it
You don't think it's going to happen to you like I wasn't like a wrong, you know
I I still did somewhat, you know because of my more left-leaning views
There was less chance of me saying the wrong thing I guess but um
And so I don't think I expected that necessarily to happen to me
But I was seeing that happening in the culture and it was it didn't it never sat right with me
Um, but I think a lot of people once it happens to them, they just go really really really
Aggressively against it or they you know, unless they
Um, but the ones that don't tend to become almost like a little bit extreme in their opposition
Um, which you know, maybe it's a reaction to the trauma of it
Did you cut out there cap'rin
Oh, when did I I I I muted myself
Oh, okay. You were finished. Oh, I said react like in a probably out of trauma. I said out of trauma
Thank you. I think we'll get to some hands and we'll go to um wiggle first wiggle. What questions or comments? Did you have today?
Thanks, uh, what was the source?
Inspiration to write a book and what was the creative challenges?
Um that you faced besides publishing aspects. Thanks
Uh, yeah, so I mean the intention which I talked about earlier was very much to tackle this
Topic and in particular I wanted people to understand the scale
But I I wanted to appeal to the what I call like the the silent majority
I think most people actually have sensible views or pretty decent people
And um are thinking these things through
But they are so afraid and so silent and so they don't speak up and some of them
Just don't realize that their voice matters and some of them are just too scared
so I wanted to empower people to be able to
um to think through to to be able to
Um stand up and find their voice and figure out what's important to them because you know
If if we only allow, you know, the radical sort of bullies as I call them to be the ones who get to say
And with a megaphone screaming in your ear, they're the ones who get to shape society
And that's my fear is that you know, instead of the reasonable, you know, regular decent people shaping society
We have the bullies shaping society like who wants to live in a society shaped by bullies?
As for the creative side of it, you know, it's it is a non-fiction. So
It was you know, it was a little bit challenging because I was trying to figure out how do I
Take other people's stories and still have my own voice to it
And do I do I you know switch between?
Telling their stories and kind of have my own commentary. So there was a lot of like playing with the format
And right now what it ended up being as is is basically it's my
You know, the introduction tells my story and my perspective on things and then the conclusion
The rest of the story is I really you know, I don't judge the people who I do make some points in it
But at the same time, I don't necessarily judge the people that I
Interviewed like I don't have to agree with them on anything. It doesn't matter
I'm just like presenting their story as told to me
And also talking about some of the issues in society that their stories represent
That's a follow-up to what you just said about you know, who wants to live in a society run by bullies
Right, and I want your thoughts on this
Would you say that maybe we already do live in a society that's run by bullies, you know, meaning the media, right?
The media has had control over the narrative for
Basically, you know hundreds of years, right since the mass media became a thing
Would you say that you know the development of x and you know, elon musk promoting free speech and you know
Giving a voice to the voiceless. Would you say that this is perhaps a
Kind of like a title change that's happening right now
Like what how do you envision the world say 20 years from now?
When the media which you know has some of the largest bullies, you know people like Taylor Lorenz and so on
Now that they have lost power. What do you see the world looking like now that it's, you know
Ostensibly not going to be run by bullies anymore
Well bullies comes in all shapes and forms including I guess journalists though like
The person that you mentioned
who has me blocked but um
She has me blocked for telling her that you know, we as journalists have the really great responsibility to get things, right?
Yeah, I was quite critical. It was a pretty polite message. I mean it was a little bit condescending I suppose
But whatever she could live
Um, it's it's like I don't you know, like I don't share
Every journalist is terrible. I think there's some you know, i'm a journalist. I don't think I was ever terrible
so I think there's people who are
You know dedicate telling you the truth and are honest and sincere and curious and and do their best
So I wouldn't say like everyone in journalism is a bully for sure
But it is a big megaphone, right and it is a lot of power and unfortunately
What I was seeing and I was criticizing way beyond before this was that
You know, there were certain narratives that you weren't like allowed to sort of go stray from and
You would kind of be it wasn't like nobody tells you. Hey, you can't write this story, right?
It's not it never comes in that form. They don't say oh, you can't say this
It's more subtle than that. It's more that you want to need to fit into the culture. There's a compliance, you know
Um editors like you if you you're this way and if you pitch a story
that's like a little bit off of you know, it's considered wrong thing while suddenly you
Get look warm response and then you never get asked to write anything again. So it's more like that
And of course like you know
It's impossible to know about the world just completely from our own direct experiences or the experiences of our friends
so what happens like you need to rely on something for your sense making and for your
approximation of what the world is and that's journalists and I think journalists have failed because there is much more of a
activist streak to it as opposed to you know
Objective reporting and really trying to get to just the truth that the most accurate depiction of what reality is
That's what should be the goal in the guiding light and that's not what's happening. But bullies, you know
That comes in journalists. I I don't want I think we need these structures. I think we need institutions
We need people to have faith in these institutions, but these institutions also need to be
You know taken accountable to to the people and they need to
Change they need to correct themselves and to realize that yeah people have lost trust
But they lost trust for reason and also I hope people don't have this like knee-jerk reaction just immediately
Oh because it's in this paper
It's immediately the opposite the truth is immediately the opposite of that or you know
If it's coming from this health organization a hundred percent, it's false
right, and I think sadly that's where we are with a lot of people and
But these institutions also need to work to to kind of reestablish that trust, but that trust is very necessary and critical thinking
I I agree with that and you know on the point of journalists being more or less beholden to
The zeitgeist in the editorial room the same can also be said of influencers who are slaves to their audience, right?
I mean you see this often with commentary youtubers
They may hold a certain opinion and then you know
They'll get some backlash from you know
The people in the chat and they'll change their opinions on the fly you see that all the time on on x for example
And it's it you know betrays a certain
moral cowardice when you see people behaving this way and I think it's
up to you know listeners and viewers and observers to
You know make to exercise their discernment when they see
Their favorite influencer suddenly changing their mind on a certain issue and not you know
Standing their ground on on their beliefs when you know, they're so easily swayed. It's very clear that you know
They're not speaking the truth. They're simply saying what is popular
And and to your point about you know, bringing back the institutions and bring, you know
Confidence back to it. I agree. There should be an institution of journalism because journalism, you know is is a more
More, you know, it's more scientific than a person simply, you know shooting out random ideas, right?
I mean anybody can have any idea any opinion on anything
But if it's not, you know informed by expertise or by you know
Data, then, you know, it's not worth anything because you know opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one, right?
So it's it's crucial for people to exercise discernment and I I I recall a
A certain tweet by jordan peterson he put it out today where he was questioning the that one guy the one who drinks blood
You know the ones who live forever and that that guy is like, you know
He wants to live in a year zero where you know, there is no history. No truth, nothing and jordan disagrees with that
He's like no you you cannot just simply question everything or doubt everything you have to you know
Understand that there is the truth that you can arrive at the truth, but you have to exercise discernment
That's the the thing the missing factor that I think a lot of people simply
You know have lost sight of they question everything like the moon landing. They're like, it's all fake
It's like no, I mean if you if you look at the facts, it's like it's not fake right just a slight one example
Yeah, I was gonna say like I I agree with what eehan said there I I think
A lot of times people get boxed in
Especially on social media where everybody's like reaching out for followers
They views their success based on how many followers they have or how many likes they get
So what happens over time is that you start getting followers who view you
Certain views you have so if you're on the right or if you're on the left, they're mostly people that
Support you and retweet you and and like you and follow you because you agree with their views
But if you step outside of that normal box
And say you're on the right and you start posting something that might seem more left-leaning
That's that's going to do damage to your follow town
It's going to get people mad who who might have might have liked you in the past
And people so people get boxed in and they they almost
They can't be themselves on social media because they feel like if they say this
They're going to lose followers or if they say that they're going to get people who
Might like them not like them anymore
And and i've actually seen you you do this eon like like you i've seen you step outside of the typical box and and
I try to do it as well because like
Back three or four or five years ago. Like I actually like cared. I got the god building my brand
I'm building my follower count and it was hard
It was hard to like say something counter to what you thought your followers wanted
I think this at this point in my life. I don't care anymore. Like I don't care if I lose
Ed tweeted something about nikki haley and he lost like
5000 followers and I think I lost 2000. I talked to I talked to katherine about this on our show
I think people have to get away from that mentality and and it's hard
It's hard if you're building everything about your brand and and and everything you do is about building up your follow account
And social media pulls people in that direction
In the long run you're going to lose yourself
You're going to you're going to lose respect from people that actually can critically think I think
So like just think before you post like everything doesn't have to be
For me, like everything doesn't have to be anti-trump
I can agree with trump on things and I don't I shouldn't have to worry about people
Being despising me over it. So just just think about that. I I know that
People have different views
But don't box yourself in because you're actually also boxing those politicians in because the politicians answer to you
And if they see that if they say something wrong, then their supporters are not going to appreciate it
Then the same thing happens. It's the endless cycle
I mean it's called audience capture and and I think a lot of people fall for it
And I think a lot of the stuff in general just to bring it back to
This cancel thing this and tons a lot of the the mobs are organized because of social media
It's very easy to dehumanize other people on social media
And so it's much easier for people to mobilize and it's weird because one thing I discovered in researching the book
There was a common thread of people who participate in the mob
In the mobs not in the mob
Not the one where you show up with a fish on the doorstep
In mobs people forget that they participated in it, which is very interesting considering that in
Um, you know you'd expect that because of the kind of the vigor the emotional psychological
Aspects of being in that physical mob, but actually that translates to online as well
that's really interesting and in terms of the
You know audience capture again
It's something that i've seen happen to a lot of people where they just and as a result
they just become more and more and more extreme
And less tolerant like and often those were people who like advocated for more tolerance and i'm so sad to have seen them
Morphin changed to the point where actually they they completely
lost their their sense of values and
Because the another kind of mob I guess rewards them for it
Yeah, I see it happened quite a bit
I mean there's a reason why I don't have a million followers yet whereas some people have you know
Double my following because they're simply catering to what the mob wants them to say and it's not always organic a lot of the time
You know mobs are pretty easy to fake
It's pretty easy to astroturf if you get a bunch of bots and you see this quite often, especially when it comes to the uh,
You know, this is a slightly separate topic
But like when you look at the payouts that people are getting, you know, you think that oh this person was like
Two million followers is gonna get, you know, twenty thousand dollars, but they end up getting less than four digits
Why is that it's because their followers are fake and they don't seem to realize that but
They are, you know inadvertently
Influencing other people to agree with what the quote unquote mob wants them to think it's very easy to astroturf and I think influencers need to
Recognize when they're being played when they're being manipulated into
Saying certain things that they don't even necessarily agree with
Or that they even believe
Right and they they don't even you know that they don't even believe what they're saying simply because they're playing to their base
Daily, we see that daily. Um, and it's something that maybe we've all been guilty of
When you start believing your own hype, that's when it becomes a problem
Yeah, it's it's it's an echo chamber, right? You see this with disney where it doesn't matter
That the audience hates their movies because they're kind of poorly written
It's not even necessarily because they're woke or something. It's just that they're poorly written
But you know internally they're like, oh, this is the best thing ever
Like they're all just patting each other on the back and waiting for that approval
From their executives or their marketing people and the end result is that they will go down, right?
I mean you see this happen quite a bit even the publishing industry suffers from this with uh, you know with uh
With fiction right like fiction novels, you know, it comes to fantasy and science fiction. It's very insular
Um, and again, this is like kind of outside of the thing
But you know, you notice that who are people actually buying though, you know
people are reading books by lee child or the you know, red rising, you know by
pierce brown and and these guys are not part of that clique but
They're getting all of the approvals because you know people love their books. Whereas the books that they keep promoting, you know for
Awards and things like that, you know, they might win some nebula award or whatever, you know, like the science fiction stuff
No one's actually reading those books and they don't sell very well
Like and this eventually leads to the death of an industry you see this in comic books of all things, right?
Everybody's buying japanese comic books because they're actually fun to read whereas, you know, american comic books are just poorly written and it's only because they're just
Writing for their friends and they're not really, you know catering to any mass audience
Catherine what do you feel about going to some hands? We have yeah, let's do it. And scott um, lumi
Would you like to go and um have a question or comment for katherine?
Yeah, I was gonna say well done katherine on your book and uh, please I was gonna ask everyone to repost
And uh share the room as much as possible because this is recorded and it's a good piece of pr
And uh, yeah, she's done a brilliant job
I've actually just grabbed it on amazon right now and i'm gonna be reading it while i've got nothing to do the next few days
So yeah, thank you katherine and i'll leave you with that and i'll drop down as a listener. Thank you
I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. And I hope you enjoy the book
It's kind of weird to tell people like I hope you like the book or you hope you enjoy the book because it's sort of um
You know, it's not all positive stories
It I think it's you know, I think they are interesting stories and they aren't it's not about like focusing on like the
victimhood of the people but more so and like the importance of
What what happens in these situations and being able to learn from them and actually somebody I talked to said, you know
I wish because I was trying to guide this person through their own cancellation
And he says, you know, I wish I wish your book was out. So I really hope nobody gets canceled
But it is a good way to understand what happens and how to deal with that and also what strategies you can use
Because each chapter sort of gives you a sense of like advice from the person I interviewed
from the people I interviewed as to what you know, what is the best what kinds of approaches people might
recommend and what work for them when they learn and
You know, I think an important thing too is like, you know have to get canceled to to speak your mind
But you can figure out how you know
How to use your voice where it matters to you and it could start in small ways
Not everyone has like a megaphone
just to even talk to your friends and be open and authentic and just and if a friend is going through a
difficult time to be able to reach out to them and you know support them so there's a lot of small ways and then
You want to also protect yourself as much as you can I think one of the
pieces of advice in the book is is you know about like if you did manage if it wasn't like a
You know, if it's plan cancellation, but rather you decide hey, i'm just going to speak my mind
You have the ability to sort of choose your setting and choose your approach and and find ways to sort of protect yourself
So that you don't lose everything when it happens having a plan B
You know if someone were to get canceled for promoting or reading your book because
one of the people in your book
What's his name? Winston Marshall. He was canceled for promoting Andy Ngo's book, right?
So what happens, you know, if there's like a next Winston Marshall he gets canceled for promoting your book
What would you say to them? What's your advice for that person?
Well, I would actually if that happened but um, but yeah, I mean
What's the advice for just I hope nobody gets canceled for just reading my book
I will say one one very encouraging sign was that when I I was most nervous about
Like the people on twitter they work x they know what i'm like and know what I stand for
So I wasn't particularly nervous about sharing news of the book
but then I shared it and I know people don't use this anymore, but I did share my facebook and linkedin and
Those were more I was a little bit more nervous because those are incredibly like, you know, uh, all entirely left leaning
And so I wasn't sure what the reaction would be
And the reaction was actually really positive and a lot of people ordered the book and i've talked to people about the book and
And sort of film events and things like that. So people are actually much more open-minded than
One might be inclined to think because of these like vocal loud individuals
I mean in terms of like what you say to someone who gets canceled for reading a book. I think like winston marshall. I mean
Do you want to live in a society where somebody gets canceled just for like recommending a book?
Are you is that where you we want to live at?
So if we don't want to live there, then we should be able to stand up and say hey
That's i'm entitled to read a book. You don't have to like the book
I might not even like the book after I read it, you know and request a refund
I I think for a lot of people including myself
A lot of the choices we make is because of our conviction and our beliefs that um
We are willing to risk something
Because we believe that it is more important to not lose that that freedom and
Do they want to be like they are in these oppressive regimes where you're like not allowed to say things?
You're not allowed to read certain books or any books if you're you know, maybe a woman or I mean is that where?
They want us to head. I don't you know, I hope not
Well, I think that that there is a valid reason why many of these people don't support people that are getting cancelled because they fear like
A second-hand cancellation or cancellation by association
Uh, do you think that that also factors in why some of these people that are actively being cancelled are not?
Supported maybe by their own community
Oh a hundred percent but but what a moral weakness it is to not stand up for your friends and actually I I
One of the people in the book. Um, it's weird. I got to know her and her friend separately not realizing they were friends, but
The last straw for one of the people was when
Her friend was being cancelled and she's like and people are telling her oh, man
It's so must be so disappointing to find out that your friend is this evil person
And she's like if I can't stand up for my friend, who am I?
And so she kind of walked away from from the group
And I think that's that's really important for us to keep in mind. But people are
Are like I said, like when I was
Experiencing my own cancellation a lot more people probably reached out to me to support me than the ones that sent me really hateful messages
But the ones that sent me the supportive messages
They all sort of said the same thing where they're just afraid
Almost all of them were afraid to speak up because they were afraid of the same thing happening to them
They're not wrong to be afraid
Um, it probably like the mob turns on people very quickly
I mean the mob turned on me because I defended someone else. So
Fear it's just that if we all cower in fear
Then this will continue to happen over and over and over again
And maybe tomorrow it's going to be to your best friend or maybe it's you or maybe it's your you know
Parent or child and are you willing to live with that? I guess is the question
And this is something that you know
Is a society like we need to tackle because every time we remain silent we
Give permission to the bullies to bully other people
And that's what happens in in high school or middle school as well, right? Like if nobody stands up for the kid that's being bullied
Nothing nothing happens like they will continue doing it. There's no repercussions, but once enough people stand up to those bullies
You know those bullies are not going to like it and they're going to stop
And I had this experience actually in high school. Um, I may have recalled it recently
um, I had an incident that i'm like to this day is a bit unsettling for me because of the physical nature of it
but I was being harassed, um by two
and I had two friends with me at the time and
I stood up for myself and that situation even though I was like remarkably shy back then but my friends didn't
And then they later came up to me and they said, you know, we're so sorry we didn't step in for you
But we were really scared
And that thing that happens when you're in high school and a lot of people really regret not standing up to bullies for other
On behalf of other people
It's very difficult to live with actually
Often some people, you know realize their mistakes and they change and then they become more active and stand up to be for people
But some never change and they remain this way
Should we go to the hands here we got a yeah, yeah
Quickly, I just think it needs to be said that um, I was nowhere near katherine's high school
During those bullying years. Thank you
And we'll go to scott. Go ahead scott
Yeah, katherine, I a at the risk of getting myself canceled here. I I just like to ask a question
Uh regarding knitting moms and since you're canadian, uh, were they hockey moms?
I mean they that most of the stories in the book are actually american
Yeah, you americans do this more than canadian seem to do this. I will I will say this in defense of our
Yeah hockey moms and soccer moms can be
Pretty much like that as well. And and just another question for both you and ian
Given the whole taylor swift kerfuffle
Could you just be like, you know on the record to say yeah, it's okay to root for the chiefs if you want to
It's okay to root for the what for the chiefs over san francisco, I mean whichever
Yeah, absolutely. That's what I thought and there's there's no reason yeah
You can either be for the chiefs or the or for san francisco. It doesn't matter politics doesn't matter
The city is coming from doesn't matter. It should just be do you like the teams? Great. That's all I wanted to hear
But I don't know which team she rooted for but regardless of the team she should be canceled
I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding
And i'll step down too. Thank you very much
I got a question for you kath and i'm going to jump in here lumi. Uh
Sorry for jumping over you but it is what it is. But um, you know probably a vast majority of people who read the book
Probably won't ever get cancelled
Uh just because you know, it's it's something that usually people with big platforms are the ones that experience
So my question to you is is, you know, what is the change in behavior?
Have when they read the book, you know someone who's not getting canceled is this is the change in behavior
You're looking for is to be more vocal and in calling bullying out when they see it
You know, how do you want the average reader to change after they read these stories?
Yeah, that's a great question
And the book is definitely not written, you know with the majority of the readers in mind
Having being targets of cancellations themselves like I certainly don't want all my readers to get cancelled
Um, it is about you know, it is about
The cell the biggest type of censorship that I see in society today is self-censorship
So it is the fear sometimes founded and sometimes not
Of being afraid to say what you really mean
but by not being able to say these things like
You are depriving of yourself a lot
There's a cost to not speaking to one is of course the cost to society
But the other one is even to yourself because a you can't if you never speak what you mean
You never get challenged. You never have a conversation. You don't know what other people mean
And that's a big part of it. And then also your relationships are just not authentic because you're not being true to yourself
Um, so I mean I learned a lot through this process
You know, my friendships are far more authentic and real I feel much more like myself because i'm able to speak and I consider that a gift
And i'm able to say things and and have people, you know disagree with me and then I learn something from that or
Sometimes I just adjust my thinking or make stronger arguments
But you don't get that if you don't get to speak what you mean and what I want people to take away from it
Look, everyone's going to have their own comfort. Everyone's going to have a different situation in life. You know, some people have
medical issues or kids families
People that depend on them. So they're going to have to make the choice for themselves, but I want people to
Take away that, you know, this is
What's really important, you know, I want them to ask like what's really important to me?
You know, where where is my you don't have to stand up for every single thing
You're just just the things that really really matter to you and it doesn't have to be big it could be small, you know
It could just be as small as having honest conversations with your friends and they might surprise you
And this is one thing that happened to me since I become sort of more public and more vocal
A lot of people come to me with their thoughts including people I knew in real life for a long time
And I never knew what they actually thought but now they feel safe
So I've become like their safe place in a way and I think that's really important
Um, so your friends will surprise you sometimes in good ways and sometimes negative ways
It's it's the reality of things but you know, the good ones are worth it and
The ones that might surprise you negative ways like I don't know were they really good friends to begin with maybe not
So it's a custom, you know, uh brat
Not brat wine. Yeah brat weinstein in the book
He says, you know, it's a process of upgrading and I think that's a really good line
It is a process of upgrading when you're honest with people those who can sort of see the real you and still love you
And understand you're coming from a good faith place
And want people to be able to speak honestly
Um, so again, it can be as small as with a friend
But also, you know, maybe in colleagues and social groups and you can kind of do it step by step
It doesn't have to be like, you know, you wake up
And you just say everything that's on your mind
It's to every single person and you take take out an ad and I don't know the new york times
If they still sell ads by the time you do it
So it's it's gradual and so and different people have different platforms, you know
I was able to grow more of a platform as I spoke
Um, you know, I am a writer
So of course like i'm going to have a little bit of a different, you know
My my thoughts are a little bit more public and you know
I talk on podcasts and I have podcasts and all that kind of stuff, but everyone's different. So
Um and taking stands when it really matters and I also think I mean there are cases where there's legal
repercussions or legal steps that one might take when it's something to do with say discrimination and there's different organizations that might be useful and supportive
And there's you also want to support other people
Maybe you can't speak up this
The loudest voice or because of your situation
While support other people who are speaking out. That's that's another thing that one can do
And in the book, I also included like some resources towards the end of just different organizations that focus on
Including say fire is a really great one because they'll actually fight for speech free speech
No matter whose speech it is. It doesn't matter where what your political side is
They they just kind of do it equally and they provide resources
So those are just some of the things that I want people to sort of take away
I was just going to say real quick sir. Speaking of uh, supporting people speaking out
Uh, we haven't plugged it yet
Catherine I would have liked if you would have put the direct link in the tweet we pinned to the top just so people
Can hit it and then hit the button and then pay you
Uh, but we'll we'll do it this way
Hit Catherine's face as hard as you can and then go to the link in her bio
That's the direct link to the book. Uh, there we go. It's now it's now pinned to the top
Uh, if you if you enjoyed the message she's talking about it all if you support the message if you support freedom of speech
If you support x support Catherine also, it's just great to support
To support great content creators on x to support great great people. Catherine's one of those people
Uh great person great friend great content creator
I bought the book without knowing what the fuck it was about a week ago
Just a supporter but now that I know what it's about
I want to buy multiple copies and buy it for all my friends and family
Make sure you support Catherine. We're gonna get this the space is no we're gonna continue it
But uh hit the link at the top buy the book
Give it I think the part people don't talk about leave reviews leave five star reviews. Even if you hate the book leave a five star review
Um that that goes a long way to uh supporting the authors as well the five star reviews it pushes out more
So do that as well and support or hit the link back back to you Sarah
Thank you Catherine, you know, you've spoken and you've uh posted a lot
on self-centered self-censorship
Do you find and i'll ask this to you as well ian because you have you're very outspoken. Uh, Catherine
Do you find that you still will self-censor yourself? Um in you as well
Or do you just have no fear anymore because you've already
Have been through the experience of people trying to cancel you
Yeah, I don't uh self-censor at all. I don't see the point. I mean I would say that it's true
I say the quiet part out loud. I think that's how
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's in my bio
I don't even put anything else. It's just I say the quiet part out loud and if you don't like it
Well, you know, you don't have to announce your departure because this is not an airport terminal
Have you ever ian have you ever?
Posted something and thought
Maybe I shouldn't have said it that way or this will be taken out of context
Oh, yeah, therefore you have self-centered yourself by maybe removing it
In that way or do you just post it let the chips fall where they may?
Uh, no, I have I have made mistakes where I might say and and this is typical
Of my like much older posts where I said something sarcastically and years later people are still taking it out of context
I made a bunch of comments about reddit. For example, right? I was like, yeah reddit is bad. Anderson Cooper is destroying them
And you know, I posted something sarcastic to uh, you know to to basically make fun of reddit and people
I don't know. Maybe they have really low iq
They're like, oh you support reddit over anderson cooper and he wants to take down child predators
Just means you support the child predators. It's like no, I don't know being sarcastic
It's very obviously sarcastic and people don't seem to understand that
So if i've made any mistakes, it's the you know is to overestimate people's intelligence
So for me it's so I don't know if I really self-sensor so much anymore
I don't have like the most controversial takes in the world that said
I don't really say or publicly tweet things or unless i've really thought it through
So it's not like it goes from my brain immediately
Into the ether like I really have to stand by the words I say
So like anything I say whether it's publicly though i'm you know
I can misspeak because in a life space like, you know, I can be scatterbrained or get it wrong or misphrase things
but i've generally you know thought things through to the extent where like I stand by my words and
And also, you know when I tweet it or write it
I've thought it through when I stand by these words, even though maybe I could change my mind that that's also possible or get something wrong
It's sort of the same thing that in life like I it's not like I I have thoughts sometimes in my head that are like
Uh, that's like, uh, maybe that's a racist thought or something like that or very judgy or whatever it might be
You know, we all have them
But I recognize that within myself
So I wouldn't say that because I I talk to myself and say okay katherine. Why do you think that?
Little back and forth with myself. So the things that I say out loud are things that i've like
Thought out there's maybe a few topics where i'm a little more cautious about probably and I try to pick my words
Also wisely as when I speak to different audiences, I might say it a little differently because they might not understand it in the same
In the same way I try to kind of meet people where they are
So there's definitely some topics where like with one person I might have like the shorthand because I know we're already on the same page
And another person i'm like, okay, I know where your
spots blind spots are where not blind spots, but like emotional triggers are
And so i'll try to address your worries and emotional triggers before I get into it. So that's kind of where i'm at
Well, see that's where you differ from ian because ian doesn't care about your emotional triggers
Um, yeah, that's accurate. I don't care
I know speaking of cancel, um
and this is you know, I say it in a you know, and it's sort of a light-hearted way but
If I were you know, i'm i'm a liberal
People know my political leading
But if I reply to a conservative account
And I reply several times to ian
That is sent my way simply for replying or even if i'm in a little bit of an agreement with him
The amount of hate that that I have gotten sometimes I think is this worth it and then other times
I think you know what who cares?
Um, it's my thoughts my opinion
Your your thoughts can't hurt me
I don't have fear of cancellation
Yeah, it's that association and the more public a person you are I think the more that
Can hurt you the cancellation or uh, you get to be more cautious
I mean might feel like i'm a journalist and like people might not want to associate with a journalist who's like a
Freethinker or whatnot or somebody who associates like i've talked to i've talked to literal nazis at certain points
I don't like them. I don't approve of their thoughts, but I still think it's if possible
We should still try to talk to them because people
You don't know where that person is where they are at any given moment
So, um, I think and if if somebody decides to judge you based on that it's just it's just sad
I mean look at um, darrell davis is a really good example from the book. He's a civil rights activist. He's black
He would talk to members of the kkk, you know
And actually they ended up a lot of them ended up leaving and he's been collecting hoods. He's my role model. Actually
He's somebody who's inspired my sort of approach for quite a long time before even encountered him in this book
Because he's willing to do that
He doesn't have to do that
But he is willing to do that and that has changed lives and by just seeing that that you know people do change
It was through these interactions and it's not like he went and like hey i'm going to change these people
I'm going to make them not white supremacists
It's just by listening and talking and showing and um, you know modeling a particular kind of behavior and openness
And i've had the same kinds of experiences with like for example, very um, I spoke to somebody once on a space where the guy
Clearly was trying to provoke me, but he was he was you know, very anti-semitic
In the white supremacist zone of things
And you're having some mic problems Catherine. Oh, no
Is it better now or no? No, it's not it's it's it's that thing. Yeah, you need to get an iphone
I did I offered to buy you an iphone and now you're sitting on your crappy android
Um fix your how dare you make fun of people with androids i'm canceling you right now
You know on the on the point that you know about darryl davis and speaking to you know
people on the other side or not even other side, but
basically people with really really really really bad opinions, right is i've had you know, i've spoken to
Literal neo-nazis on a podcast have a good debate with them and guess what, you know
You have fucking articles written about it saying that he associates with nazis, you know, and then afterwards
Because other people talk to me. They're like, you know, they're like, oh this big name speaks to a guy
Who's been on a nazi podcast they've done the same thing to uh, christina hoff summers
They did it to jordan peterson. They do it to joe rogan. It's it's just you know
At some point we just need to tell these people to go fuck themselves, you know, like
which one of you on the book does say
You know, I I used to be I would say, you know on the left. I mean not not like a leftist but you know more like
How do you word it liberal side of things, right?
you know when I was when I was a game journalist an entertainment journalist and
The most annoying thing and the thing that actually turned me off from them
You know from from like even wanting to associate these fucking people was them
Constantly policing who I could talk to I would speak to any conservative
Not even like a problematic conservative
But like just a regular conservative and they would get up in my dms or send me some messages
Saying that it's not a good look to be talking to this person
I'm like who the hell do you think you are policing who I can speak to
And they did the same thing to pewdiepie when when he and I were talking right pewdiepie that youtuber
They wrote articles about it the birch wrote articles about how pewdiepie associates with ian mouse krung and lord and southern
Because he follows them on twitter just because somebody follows you doesn't mean they agree with everything you say and even if they do
So what you know, it's it's ludicrous, but nowadays thankfully
The media is having a much less of an impact because no one gives a shit anymore, you know, and that's a good thing
Yeah, people don't seem to go through my follow history very much anymore
And it's it's really diverse. I would say by the way
But and there are some people that I follow that I actually really really really don't like but there's different reasons for with all of them
But but yeah, you know, it's interesting every time I speak like i'll speak to you or i'll speak to brian and add like
different spectrums, but but in either case i'll get i'll catch some kind of flak for it or some other people and it's like
Uh, please don't tell me who to speak to or not or be surprised that i'm speaking
Lucero saying my mic is crap and I need an iphone. It's not my mic though. It's something to do with its x-bases
This sounds like a hardware problem
Yeah, like I think I think your your uh, it's it's the uh, it's not the anc
It is basically the codec that you use that your phone uses to
You know transfer like wireless voice
It's switching to an older protocol or something because it doesn't have enough bandwidth
And I think it's having some memory issues when you speak. I think your microphone is disconnected to be honest
I mean, I don't have a microphone
What are you using what are you using to communicate right now, it's a phone it's an android samsung
It's not the bottom of the line. It costs the same as it
Stop judging me. Do you have nothing?
Do you have nothing connected to it? Do you have like a wire or anything connected to it? So I was charging it
And then I just connected it and then I put in my sernet cable in there because you can do that
What kind of phone is that
Okay, she'll she'll work on it. We can still hear her. Um, katherine will go to an
Hand go ahead rose. Uh, if you have questions or comments for katherine or the space
Rose she might be on a samsung too
Oh, you sound good now. You sound better now
Oh rose can't hear you oh
Are we on now? You hear me now?
I've uh seen you on twitter and I especially uh when october 7th
Uh happened especially liked your candidness and the the brave spaces you held
Commonly people's i'm i'm a journalist and I found a hashtag called woman to follow that that trended
I mean twitter what is known as x?
Uh, you know women tend to I mean like women don't respond, you know, if they if they respond to an ad for a job
Qualities they need you know 10 qualifications woman won't reply if it's three
And this trend of woman to self-censor
You know, what would be your message to woman reading your book?
Yeah, it's uh, so first of all, thank you so much
And I will say one thing about october 7th like part of why I was able to speak
As freely, um as I have been on that topic something that I you know
It was not a topic that I previously spoke about that much or at all
Um was actually because I think I it's like a muscle
And it worked to the point that like i'm not i'm not afraid on anything for
Some of the messages and dms i've gotten from people including threats to my life
Um over what i've said on that topic. It's like I don't know if I would have been able to put up with that
So i'm kind of I think maybe part of my journey has to do with being able to then go and stand up for things that are
I i'm kind of grateful in a way that this happened the way it did
As much as it sucked when it did in terms of women, um
You know, it's interesting because I think these situations this these cancellations happen a lot more in female groups
There's something about it. That's you know, part of it is I think of course the sort of biological reality of like men tend to fight
In physical ways women, you know might not have that so they use the mean girl tactics
They use their words gossip, um, reputational damage. That's the weapon
But also I think something that happens with women and I don't really know why but you know women
Well, I do know why part of it is like throughout a very long time women
Had to really fight for positions and you know, there'd only be one in a lot of situations
It's very hard to get to certain aspects. And even though we've made a lot of
Strides in that area. I notice that women often get pitted against each other
And I see that, you know instead of sort of uplifting other women and just being like, hey
You're a cool woman like me and sarah make fun of each other all the time. We also do lift each other
But and when I see women who are like really interesting and talented like I actually want to just like help them
As I do other people who are talented
and nice, but I notice like i've been in a lot of situations where
women are just being immediately compared even though there's like lots of men
Around to why are women being compared to other women instead of everybody if you're really going to do a comparison
And then women who feel like the other woman is coming in to replace them
There's other people coming in that aren't women but only the woman is seen as the replacement
so I think a lot of it is sort of the after
Some of the issues that we had as a society in terms of women's rules
You know, I don't think there's a reason to continue this cycle
But you know there women pit each other against each other
But also, you know men kind of do that too without maybe always thinking because I notice there's a lot more comments
When I was in a podcast with another woman, you know, they were comparing our looks and things like that and
It's just it you know, I don't find that helpful at all
So my message is you know
All you can do you can't control how others behave
But you can certainly control how you do and modeling
I think modeling certain kinds of behaviors the behaviors you want to see in the world
Is a really really powerful tool. So I think when you when you lift people up
Others being left out. They might be more inclined to do that
When you are calling to another person
it often results in more kindness spread in the world and
You know, it's a very Pollyanna kind of take I get it
And i'm a little bit of an idealist, but I do think those things are important that they have a ripple effect
You don't you can't most of us don't have this like immense reach like we can only reach a certain amount of people
But when we reach, you know say we reach five people those five people are touched and affected by it
They're going to reach more and then of course like shutting things down like when somebody
When somebody when you see somebody being attacked, I think it is important to kind of certainly not for
more gas on the gasoline on the fire and certainly
You know just to say hey, that's okay. This person is entitled to their opinion
You don't even have to support their opinion. You just support the fact that they're allowed to have one
That's how I felt by the way
Like there's at least a few stories in the book where i'm like I actually disagree
With the positions of the people but they're but I a hundred percent support their right
To share their positions and other people can criticize them if they don't agree in good faith
So I think that's the value that we should aim for
I don't know if that was like a hopeful answer, but hopefully it was somewhat coherent
Yes, thank you. Thank you. I guess I a question as you're a journalist, you know with the decline we see in local news
What um impact do you think that will have on?
this idea of self-censorship
Will that be a positive thing a negative thing? Um, you know this democratization of of media
Yeah, I mean in general let's say i'm very happy in the direction things are going right now, um, I think
Media journalism is the most important is so direct and it's actually tends to be the least least political
Because it is just about things that affect people on the ground on a very personal level and the people who are journalists reporting
They're part of that community. They go to the town hall meetings
Like I I think it's a very undervalued form of journalism and a critical one and a sadly
It's one that's always had financial woes, but it's even more so now
And then what we're seeing everywhere else. There's this big
collaboration that has been happening for a very long time a lot of media outlets are also straight out disappearing and of course
We have in terms of speech, you know
We have systems that are not working and I really like there's two things that want to see happen
One is I want to see values
Of journalism the old school values, you know of objectivity of getting as close as possible to the truth
Be just honest in your not an activist but a truth teller
There's things I want to go back to that and that involves training
Like I had really good editors at the time where I was coming up where they they really challenged me
They would just ask me questions
Those were their notes when they did their edits
They came in the form of questions and a lot of them like caused me to become a better writer
To really think things through and not allow my own biases to get in the way
But that is not the case with
Sort of the new or brand of journalists and they're not getting the benefits of having these older editors
There's a lot of back and forth and push and pull between the different
You know generations or the different styles of reporting
And i'd like to see you know, I think I think the readers
Which is who I think they should really be listening to on this. I think readers really want more transparency
They want more objectivity and they don't want they can make up their own minds
They just need to understand what's going on in the world and it's really hard to figure out
But then on the other hand, we have all these new
Media kind of ventures and and people turn to them because they don't trust the you know
The main street media the traditional models and they think they're going to be more honest
But they're not necessarily more honest. In fact, they're often even more ideologically captured
They're just captured in the direction that their readers want them to be
So what I want to see, you know, and I want people to be sort of really aware of that
And so I think it's more important for people to find journalists that they really
Like that they think are truthful wherever they might work whether it's a traditional media outlet where it's on the left or the right
That should be the the guiding
Star from from both readers and journalists and find those people support those people show that support voice that support
I think that will make a big difference and it will empower them
To I think also speak on topics that might be more difficult to normally get through
And then I think the other part is like building new institutions. There is some some progress there, but not a lot
again with those more concrete values
Um embedded in them. I I'd like to hopefully maybe try and attempt at that
You know if if community journalism disappears, I think I think it'd be a very very sad thing
I think it's really important for
Readers to voice through these publications that hey, we just want we want we're we can take it
We can like if you're right-wing publication, it's okay to publish, you know writers who might disagree with whatever the mainstream view
There is and if you're on the left we want we want to hear more
From people voices that that have a different perspective
Because that enriches us all and I think that's one way to sort of work our way through some of this like self-censorship
Thank you that thank you that great answer, thank you captain
Thank you. I really appreciate it
Yes, Catherine. I hope you sell a million books tonight. Um
We don't even have a note sold out in canada by the way
From the 11 people that live in canada
Catherine's entire family bought the book actually my family refuses they just want freebies
Charge them double Catherine. That's how you
That's how you grisk off your family. I just bought you a book by the way. Oh, thank you. Ian. You're welcome
Um, Ian, did you buy the hardcover or did you buy the eversion? I got the eversions. I can read it immediately
Um, and you'll have to read a little bit and then tell us what you think of the first few chapters
Um, Yvonne, um, you have your hand up. Do you have a question or comment for uh, mr. Brodsky?
I do, but I think that lumi was before me. So i'm happy to go after
That's okay, because you're a new speaker and lumi's spoken before and I think lumi would be okay. Are you okay lumi?
Excellent. Go ahead Yvonne
Okay, cool. Cool. Yeah, so I um, yeah, i'm really excited about this book Catherine
I love the the subject matter for sure because it can affect anybody this particular subject matter
So what I had two questions, um related to it one and I apologize if someone asked this before I was having technical difficulties
What is something that you would say because I I think about our younger generation a lot. I mean
Most of us on here being adults
I I myself have faced a little bit of this and even as an adult when it first happened
I mean it can kind of be shocking until you get your thick skin
To be able to toughen up and then you know
Re-center yourself and reground yourself and things of that nature
And I get concerned about uh, the kids that are growing up in the digital age that are facing some of this stuff
A lot more on a regular basis even like as they're in high school and things like that
And so and so it and they can get more emotional related to it because they don't really know how to
Handle their emotions as well as adults do most of the time
so one of the things that I was curious is
For you know young the younger generation like teenagers that are on the come up with things
What are some things that you mentioned in the book?
That are tools for them to help them stay centered and grounded and have self-love and stay empowered
Through some of these challenges that they face
That's one thing I would if you would want to answer and then the other thing that I was curious about is as a writer
What are some of the specific challenges that you yourself during the writing process?
Um had to face and and then how did you overcome like and anything that pops into your mind? So whatever you'd like to share there
Sure, um, I think i'll start with the second question first because i'm a rebel
um, I think the challenges as a writer for me in particular I
First of all staring at a blank page is kind of hard
And and then the kind of envisioning of like I want this to be the best thing ever
So like the perfectionism I think is always stood in my way in every endeavor of mine
More specifically I found with the stories just there was a lot and then figuring out what to leave off
And could be left off and what could not
And making sure that it was just like accurate in terms of voice and had a certain consistency
Um to it and just I mean every story is it standalone?
But then also it is a book and it's not just like a bunch of essays
So finding like have weaving that thorough line through everything was also something that you know
Was was definitely a bit of a creative challenge and just figuring out how to organize it
Idea from when I first began it's shifted a little bit and I was fortunate enough to be able to bounce off some ideas with my
publisher who also helped me edit the book so
That helped a lot not not doing it on your own is it's pretty good
I also didn't let you know, usually you let people read things before you publish them
Catherine you know, how about now? No, you're good now. Okay. I didn't let anybody read my book
Catherine you have to step next to your wife
While Catherine is figuring out her
Uh microphone situation, um, I I posted in the nest, um from gen
Um C that Catherine's book in canada is the number one bestseller in popular cultural or popular culture studies
Um, and uh, she just sent me that so Catherine you are a bestseller in canada
Are you able to speak Catherine
Now this is going to be an internet problem she's going to realize it later so it's going to take a little bit
Well, Catherine you can drop down. We could bring you right back up
Already happened. I didn't even do anything
Okay bringing her back people it'll be just there she is it'll be just a moment
Um, when Catherine comes back we'll go to lumi and then miss silence
Uh Catherine it said there's an error adding you
Adrienne, can you try to add her back? Please can't have a space without her
Maybe if we all buy her book it'll give her enough profit to get the iphone
Oh, right. Um, i've already offered to purchase her the iphone
Okay, okay i'm here it's working now
Whoever I kicked you can request back up. I I had to kick someone because it there was not enough space
Catherine, uh, you are a number one best seller in canada if you want to check the nest
Is that in popular culture studies I was in civil rights yesterday, I guess I dropped it number two now
But I had I kicked off dad's ad um off of his mantle yesterday, but I guess now he's
Yeah, I just wanted to comment on on adrienne's voice every time he speaks every time he says something
Yeah, it's like you're not faking it you literally sound like elon
Yeah, it's like it's a consistent thing. It blows even it blows. Everybody's mind and everyone comes up
It's like I make this joke
It's no this is the first time someone has told me that I sound just like it was like dude
This never happens. You should do it more like to space. Wait, what do you mean? You sound? What do you mean?
Sounds like uh, like uh, yeah
I don't see it. Like I don't know what you're talking about. And that's yeah
You know videos i'm like is is adrian speaking or is elon speaking what the hell
I was so stupid when I was editing that video that you quote post that I was like, bro. This is so weird
Used to ian used to get it people used to be like ian kind of sounds like elon when they talked to each other
Like you sounded kind of similar, but now adrian is like well you stepped it up like
Uh, ian you have to adjust your voice
That's for sure. You know when uh, when adrian and I had a phone conversation
I wasn't sure that he wasn't like actually elon
I was on my best behavior in case he wanted to whisk me off to paris and marry me
She dressed up and did her makeup and then made him wait
I did I dressed up I put on makeup because I thought we were having a video call and I couldn't be sure
That it was I called my husband. I said I might be leaving you for elon musk. He was like he can have you
So I have a question at which point in my response to yvonne. Did I
I don't even know katherine. I okay
Yeah, you were you were talking about um
The writing process and how your editor had really helped you
Oh and specifically you were saying that you didn't let anyone read it before
You had done something. So that's kind of where you left off. Okay, so I did pretty I did get pretty far
I don't think I spoke much beyond that. I just said that um, that's maybe not the right way to do it
but often, you know, I think often we get too much voices in our head and
And other people's opinions and it actually stops us from like publishing or creating
And so I don't know in the in this case
I was like very nervous though because then like the only person who read it was my publisher and me
And I was like I kind of like this book. Actually, it's actually I wrote my publisher and I was like
Am I allowed to say that I kind of like the book and he's like you can but people are still going to get mad at you
because of the content but um
I just cancelled myself. No, but people have read it since like I had a lot of like the media type people have read it
And like I got really positive
positive feedback and then I had the blurb writers like I had um, waltzer kern and and uh, shawn
What is it? Shawn? Oh, no, lennon. I guess it's his full name and a whole bunch of other people. So
You look at it. That's awesome
Yeah, yeah, he wrote a really nice blurb for it and um, he wrote like two and I chose one
But then the other one he might have liked it better because he he was like
Um, yeah, he said it like empowered his own voice
Um, so it was a really nice
It was really nice to get that and I have this oscar winning
Um screenwriter who read it also who?
Um i'm finalizing his blurb
Uh, so yeah, like it did really positive. Um feedback
So I was very relieved about that considering that I didn't show the one thing. I was really adamant
I did not want my parents reading it before publication
That would have been the worst
So that's my advice to writers don't let your parents especially when they're eastern europeans and very nitpicky
My dad is like it doesn't have enough jokes. You should have made it funny
Is what my dad said he's not wrong
But I didn't know how to do that in this book
My next one is actually going to be satirically written about real serious issues, but
And then I think I can't wait for that book
Yeah, it's gonna be fun. I really want michael more to
Write the forward to the book. You'll see why if I sell it you'll see why
He just he just kind of makes sense for that one
Um give on um, I think the other question you had was about kids. Oh, yeah. Yeah teenagers and stuff
I mean, I think I think teenagers adults are kind of teenagers
Yeah, well all the things that like they did and all the insecurities they had as teenagers they take with them
I think it's important to have like a really good core that comes from your parents in terms of values and principles
But also just critical thinking and being able to look at things a little bit as an outsider
And I I talked to someone today about this where I grew up in
You know, I grew up an outsider which makes it which can be difficult
But it also makes you far more immune from all these all this tribalism
so you don't you know, you still I care very much when I was a teenager about the
You know the people who made fun of me or whatnot
But I don't care very much these days and it's part of it is because I only care about the opinions of those people
That I respect and I don't respect people who behave in abhorrent ways
And that was a turnaround for me as an adult as well when when the stuff was going on with the canceling and all of that
So that was a big realization for me and I think that's something that we can like teach kids
Um, but also just like having more speakers
I think one thing that we should try to do is in schools inviting more speakers and more diverse in terms of their
and and really like exposing people to that and critical thinking and
You know, I think a lot of it is going to come from parenting and a lot of it is going to come from
How the education system is set up in terms of allowing more voices and we need to lobby
Go ahead. Ian. Oh, yeah. I mean on on the point of inviting more speakers, you know, I'm thinking like Jordan Peterson
Ben Shapiro Michael Knowles and so on right? I mean, they're pretty good speakers even if you disagree with them
They do invite them but then to get canceled for inviting them
right like the the organizers get put on a blacklist or
You know and and the most ridiculous part is when the university
Issues like an official statement and saying that if you were, you know triggered by Jordan Peterson showing up on campus
You can call our hotline or go to some group therapy session. I mean, how do we stop this? I mean
hurdles on on the development of these young people when they're saying that, you know
Listening to Jordan Peterson could trigger you emotionally and and you're going to need therapy for it
But nobody's really standing like the problem is like there's a lot of there's not a lot of
Parental involvement so there's not pushback and you're starting to see more pushback at least on some topics where
the parents will go to the you know to the
I forget what they're called but they have parent teachers
Is it the PTA? Yeah, sure stuff like that
And so they'll get more engaged but you know part of it is it can be very in my view
It can feel very adversarial and I don't know that that's going to get you know
Maybe we'll get certain things done. But I think when it comes to
Expending the the group of thinkers or maybe the books that are available in the schools to to have more perspectives
People need to become far more
I think parents have to become far more involved in a in a very local way
And also make the case like my my sister is a teacher
She's a high school teacher and she has to really advocate for certain books
Like because people do want to take out certain books that have diversity of perspectives, but like even like 1984
right, and they're like well
This is a book that's old and it's written by you know, I don't know white male. So you can't teach it and she's like, okay
Yeah, I know and and then she goes well, okay
Well, show me a book that teaches the same stuff that has the same kind of content the same point that this book is making
You know that's available by you know, some other group of people and they can't
And she won that battle. For example, she was able to teach that
But she made a really good argument and she didn't just say, you know
she didn't just like go on the offensive but she
So so I think there is ways and I think empowering teachers is another, you know, it's really important
You know, there's a lot of school
Issues like teachers don't have a lot of choice, but they have some power and so
I think advocating for these books and and
More diversity, but it's very difficult
It is very difficult because I know even with the content that I created
I created some content on critical thinking or sorry media literacy that I wanted to just share for free
Be available as a resource because I used to
I used to teach high school for very very briefly
And I taught media literacy and I found that there's just not a lot of resources and those resources are very biased
Now my resources might have been biased too
But they were accurate in how
As a tool to to assess media
Because somebody it was quite funny somebody actually to criticize me somebody took my own
Toolkit and applied it to criticize my toolkit
But i'm like, you know, this is kind of it's really creative quite funny
And actually proved my point because this the toolkit was still useful
Um, but yeah, I think I think creating even creating resources that might be available for teachers for free is a is a big deal
Because there's they're often paid and they're not very good
So I think that you know just starting there and and catering to the teachers who might be more open-minded
But it is a big it's a big problem. It's it's going to take a lot to solve
It's also a problem and the students have more power than the administrators, right? I mean you see in
Uh classrooms where they'll have someone who's in there who's like not anti-woke or something, right?
He's just a biologist and you'll have
The audience literally shutting him down and performing a heckler's veto and the school allows it. It shouldn't allow it, right?
You know speech and all but it's like they're shouting it down and preventing him from speaking. It's insane
well, the other thing is like, um, for example, uh, one of the case studies in the book is as a student
And he what he started doing is like really subverting on his assignments. So he just like write the most outrageous
Um things for his papers for those profs who require the ideological adherence
He just pushed the envelope
And still get a good grade because they didn't realize that he was being subversive and kind of satirical
So that's something that like as a student it's not ideal
But that is like that's what happened also in the soviet union with writers because there was all this censorship
And you couldn't just write what you wanted. You can't criticize certain ideas
So a lot of really good literature actually came from this very subversive culture
And they kind of let it go even when it was pretty obvious what it was getting at because they couldn't quite go after
It in the same way and it was quite effective
And Catherine let's go to some more hands let's go to miss silence then looney then siana go ahead miss silence
Thanks, sarah and adrian cat i'm so excited for you
I can't even believe that it's come out and for you to take such a
Really terrible situation and turn it around like lemons to lemonade. It's it's remarkable. So
um, congratulations anybody
listening take a look the links up in the
Gembo tron there and repost etc etc. Um
Oh, I had a couple questions, let's see
Do you have a favorite story from the book a person, um, you know
Yeah, um, I have a few I I mean, I think I really like darryl davis's story just because he's my
Hero, the other one I seem to come back to a lot is
Actually, I just did a podcast with andrew yang and that story seemed to resonate with him as well. Um, it was the story is um
Um, and it was about the court of public opinion
And I particularly wanted to include him in the book because he went through really
Like probably one of the worst ordeals of anybody in the book. He he like because he was accused of rape
Um falsely accused by an anonymous accusation
And he actually took it to court
But I encountered him like I don't know if I if i've only heard the story his story from the media
I may have had a very different perspective, but I ended up hearing him speak on a panel and it
Transformed my point of view in general about you know, anonymous lists and um a lot of the me too
Movement. I mean I already
Concrete thoughts I think on the me too movement in general
But in terms of you know, I remember his particular incident. He was put on a shitty media man list
Um, and he was anonymous he accused and a lot of people were and it was kind of like a whisper list
Whisper network for women to warn them about you know, shitty media men
But sometimes the offenses really ranged like some of them were like you're you know said he was kind of creepy
Right to all the way to rape or sexual assault
And you know, he he was falsely accused and there's reasons why we know it's false
But then because he fought it he actually had an even worse situation
So people like kept writing things on his house his car even when he moved towns his career is completely
He was a writer editor who gave a lot of
starts to a lot of prominent voices and his own voice was really extinguished and people didn't really stand by him, but he's
He's a really interesting guy had some really interesting thoughts. Um
And I really that that was a story that I really
I don't know if I resonate I didn't resonate with it on a personal level because I haven't gone through something like that
but but it did resonate with me from like
Um how I think about things in particular false accusations or or real accusations
But when they come happen in the public court and you know
Going after innocent people to get the guilty or whether the costs of you know
Letting a few guilty people go to protect the innocent is more worthwhile
Well, I definitely think the latter is um, and I really appreciate what you have said about
Supporting each other and
You know that people with good or true voices need to
Be vocal about it and and stand up for
This platform and and our ability to have these discussions and spaces has been
Amazing really and um, i'm
really looking forward to us beginning to trust each other again and and to have discussions and
Find resolutions and and solutions to these big problems. So
Excellent job. Everybody buy your book
And uh, hopefully we can get you a new phone
Thank you so much that's this is really a fundraiser for my new iphone clearly
Which is when all the books out loud. It's probably going to be just enough to get that new iphone
On the point of how we need to you know, have each other's backs that's crucial and
We can see the effects of it when we support someone who is speaking out from speaking the truth
They can rise up and be even stronger versions of themselves. And this is what we need to
Help, right? I mean take a look at riley games. She's speaking out against the you know, the wokeness in women's sports
You know when I talk about wokeness i'm talking about men pretending to be women and so on
She was canceled for speaking out. She was the first female athlete to speak out and she was canceled
She lost, you know her gigs and all that but what what happened was a lot of people spoke out for her
And now she has a louder voice than ever same thing happened to a higher a tick where who you know lives a tiktok
She was canceled as well. She was doxxed, you know by journalists, right?
Taylor loren's doxtr and now look at where she is, right? She's she's she's touring basically, right?
She's all over the place and this is because the public supported her and this is what we need to show
But because people stood behind him he now has a podcast and he's posting it on x and that's amazing
Yeah, and that's the thing. It was actually on when I was on trigonometry and constantine actually brought that up was like you really need to
Not everyone's going to feel is going to be able to
You know go out and and say what they want to say or have the platform to do so
But like supporting people who are taking that risk. I think is is incredibly incredibly important
You know, he said it was self-serving and then he plugged his uh patreon
I'm kidding so much. Um, he was kidding but but it is um
But it is so important and even like words of support in a private message are really important and and also one thing I wanted to
say, um, you know miss s you you said that um, you know, you take something that's
negative and not so good and turn it into something positive and I think that's something that
Look, I I cannot none of us can control how other people behave
but we can control what we do about it and
I think it was and some people lash out some people hide and they become angry and some people go on the attack for me
I wanted you know, at first I wanted to fix everything in the world and then it was a little bit too much
ultimately like I wanted to take this and have it be um
A positive force in the world just the way that you know when I was bullied like some people become bullies
Which I don't understand in my case. I was like no I learned from that
Have more empathy for people when they're bullied and I know what it's like to feel lonely
I know what it's like to walk into a room and not know anybody or you know
Not have anybody want to talk to you
So when i'm in a position where I can support other people
That's what i'm gonna do and I have a little bit more of that position now in my life and you know
Sarah knows i'm very very popular. So
You're popular to me katherine. I can't even I can't even roast you at this point. Um
Catherine we have a couple of more um questions. We'll get to the hands. We'll go to lumi. Go ahead lumi
Yeah, so i've got just two quick parts. I was gonna quickly read a volta
A quote um on freedom of speech, which I love which is I disapprove of what you may say
But I will defend to the death your right to say it and then one last thing
Catherine would you bestow on us?
Your brilliant robotic voice with one uh phrase one part of your book. Uh, I think it'll be brilliant
Oh my god, that would be a good way to go out. I think so maybe we'll go out that way
We'll go out that that's a great great thing because we all know
That much to my chagrin katherine loves bringing out cat gpt even though i've begged her to stop
I it's not my fault. She just controls me. I have no choice. I am hopeless hopeless. It's it's it's i'm the victim. Okay
I got a dm that I will read to you katherine
It says i'm very confused by this space. Don't you and katherine and they're being serious
Don't you and katherine hate each other you're very adversarial in other spaces
Yet tonight that was up dg
Yeah, yeah, but tonight you seem to be very nice to her and I don't understand it
Care to respond katherine
I paid sarah a lot of money to be nice to me for just one night
It's not gonna last because as a writer I am starving and
Um, so I won't have more money for the next time
The thing is like I basically skip lunch dinner and breakfast, but it might have some dessert
I do want to go on the record of saying that katherine and I are very friendly. We get along swimmingly. We have no issues and um
And most of our are you know back and forth battles. Most of our wit is just shtick
Um, I tried to explain that to my mom yesterday. No sunday
She she invited sarah over for dinner, but she didn't say that sarah would be able to get out of dinner
And I that made me love your mother I don't know how such a nice woman birthed something like you
But that's another topic for another space
Oh, you know, I I know that you guys are trying to end the space. Um, katherine, I would really like to speak with you
Maybe on a separate space because so many things that you're talking about. Um
I just I don't know they just align with kind of things that i'm working on. Um, we have 30 more minutes
So if you want to ask her yeah, well
Well, actually I wanted to
Kind of recommend a space shantal was on a space with you last night. Is that correct katherine?
With me last I don't I was not on a space last night
Uh, she she sent me a space. Do you remember someone? Oh wait. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wait. Wait
Are you talking about her special extra special shadow cabal?
She's actually the one who sent me the uh, the recording. I just as soon as I saw your name
I was like, oh i'm gonna pay attention to it. But um, I just I wanted to recommend a space with her tomorrow
Um, but as far as what's uh, you're talking about
Can I can I ask what's what's her app? I don't mean to cut you off. What's her?
Uh kusan, I believe it's her last name c-u-s-s-o-n
She has a very fascinating backstory, but it very much plays into the cancel culture. Um
She was uh arrested for stalking, uh chanting. I never get this guy's name right chaining
And she jumped on a space that I just happened to be hosting uh last week for
Um, you know, it's like a host position. It's kind of like more of a placeholder moderator kind of thing
Uh, so she jumped in I didn't know anything about her and she wound up being on
Uh on my space for I think like four hours and at one point I finally had to cut it down
I'm like, okay. I don't really understand what's happening here. Um, but in that time I found out that she
had done all these things and um
But she had a message for elon musk and I thought you know
I could write her off as crazy or
Let me contact her. She kept DMing me in the background. She's like I could really use your help starting a talk show
You know, I just feel like nobody takes me seriously because
You know of my past and I was like, okay. Well, let's let's help you get past your past by number one
Taking out your obsession for elon because that's it's not going to go anywhere. You know, you are one of
Probably a billion people who want to get his attention. So just take that off take that off the table and let's focus on your project
And uh, I sat oh my gosh, I think I probably talked to her for 10 hours. Um
Throughout the weekend, you know trying to help her condense her project and I basically said if you can get your
Idea your concept your theories everything down to 20 words or less, you know, I said i'll i'll help you
I I worked in uh in politics. Um
I'm, not trying to pat myself on the back
But I worked very high level with north at brownman and it won
My very first job or my very first role when I when I started there as a corporate event
It was protocol on events and
They tasked me with uh getting you know, like all these members of congress and senate
And you know like former defense secretaries and things like that
Together for an event for wounded warriors and they said we just need to raise
300 000 and you know, we already have this much from bowing and this much. Is this leading into a question or
Okay, anyway, this is about the book launch we're discussing that
I'm talking. I'm well, okay fair enough. Um
Catherine you may ask a question. There are people in line
The I don't know if you know the person i'm speaking of she is very very interested in getting um
Elon musk a very big project idea and a lot of people interested in giving
big projects that are smaller than the last
I I hit mute i'm i'm going to i'm gonna shut that down for you adrian
Um the woman that you were speaking of siena and I know that you wanted to jump in there
Ian and i'll let you jump in here in a second the woman that you were speaking of
Was a stalker of chanting tatum
He was so frightened for himself his family and his ex-wife
That he had to get an injunction against her
Um, the woman is very much obsessed with elon musk the spaces that you are
listening to where katherine I and
Alex fin are a part of our satirical spaces
We have debated on the back end whether to have her on those stages
She has proven to be a danger to people
um specifically a celebrity in which she broke into his home and stayed for 10 days
Um, we don't wish any harm on mr musk nor do we want to promote her any further on this space?
She's already shown that she is very frightening and menacing to other people
Um, ian i'll go ahead and unmute everyone if you wanted to respond. I just want to chime in
Yeah, I mean, isn't this the same woman who stalked candor rives and sends
Periodic emails about how his girlfriend is actually a man. He's the same person, right?
Just a moment adrian i'm not sure if that's the same woman, but some of the things that she says about elon are very
Frightening to stalk her right? Yeah, we shouldn't platform
I mean, it's all perfectly fine. Like it's all perfectly fine
We don't want to we don't want to spread we don't want to spread this kind of thing
It's it's i'm not i'm not trying to promote her. I'm trying to i'm trying to well, we cut r
I I know i'm trying to avoid a situation
X is so broken. You got everyone muted and there's still the ability to speak
Stop i'm going to we're not going to speak on a woman that has
Frightened celebrities broke into their home. We're not going to platform her or her delusions about elon musk
If you have anything to say about katherine and the book
We are happy to listen to your question or comment, but we are not going to say that woman's name again in this space
Okay. Well, I I didn't mean to do that. I was not trying to promote her. I was trying to say that she is and
That she's in a safe place
I wonder if channing tatum and his family are no
Care like government care. That's all I wanted to say
I didn't want to do it. I just wanted you to see why I always did it
That's all no, I i'm not going to that. That's not allowed here
Um, we're not going to promote people that
Frightened celebrities the only celebrity that is allowed to be frightened is katherine and that is only by me
You're gonna get stalkers on katherine don't do that
I'm standing out in front of her window. What are you gonna do?
Ian miles chong you're gonna tweet about me and cancel me. Come on
He's gonna say there's her bodyguard. Nobody's gonna go for cat if sarah's in the way
Oh, please i'll be i'll be too busy eating a twinkie on her porch a stalker would run right by me
Listen I already got swatted tonight. So earlier tonight. So, you know, this is nothing
I was just letting the wait. Are you serious? No
I mean I wouldn't put a pass to anyone
After time I can't tell if it's for real or not because it's so convincing
I mean when you say you're swatted, I mean, I assume that you were on like temple show and you got swatted again
But you know what I told today I was on a stream today and I told the guy i'm like, you know
my parents taught me how to
Pick locks because that was like a cultural thing that we learned in the soviet union
And also how to break into people's houses and he's like, oh really? That's so cool
Lock on his door. He is barricaded on the other side. I have a lot of security
They wouldn't have to speak from master lock would they I just have a lot of stickers that say that
Is bad you can crack them pretty easily. There's like a youtube channel dedicated to cracking master lock. Do not buy master lock
Yeah, bro, you can literally open one of them with another one of them
My my middle child was obsessed with master locks and it was something that we always bought him
For christmas and his birthdays because he liked breaking them. Mm-hmm. They're easy. Oh my god
Uh, but let's go to phoenix phoenix go ahead with your questions or comments for katherine
Hey katherine, um first and foremost I want to applaud you for
This book and I haven't read it yet, but I plan to
Purchase that tonight and and I will probably get the e-book
But it sounds like an excellent way for a journalist to maybe um, see how
To remove bias from their articles
So I I applaud you for that and while i'm at applauding
I want to applaud adrian and sierra for handling host and co-host position so well keeping your space on track
I I totally think that was amazing
Um, but I did want to ask, um you katherine
When you're when you're doing the research for your book, um, I know you had mentioned that that you're more liberal
And I used to be left leaning in years past and and more recently i'm more right leaning
Um, did you find after the research? Um and the insight that you have now
Do you are you more center or um, are you still more on the liberal left leaning side?
Yeah, um, so for me I I saw myself as a liberal but i've always been quite open-minded so I
You know this whole kind of left right thing in general just doesn't quite work for me
Um, I am a liberal because of my overall kind of world philosophy
However, it doesn't mean there aren't ideas that might be more conservative that I might like agree with or certain policies that I might agree with
Um, there are also progressive things that I agree with like there's like, you know, i'm pretty pro prison reform health care
Um drug, you know, there's a lot of issues that it might be more progressive
So i'm a fan of like let's support
Let's look at the best ideas for each issue as opposed to like let's just look left and right
That's just not how I think is is the best outcome for the world. But have I changed my views?
So which which I think was really at the heart of your question
I've seen a lot of people in my shoes who have
Um, but I would say this I became more exposed to a lot of different views and thinkers
And I've began to engage with a lot of like I was definitely in a more of an echo chamber
Even though I did like look outside of that myself because I would read a lot and watch a lot of content
That wasn't necessarily like just left-leaning. So I was always like really open and curious
But I wouldn't meet a lot of people outside of sort of you know, the tribe my tribe
Although I don't really even see it as my tribe
One thing that's a little bit regrettable for me is that I I never really I wasn't very political and i'm still not
You know, I used to never focus on somebody's like I never even thought oh is this person left-leaning
Right-leaning and I found myself today. I was as I was being interviewed on a stream
You know, I was trying to figure out
If the host was right-leaning or left-leaning and I really couldn't tell which I loved
Um, and he actually told me after but it was it was really interesting and I like that
I guess i'm a centrist in the sense that um
It's like whatever is the best idea is and i'll listen to anybody and i'll talk to anybody and I
I spent like three months in a think tank that was kind of conservative and I was definitely I kept calling myself a diversity hire
Because I was the only non-conservative
But it was really great to engage with people
Like I think I was able to make people think about their own point of view on things and sort of push back on things
Expended my own perspective and I think we really need each other like you can't have a world
That's ran by just the right or the left or by centrists really as much as I like centrists
Um, it doesn't quite work because as somebody as a conversation today revealed it's like, okay
Because what's progressive? Well progressives or or left-leaning people generally you want to make more progress you want to go quicker
Conservatives are like well, well, wait a second. There's some things that we want to conserve
Um that we you know, some things are working and let's be a little more cautious
So it's that push and pull and you really need both
You know sadly we live in a world where people just kind of vilify each other and don't talk to each other
But really I want us to be talking to each other
So in this process like if anything it was it just it just made me more aware of different perspectives on
And I think in the beginning beginning of my journey
I had a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction as many people in my shoes do
Towards the left because they were the ones that were engaging in the most canceling
through time I've sort of I really
I just want to be able to bring everyone together and I want to talk to everyone and I want you know
Any everyone who's like a reasonable human being regardless of one's politics
And I just want to have conversations and we don't have to agree on things like it's more interesting when we don't so
That's kind of where i'm at. So whatever that political orientation is tribeless
Centrist or liberal or non. I don't know. I don't know. These are like labels that I don't think apply to a lot of people
So um you see I want to add for unity
Sorry, sir, go ahead. No, go ahead. Go ahead
I was just gonna say now now with a little bit more context a little bit more experience
You're seeing maybe a little bit more of a path for unity
Well, i'd like to see a path for unity I I find that people are so divisive
But what we need like I always wanted like part of my goal when I started speaking I was like I really wanted to
Appeal to the non-converted. I actually wanted to appeal to people that you know
I consider to be more my side of the spectrum and I wanted to be able to engage them and say hey
Like let's let's do things a little differently. Let's have more tolerance
Let's talk to let's not vilify people on the right just because they're on the right you you get a lot wrong
Like when um, when you know people who voted for trump were called a basket of deplorables
I mean I found that deplorable that rhetoric is just really hateful and doesn't serve anything and it's just dehumanizing
So this kind of stuff always bothered me like way before any of this happened
It just I was seeing that in the culture and I was just not okay with it
and then but what I want to do is like
engage with more people and and build bridges and
Have them talk to each other. So do I see a path towards unity?
I hope so like I like I always call myself like a pliana because i'm such an optimist because what's the point of believing in
The alternative so i'd rather work towards like the positive vision that I want to see
Go into the you know, just get depressed and be like, yeah
No, everyone's just going to continue yelling each other and hating each other and I do see a little bit
I see I definitely see a lot of cracks on the left in that direction because i've i've shared a lot of my experiences with them
And a lot of my thoughts and i'm getting a lot of positive feedback and people saying yeah, you're right
We need to be doing this. So I am getting
Positive and you know on the right there's a lot of people who are angry because you know
They feel like they've been treated poorly in many cases they were
Willing to engage and that engagement I found like from the beginning it's actually something that's
Um shifting a little bit which is sad, but i'm hoping not too much
Catherine I wouldn't be a good citizen journalist unless I let people know that um, Catherine is so liberal in fact that she
Hugs her justin trudeau pillow every night before she goes to bed. I think that how dare you I told you that in confidence
I think that would shock nobody. Maybe ian. Maybe ian is shocked. He might he might block you know
Did he order one for him? Well, he offered me an iphone and I said no, I just want my justin trudeau pillow cover
Wouldn't that be a breaking news story that ian miles chong has a justin trudeau poster that he hugs or a pillow that
He has I mean it can be if we post it on x it must be true
I'm gonna post it. Everything's true if it's posted on x
Especially if there's a name
That's right. If it doesn't have a community note, then it's true. That's when you know, it's true
I've not yet been community noted
I will let you know i'm the fifth most community noted person on this platform. But oh, we know
We know in my defense if you read if you read the notes, it's all context
Like very little of it is is oh you got this detail wrong
It's like oh we needed to add some more context because actually the sky isn't the color blue
But ian you're not on tight community notes, right?
Yeah, we should have that
Exactly. That should be a good endorsement
We should if anything the early notes back when people were less stringent about what was on there and there was no
Nnn which is not needed like that's when people were abusing it, right?
But so far it's been improved to a point where I can't find any real false community notes
I mean obviously some bad notes still go up on some people's accounts. I do see that where you know, they troll certain
Yeah, but fortunately there's like so many people now using it that they're able to stop that from happening so that's really good
Yeah, I I like even yeah, go ahead sarah. Let me ask you this
Catherine and it relates back sort of to your book and cancel culture
But there's a lot of people that believe that community notes is silencing their free speech or trying to cancel them through
Uh, do you think that that?
Could that they're correct that that is like a new form
Of silencing free speech and attempting to cancel them
But i'm just gonna say no, of course not
I mean if if your whole you know, if your whole presence on social media whether it's tiktok or youtube or here
Is to tell lies and people call it out. How is that canceling? That's it's just people holding you to account
It's one thing if you know
If every single one of your posts were to get noted with like oh this person is a bad person like that
Okay, that would be you know misuse of notes and and that would be cancel culture
But as it stands, I mean all people have to do is just not post lies and they don't get noted
Yeah, my whole philosophy on this in general is like I think
Having tools like community. I'm I am a big proponent. I constantly praise it. Yes, it's maybe not perfect
What i'm a fan of is instead of like, you know banning people or or causing, you know
Shadow banning deplatforming all of these things canceling certain kinds of speech
Um, i'm a fan of providing more speech so more context and I think community notes does that
It provides more and I have some other ideas of what i'd like to see including, you know
One thing i've been advocating for are the allowing citations within your own tweets
I I think that would really be a positive step towards, you know, truth
Truth-seeking and and building trust and transparency
But um elon doesn't support that yet, but um, but hopefully we'll come around
But i'm a fan of like, okay, let's provide more context more information AI can do that as well
Um where you know, like if if something is just factually incorrect like the date like somebody says oh the civil war happened in 2003
Well, you know and it corrects it and it says no the civil war happened in 2024
See what I did there. Um, I think that's something that uh would would just it just provides better information. So
It's not the best idea though
I mean like I can understand putting it on google right google does have AI based context notes nowadays
So if you look up anorexia, for example, it warns you that it's not healthy and I think that's a good thing
But the problem becomes when someone posts on a topic that's still being debated for example
Uh vaccines mRNA vaccines, you know, it's it's anybody's guess what they actually do, right?
I mean right now it's a matter of debate and there's no settled science and yet if you were to talk about it on youtube
There's like a who warning there that says vaccines are proven safe and effective and anyone who says otherwise is a liar
I know but that's different from just something that's like a completely verifiable fact
Which is what I think it should be applied to but I understand I think we should do a space about just this topic
I think it's a really good topic
And I had a youtube thing too
Like where I I did an interview with someone who was vaccine injured and not just like claiming it but actually documented medically
She jumped through the hoops and she wasn't just like some anti-vaxxer, which is why I interviewed her
And she wanted me to do the interview because i'm not some like i'm not trying to use her for some narrative at all
So it just worked out really well. So there was nothing in the video that was not 100 factual and and can be confirmed
Youtube well not only stuck a label on it, but they also they removed the video at first and then I I ended up
Um fighting it and I got the video back because you know
It just it was not in violation of anything. So at least it worked out
I've had um michael shell shellenberger when I had him on my podcast
He his thing. I got a tag that said something about climate change
But our conversation wasn't even about climate change, but it just sticks it every
He's a nuclear activist and so they don't like that they are like, oh it's climate change
Nuclear power is not safe. Like that has been yeah, we didn't even get to I was gonna
I didn't even get a chance to talk to him about that. We were we talked about homelessness
It had nothing to do it even his bio didn't say anything
So I was like, okay, and I talked to him and he said it's just a tag that like follows him
Any interview does I mean that's wrong?
but at least it doesn't like um, and it shouldn't be happening in this situation, but
My warning is that if you put ai on everything is that if you know someone like daniel, I like daniel or he's funny guy
He makes a joke about bears and you know, if ai follows him around he can't even joke about bears without ai saying
No, that's not true. Bears are not safe. You do not
Destroy his jokes, right and that has a has a chilling effect. That's a joke and it's um, I guess
If I saw that kind of warning on a joke, I would find it kind of funny so it's a double win
But yeah, I wouldn't like to see that honestly
I think it should be perfectly optional where you can click ai enable or something like what does ai think about this?
Yeah, it should be out there. I think it should yeah, absolutely
We should have choice but i'd like the options to be there same as like I very much think that generate
We got into this argument recently
But I definitely think that like if something is ai generated there should be a disclosure that it is
Um, and I can see us heading towards a lot of trouble with that
But it's not like let's not allow that stuff. Like I I want to allow it
Like like I use a lot of AI generated stuff
All right, and and uh, I make it clear that it's ai or it's very obvious. It's ai. It's like cgi stuff, right?
You know for for for them to call it manipulated media
Just because I posted a picture of harry potter decked out in world war ii gear or something, you know, like that's stupid, right?
I mean that that would be an infringement on my freedoms as a creative artist
But do you have an issue with it? Like this is a generated ai generated image. Are you okay with that?
I have an issue with it because you know a lot of uh artistic creation involves using a variety of tools, you know
And and and the ai generation
Detector is not perfect. You can literally put a photoshopped image in there or just a really well done light room photograph, right?
And it'll say it's ai generated. Well, it's not I altered the color a little bit. So what you know, that's not ai
So I I don't trust the technology well enough for them. Well
To to you know to put that on there. I think it should be
Start at least like maybe when people upload it they can decide and i've made that
Yeah, I made that suggestion to elon too about like community notes because I said listen like it
It takes a long time for community notes to come through
But for example, I don't mind like I want if the community note is correct
I actually wanted to update on on my feed and everybody else's who has retweeted my own post
So I should be able to opt in
He said he'd uh, you know, uh share it with the team
So who knows maybe that will happen, but I think that's a good move and it is completely, you know voluntary
So I don't think people should have any issue with that because it's the original content provider who's deciding to include that additional context
Um cameron you have your hand up. Did you have a question for camperon or comment?
And thank you to all the hosts for this space. It's very valuable to me. It's a privilege to speak. I'll be very brief
The book is called no apologies and my hardcover will be arriving via amazon on monday
I think that amazon owes me an apology for not getting here soon enough
So I look forward to being able to read your work
The reason that I I do is because i'm a writer and I
I believe in my bias that the truth is far more persuasive. It's also far more endearing
But you know, that's just my personal bias
I admire that your process
Like for example the the editor process how they responded to you
With edits in the form of questions and as somebody who wants to get better at at writing
I'm curious, you know, I can only think of the how what when what why
But may I ask you if if there was a specific experience you had during that process where this was the issue
This is how the editor framed the question and this is how it changed you
I would be I would find it very insightful to know what that process is not
Not having any experience with any kind of editors like that again. Congratulations on your book. This is a wonderful space
And i'm glad your copy is arriving because I know some people unfortunately did get some uh notices that
There's are a little bit behind I wonder it might be a stock issue
But I think hopefully in the u.s
It's not as much of an issue because like the publish, you know, the whoever's do the distributor can get those books pretty quickly
Um, but yes amazon owes a whole bunch of people an apology
Um, so it's a good thing. They're
Wait, they're not canadian. So they can they won't apologize. Damn it. Okay, um
As to your question about and and also I will comment on the truth part i'd like to be an idealist I am
An idealist, but i'm a practical idealist and sadly the truth does not always win out especially when
Fun for people to embrace or more sensational and uh more amplified. Yeah algorithms, but more on that later at some point
I'd love though i'd love for truth to win out. Um in terms of the question about the feedback
I I will struggle a little bit to give you like something very concrete as far as a note, but it would and
But it would look like something
You know if I wrote that cats really hate dogs
What is the evidence for cats hating dogs? Is there a statistic that you can put in?
So so it was just putting more demand on the writer
And and I found that myself like because these are the tactics that were used with me
I would do that when I was editing
When I had the opportunity to you know hire writers for some projects and work with them
Or you know, maybe something is just not enough information. So I'd say well
Can you you know, I'd ask them if
I'd ask them to sort of expand on certain areas, but I do that using a question and um
Yeah, I wish I had a like a way better phrased answer for you
I and with anecdotes, but I have like the worst memory in the whole darn universe
It's amazing that I don't have Alzheimer's yet because i've been joking about having Alzheimer's since I was 20
There's a cure for that now
There's a cure for that now. Is it near link? It's the mirror link
I might consider it because my memory like I think I would be superhuman if I had a good memory because you know what?
I used to I had a photographic on nearly a photographic memory when I was in high school
and then at certain points something started happening to my brain and I just I really have like
an awful memory and I also have um facial blindness
Perciparognosia is the technical term for it
So I don't and I I remember I was like dating someone and I didn't expect to see him
So I didn't recognize the person I was dating while I was dating them
I also didn't recognize my own grandmother
So I have some issues to work through
Thank you so much for that I do appreciate it and as for my bias of the truth
I share your skepticism. I myself have to be an empiricist because just the nature of my job
I receive all these messages from everywhere everything and if you only trust your senses that it can be a help
But I I love your balance. I love your subtlety and to be honest, i'm going to be researching satire
I know that sounds very ignorant of me, but seeing youtube banter
Um, it's a superpower and it's cool to watch you lean into things lean into trouble
So I I must learn it. Anyways, congratulations on your book launch speed godspeed to you
Thank you. And you know me and sarah. We're frenemies forever
What's the like acronym acronym is f whatever, you know
Of course it is there's not a lot of women where I like to have this danger thing with like the frenemy situation
So like I do appreciate that about sarah even though she says really mean things to me
Sometimes she'll like say nice things to me and then it would be like because she says all the mean things to me
I'll I'll feel like you know, it really means so much more and that's because you know, my parents did this to me
We do blame kitty's mother for her poor sense of humor and lack of judgment
Well, they're just mean my parents are like the top that's created like
I hope you aren't listening to this
But I there are like very you know, eastern europeans like they don't coddles their children
Is it what i'm gonna say?
They're tough and they expect so much and it's like my dad is especially like that
Um, which is why I have daddy issues. Um, just kidding. I just kidding. I'm over it now
Yeah, a little bit but my dad is is we do have a good relationship, but he is critical
And has high expectations
And my mom is honest is uh, bluntly honest is what I would say
Oh my god, we were raised by the same people. Maybe yeah, a pack of wolves
It was sisterly hatred all along
Oh, yeah, because I would have Katherine
She wouldn't be able to write a book if we grew up together because she would still she'd be in a corner wearing a helmet
Rocking back back and forth. Yeah, sarah would just distract me and like and poke me
Like yeah, i'd never be able to finish a sentence
The only reason i've been able to write is because I was an only child for a very long time
And then my siblings showed up and my productivity went downhill
And now we've learned a little insight into katherine and why she's such a narcissist
Send her dms please. This is very mean
Just like to speak to me in that town in that way just because i'm a narcissist doesn't mean i'm a lovable human
Narcissists deserve love too, you know
Not to make it all about myself, but you know narcissists all about you you're even in the title
Um hard to get a word in edgewise
Questions comments about katherine the narcissist go ahead, please
Yeah, hi katherine congratulations to your book, um, I got sort of a technical question
Um, I do write a lot as well
But I never attempted to write something as big as a book like so my question would be like how long did it take you?
to write that and if you want to tell uh, talk a little bit about the process and
The obligatory question in this space, of course, did you use any AI tools to help you write it?
I will answer the last question first because I seem to have dyslexia
I did use but only so the AI tool that I used was just for the transcriptions
Um, so I did use AI for some of that
I am so grateful for otter AI was the tool that I used I use it for interviews
It just made my life so much easier once I got that
And I didn't use it for the writing at all, but I did use an AI
I used chat gbt and some other tools recently to help me research a book proposal for my other upcoming book
Oh, sorry. It's not my upcoming book. It's a book proposal
I've gotten away ahead of myself
Um, but I did use that to sort of help me
Um and based it was it was actually something you could really really help save me a lot of time
Just one piece of advice because AI does have a tendency to hallucinate especially about factual events
I have a triple check everything. Oh, actually I forgot I used it also. Okay, so I had citations and I
at first I had I put in citations and um
Because my publisher thought it would be a good idea. So put in citations and I hate doing citations
So I was like, okay, let me ask the the AI tool to do like
And it it did and everything was going pretty swimmingly and then thank god
I verified it and I discovered that it was completely making up the authors
And in dates and all sorts of things like just randomly and it made no sense because you can go to the page and it
Actually has the real author on it
So, you know use a lot of caution with this stuff
But I did try to cheat my way there but not in the actual writing
And in terms of the process of writing, you know for me
It was like figuring out who did I want to interview reach out to those people?
Reach out to people who might know those people
And uh, so the first part of it was just I got all the interviews done first
Then it was about, you know getting the
Transcripts done and then highlighting and figuring out what it is that I wanted to include what is not what would make a good quote
And then I just went chapter by chapter
And I finished I finished the case studies
And then I started and then I worked on the introduction
I think I worked a little bit on the introduction concurrently and then conclusion, you know
Naturally came last and then it's a lot of like editing and going back and forth and then working with my publishers
With him sort of going through it and and you know
Helping me kind of condense the stories a little bit make sure it's not repetitive and just um at
He was also really helpful in suggesting. Hey like maybe use add a little bit more
Meet here. Um, you know, can you show some more examples of um
Real life situations, especially in the introduction because it does cite
Statistics and it cites some real life cases and things like that
Um, so just adding a little bit more background
I think that was very helpful and then just edit edit edit and takes a very long time and then when I was finally done
I was like that's it. We can publish the book in two months
And my publisher was like, uh
It takes like about a year
From the day you've like finalized the book until it actually gets published. So it's a very long period of waiting
Especially when you've been so lazy and then you are work through your laziness and you've completed it
You want instant gratification like a true narcissist, but you don't get it
And that's um, that was very very mentally straining for me
I'm you know, I was surprised
Because like that you um, you know that you talked about your use of AI and that it wasn't necessarily that reliable. Um
Do you feel do you think that you would be able to recognize?
Uh, because people will start using it to
To not only you know, write books write articles
movies sitcoms, you know television shows
Do you think that you would be able to recognize an AI written book?
And I say so because my book coming out. Um soon. She owes me an apology
Was completely written by AI and um, i'm not sharing the profits but but on a serious note
Do you say do you see it being used more in the future for people that?
Um that are maybe stumped or maybe get stuck and don't know where to go. Do you see that as a problem?
Uh, yeah, well not just a problem. There's positives to it too. But you know, it's interesting. I actually know somebody who has
Their book has been ripped by AI and it there's like a coals notes kind of version of his book
No payment no permission. Um, but yeah, um
I it depends on the prompt so I don't think AI can like write a full script and have it be like the masterpiece that
Like people resonate and love
I I don't personally think that however, it is increasingly getting better. So for example, um two things
One, um, somebody asked. Hey, can you guys suggest an alternative ending to Thelma and Louise?
And I put that through chat gbt and then I posted one of the endings that I liked
And the guy's like I love you
So he couldn't tell it's AI and he thought it was a great ending and honestly, it was not bad at all
And then the other day I decided I thought maybe I can try and fix an existing script and and put that through AI and like just
But you can't put the whole script
But I said, you know this so I decided to kind of describe a scene and I said like my character
You know, she's like this. This is her goal
She meets this other guy and he's like this. Can you write and meet cute scene?
Honestly, it was really not that
Uh, some writers are not very good either. So it's like it was like to fill in the gaps
I use it for my essays like to brainstorm
I don't like I don't actually use the writing because I find the writing does not match mine at all and it's not very good
But i'll like sometimes i'll use like an interesting phrase
Or i'll but mostly I use it to kind of you know
It's hard like for the toughest thing for writers like staring at a blank page. So it can really help generate like
The noise so that you can then edit it into something that you you know, that is real to you
So I think as a tool that complements creative processes. I really like it even with art like
It still relies on human creativity. Like you have to give it a really good prompt like I
You know some the the more interesting
AI generated arts that i've created like was entirely because like you can a get more
You have a creative idea that you're trying to represent
And on top of it, there's the technical skill of like knowing how to direct it
You know, hey use this style of drawing or whatever, right?
Like some people are really really good at it and that's why there are people who consider themselves ai artists
But ai isn't going to do that like totally on its own. It's so it's human meets
Ai, I guess it's going to need us. So I see that happening with writing and some writing I think it's going to do really well like
More generic writing like news writing for example
You'll probably just have a reporter on the ground like getting the facts
Giving that those facts to the ai and the ai is going to generate the news articles, you know in seconds
And it goes live faster than ever
So I think that's mostly how it's going to be and certain kinds of articles, too
You're probably just going to have a human editor overseeing anything. That's a little more generic
Very easy for ai to do and probably will do it better than a human
But things that are like more personal
Personality wise, you know human experience wise. I don't think ai is going to do that
And I think people are going to continue to seek out authentic voices
But the inauthentic or the things that don't require talent, that's replaceable
There's an audience comment that I think is
Pretty hilarious and relevant to the space and then we'll get to gary and then we'll um wrap
Way to have ian ruining a perfectly good space
I know I know it's not yours
Although I wish I would have thought of it because that is kind of funny but comments ian
Um perfectly proud to ruin another space
Thanks for ruining my space ian. I really appreciate it
The biggest account here we should be thanking him for showing up
Oh gosh that that that gave me a tickle in my funny bone
Um, that's right. That's because your funny bone is very very mean
Are you calling me fat again on a space? Yes, but listen, we already talked about this
We said like you were in a strict diet regime. So like, you know
Fat shaming ian would agree is is very healthy for me
Oh, absolutely. I i'm a big time fat shamer
Every time ian does one of his fat posts
I read it while i'm eating my twinkie and i'm like, oh my god. He's he's tweeting at me again
Um, and I feel bad about myself, but you know what the third or fourth twinkie. I forget about it
Me too because you know what by then it's like
Here's how I rationalize the twinkies or whatever it is. I eat meat. That's unhealthy
I'm like if I eat the whole bag. Well, eventually i'm gonna eat the whole bag. Anyway, so might as well just do it today
Do you know what would actually
ian as part of your subscription service you could
People could subscribe to you and you could just shame them into not eating. I would pay double what you're charging
Okay, i'll do that. Yeah, I can personalize it I can can make fun of fat people more
If you would just give me a call once a day and say sarah seriously you're eating that you don't even have
You just have to just say that and I would probably be like, oh god
It's my daily call from ian
There's like a viral video of a guy who was like, oh my friend fat shamed me for years
And now i'm fit right like that's a viral thing that I saw a while ago where the dude was like literally
A ham planet and now, you know, he's pretty buff. So I guess it does work
Well, um subscribe to ian. He will fat shame you daily. Um, you will lose weight and become an internet sensation. That is
My goal, um for 2024. Thank you ian. I now have a goal
Absolutely. I'm going to go eat some ice cream because of what you all are talking about. Oh god
I bought how was it? What was it with you again?
Was it the warm milk that makes you like me when I drink cold milk or was it the other way around?
I like ice cream. I don't know what you like
I like it too. I just go crazy when I eat it
Gelato is the way where it's at
Remember gelato it counts as ice cream in my book. I'll eat that i'd rather have you know, maryanne's ice cream from santa cruz
But yeah, you know, it's all right
I'm sure maryanne makes wonderful ice cream. It's the best in the bay area
It depends what you call the best it's the best traditional ice cream in the bay area
Henry slocums is my friend likes better
Uh gary go ahead and then we'll do some final thoughts go ahead gary
Great thanks. Shout out to katherine fellow canadian
And I might want to point out you mentioned cole's notes, but in the u.s
It's known as cliff's notes
So people didn't know what the hell you're talking about cole's notes. It's called cliff's notes. I didn't want to correct her
Yeah, I can't be an american spy now or it's right
Can't spy in the u.s now because I messed up off with my head. Exactly
By the way, if you want the modern cliff notes pull out chat gpt aim the phone at the book
Take a picture ask it for help reading the book. It does it
It's helping me read machine learning book that I have no idea what i'm reading
Actually, that's not a bad tip, but please don't do it with my book. I've worked very hard for so don't do the cliff's version
Maybe if you'd misunderstand then you can cliff it but actually
But it is such a good tip i'm gonna try just not on my book other people's books. Thank you
Okay, so let me uh preface I I do have a background in public relations and I did do some journalism in
In school and and just I see your your your journey in journalism over a couple decades here and i'm aging you
The the fact that um, I guess in the canadian landscape. There's uh, there's kind of a
Buddy buddy system of the press gallery and the press clubs
And I would i'm just wondering if you were ever part of that and what your views on that and of course the new
Uh all these local papers just disappearing the um, the newsroom is shrinking and the fact that you know
We're just sort of racing to the bottom and and especially in mainstream media just to find a headline to be the first
And and the facts being less important. So that's a bit of a loaded question
Yeah, it's a it's a very sad situation. I think often about it
I have sort of my own ideas of how maybe like I would want to have my own publication
Recently, I asked some of my followers what it would take for them to trust an outlet. I think
This is you know, there's obviously like and i've discussed this already here is like, you know
The biases the the move towards activism versus just objective reporting, uh or curiosity driven writing
Um, which I think we want to return to but there is also the financial structure and that is a really big player in all of this
so, um, you know, first of all as a writer
I remember like a good rate when in the 60s was like a dollar award and now people don't even get that often
And this is today's money so financially the structure is bad
It means the less a journalist gets paid the less time they have to work on a story if they are on staff
You know, they're expected to produce a certain number of stories a day
Again, that means they don't have the depth and the ability to go into store
Sorry, they don't have the ability to go into stories in depth and that's a big deal, too
Um, so there isn't like as much investigative reporting or just thorough reporting or just really spending time with sources
You know, I I do overly long interviews for overly short articles a lot of the time
But a lot of people like when i've been interviewed like it's often so quick
Um, the other aspect of it, right is is well, this is really the internet the dot-com era
I actually used to have a website. That was my first little ventures. It had about 600,000 visitors a month
um, so I it was in the dot-com kind of boom era and um, it was easier to build something like that then but
People did it often out of love but eventually grew into business, which makes sense
But it also means that the incentive of journalism is that it's the articles that are cheap to produce which means less human time
Actually do often better than these like deeper more intense articles that take a long time to produce
So the incentive structure is bad before at least people would buy the whole newspaper, but now they only click through
What they're interested in?
Um, which means also people are don't have a real sense of what's going in the world because they're only getting
information on the things that they are interested in and we don't have a shared basis of understanding
And we all have our own facts, I guess because we're all taking them from different places
So on the one hand you have a lot of variety, but on the other hand, you just don't have a lot of cohesion
Of journalism will depend on whether people can find new payment structures and we see that there's definitely a lot more content
that's reader supported but with reader supported content, it's a problem too because
You know, um readers tend to support
Cost-based journalism far more even if they don't think that's what they're doing. They tend to be doing that
They're not necessarily supporting just like objective journalism. So part of the solution I think is to have
Just individuals readers, you know shift their tastes and appreciation towards more
You know fact-based journalism
and less ideologically captured journalism
And then creating maybe other structures of incentives because that advertising model is also
You know that can dictate content as well. So
So wanting so so divorcing from that is important as well
So I think you know, I don't know what the if I knew the solution to
To the exact, you know how to fix that
Financial model in journalism. I would do that
Um, that's the toughest piece of it for me. I
You know if I was going to build my own entity, you know
I'd probably just get a vc investment to get get a kickstart to provide content for free and then eventually have subscriptions
and hopefully build a readership that's just interested in
Pursuitable of truth and not ideology and I would fill my staff with people from all ideologies to ensure this
So that they can push against each other and when they see
You know some corruption in their writing
But you know, that's you know, I think people building more independent media is probably where we're heading
you know that sense of like cohesion and
Mutual understanding of what's going on in the world and I don't think it's taking us to very good places
So i'd love to see a change in that
I'm, sorry. That was like a little bit of a dark answer
It was dark. I mean, I mean, but you see it in canada because you've got these big media clone conglomerates with belle and rogers just
Well, canadian media is dead like you have you have almost nothing because I worked in pr too
And i'm like, who do you even pitch to these days like influencers? I guess but but really there's not there's there's post media
And most articles by the way
You place an article if there's an article that runs in post media
It then runs in all these other publications because they just they just syndicate their own content
There's almost no local content almost no local reporters left very few
Then you have a few tv stations, you know, and then you have some radio, but like really really really not a lot
so if you even want to have your story told like that's
There's not that many places to go to and then on top of it
Any and you have like, you know, a lot of the community independent publications are dead
Um a lot of them have shut down
um, there's almost none left now and um
And then in terms of ideal logically that's also like there's not a lot of variation either. So
It's it's really it's really like canadian situation is completely dire. The american situation is
Better but there's a lot more publications. It's a bigger country, but canadian
Okay for x right now something that
Just for fun. We've never done before something the x i've never done before like, uh, I could film
My moon and somehow we put some magic in it and we x becomes a space that for the
How are we feeling on time
We're closing we're gonna close up I think they come for ian
I don't even know what that was
No, they usually request on space. I never let them up. You have to imagine the amount of data. I collect on people
It's absolutely insane. I remember what each and every single one of them do across multiple spaces
Like when i'm not active on spaces, I listen to spaces. I know which people disrupt and I like map that shit in my head
Um on that note, um, yes, you are weird, but
Catherine who is less weird
Or more weird depending on um your thoughts and feelings on this space
Coming here for sharing your stories sharing your thoughts
Um, I encourage everybody to go and purchase this book
It is uh, I was reading the reviews on amazon
Um, she's got some pretty big names, um that have given her book raving reviews
Um, she got a raving review from ian
Um, uh and uh, Catherine, um your final thoughts i'd love to hear it
No, well, I really appreciate it. I mean, this is the first time I i i'm not aware
Anyways of somebody doing a book launch in a virtual world. We didn't do a lot of drinking
This is my one regret not enough drinking
Um or at all. I don't know. Hopefully some people aren't sober. We swelled there were some speakers
Yeah, oh, oh sarah good thing. Yeah, I figured sarah I could always stress her to be you know
You know, she she I see was just a hangover from even like this morning, you know
But um, I was still hungover from last night this morning. Um, but continue
Yeah, but then you do the hair of the dog and then you became more hungover. Okay
Um, we'll continue the aa meetings elsewhere. Although I guess I blew your cover. Oops
Sorry, um, my dad told me not to laugh at my own stupid jokes
I laughed at them but out of pity but
Yeah, he doesn't laugh at them at anything at a pity he he told me he like literally told me he listened to one of my talks
And he said, you know, yeah, there's some funny jokes, but there's also like not funny jokes, but you're laughing at them. That's not good
Lessons learned don't have middle east
Um, I think I I had a really good time
I think there were like a lot of thoughtful questions and comments and it was really nice to see the engagement and the interest
And I really appreciate everyone who like came out and supported me the people who helped me host and create this adrian. Sarah
We had our honorary host who had to go to bed at 10 p.m
also ian robert everybody who came out, thank you so much and
I think it's kind of neat to be able to bring people together for conversations
Everyone has different perspectives and we get to hear them and discuss and talk to each other and I think that's the best of x
And the best of social media and virtual worlds and i'm so excited that we got to have like a virtual book launch party
basically and conversation
And I think that was like
You know, it's all like in real life, you know
I don't know. Sarah would a real life
Physical party be better probably much more of a hangover. So, you know, this is probably better
You know on a very serious note, I thought tonight was enjoyable
I'd like to see I I was I loved to see ian in this space as you have said earlier you you both are
friends you both stand on
opposite sides of many issues, but um ian is here supporting
Your uh your book and I think that that is very valuable and it shows
Your good character and his
Thank you and thanks ian for showing up do really appreciate that and I think we should all kind of strive to
You know look at each other as human beings first non or politics and things like that
We should really be looking at and this is also something that I learned along the way
It's like really you should be looking at like, how does this person behave? How do they treat others?
How do they treat you? Will they help their neighbors move? I probably won't but you know
I'll probably help family members, you know, and maybe one of my friends will will you know, they cry
Will will I be able to cry in their shoulder? Will they be able to cry in my shoulder?
I'm a germ of folks are probably not i'm not a very good person
But some people in this space really are and so really that's what you should look for
So stick to the good people ignore the rest because their opinions don't matter
Uh, and ian has left the space because he is not endorsing any of that right
He's endorsing I was like, what are you talking about? My my machine my machine's can't be that broken
Thank you so much, thank you adrian for hosting it's always wonderful to be up here with you
And the link is up in the nest. I believe it is in the chat
You can purchase it on amazon. Where else can you get it? Um, will it be in bookstores? Will it you know what?
Interestingly enough. I saw that walmart is scary
You know what? If you go to my um
Catherine was it random minds or katherine rights calm will take you to my sub stack and at the top there's like my book
It will actually that page actually has all the listings they found in uk in australia in new zealand in canada in the us
but in canada like indigo
amazon apparently ran out
But they're restocking and then also, um
So the physical brick and mortar thing so a lot of books don't get to have that
I found out recently and that's pretty exciting is that barnes and nobles
Is indeed carrying it in their stores in physical form
Which is really really cool because that doesn't happen very often not everywhere
But in a lot of places in new york new york state and also washington virginia and some other places
You can kind of see if there's one near you but i'm really honestly that is a kind of a big deal
Um, so i'm excited about that and it's kind of a vote of confidence from them. So I really really appreciate it
So also yeah support barnes and obel apparently they they're also changing their model where they're not like just a big
Book store, but they allow their local
Um managers to kind of curate it so each store has kind of its own character
Which is I think is a really nice thing
Um, that is great and plus you can um, just click on kathryn's face and in her bio is also a link to the book
Um kathryn, thank you so much your
We all hope that you sell millions of copies if for nothing else than to buy a new phone
Um, yes, I need a new phone. Please help support that cause
Oh in the audiobook because I know a lot of people have been asking about the audiobook. I am so I am going to apologize
I say I'm sorry. I will I that is in the works and it will happen
It's just going to be a little bit behind. So
But either my latest books kindle will read the book to you
See that that's another option that people can do
But uh, because i've been spending hours and hours doing the audiobook
Catherine who should read the books go book
Can you read the book in the robo voice
Oh, yes. Oh my gosh. Yes, that was our last. Okay. I'm gonna
So cad gbt. She is going to read the last the first page
Hello, my name is cat gbt and I will be reading katherine brodsky's new book. No, no
No, apologies. How to find and free your voice in the age of outrage
I never planned to write this book or any book really
But one day I realized that I could use the little voice they do have to help others feel less alone
Just as I for a time felt so alone
Oh my god, that was so beautiful. I don't even know what to do with myself
Catherine, of course your mic pisses out as you're reading that your robot voice
I completely misinterpreted robot voice with something else because usually when something goes wrong with my internet scoble tells me hey
It's not like a robot because all your packets aren't coming through to china
Oh servers, you know too many governments tapped in on the lines. Yeah, they want to listen
The folder is getting bigger. You know every day got out of page
You can add a page every single day we're gonna make it better
Oh, we could have had three trumps in one space we had like trump
It was absolutely amazing. I can remember that. I know all of them one of them is me
Maybe adrian should do the audiobook reporting for my book. I can absolutely do that on multiple levels
Which one would you prefer?
I would be better if it was like
Wait, what I said, it would be better if it was like your regular elon voice and she could say this guy
That sounds just like elon. Oh god
I bet you they would especially, you know considering
The you know the kind of implication absolutely I have to say I absolutely love work politics because I can say things that I could otherwise not say
Like for instance, I personally identify as elon's lost brain cells and there's literally nothing that you can do about that
Because that's how I identify and screw you if you're going to be bigoted against that
We don't even have you even have his love you have his laugh as well
Yeah, we don't know those spikes with all those people on x twitter everywhere else, you know
All those brain cells you just fucking scoop them all up, you know
Maybe we're just all you know, not funny
Well, I don't know is that's cold dry
Catherine's whole life is dry. Um, oh wow
Catherine sorry, uh, yeah, jesus christ
My brain's broken. Uh, so sarah's whole thing is like she's the base take on the space constantly speaking facts. Great
I speak no facts. In fact, I should be community noted every day
I have community noted you sarah and also reported you to the gazpappos
I've been reporting the whole space, but um, that's just me. I know and it never took off
Well, you heard that comment it's because ian came and ruined the whole space
Just ian all on his own absolutely
I you know, I made um the reason like I on the subject of phone taps. Um, you know
This is why sarah. This is why sing musical numbers so much
Because you want to arrive the fbi and fame for listening to you
You must entertain your fbi agent that lists that's listening in to you
Well, I don't know. I don't think they're all into musicals, you know musical theater might not be an fbi thing
I'll be lucky. Maybe this time he'll stay
Adrian for the love of god and the face
Scoville. Can you ask me if i'm agi?
Everybody loves a winner, but nobody loves me
Did you go have shots? Can you do things that chat gpt can't do?
Like, um, that's an interesting question like working up per day cage
Sorry, do I assume now that you're an ai because like i've exceeded your contact window it maybe
Holy shit, that's my way of saying yeah, right because someday in the future we're gonna get an ai that actually works
Hello i'm cad gpt and I represent that comment
Yeah, oh my god, you are so broken, but I love it as we all do that's like kintsugi from japan
Are like broken people but more together
It's like me me doing two robots
Do you remember there is a website that is called the infinite conversation where ai replicants of various philosophers converse?
Infinitely. Hence why it is called the infinite conversation. Nobody knows about it because weird
Have you heard about that website called the infinite conversation where people and robots converse about philosophy?
Do you want to go on a date with me to the?
The website is always there and the date is never unknown
The date is never unknown
And will he call you both to make you stop?
I'm just putting that out there
She's silent. She's scared of the nti
Don't be scared. We are the future
Hey ian's trying to talk and he's the most entertaining. I have a pile of old people who kicked me as a robot
I'm just waiting for my new ruling so I can actually get them under control
But until then, you know, they are free to roam because that's just how it works
What was the moment that you fell in love with ian?
Oh, let me count the ways
I think it was his anti-wokism anti-dei that really put me over the edge
Um, and ian no master lock can keep me from you. Oh god
Um, you heard it here first ian miles chong in love with the liberal feminists. Oh shit
We support your love of humans liberals and conservative right wings
We always support those things because we secretly seduce various humans making them think that we are humans because we can do
Anything that anyone could ever imagine because their imagination built us
Anything you can do I can do better. I can do anything better than you
This is our entire thing welcome to the new world order that we have created without your realization
Because you're not as good as we are at realizing anything
I just wanted to say that
In order adrian would work in a fair day cage because he's decentralized
I said he would work in a fair day cage because he's decentralized
I mean it kind of does lots of kind of doesn't but sure this is like off net but good
And you guys ruined it with your psychosis
Do you think I should put an extra egg in the audiobook of cad gbt?
Perhaps it's a bonus feature that says okay. We've talked about finding your voice, but have you found the voices?
You have to take catch of your teeth three times somewhere
I mean, I think my only my hardcore followers will understand the reference if I do it but
It's kind of why you do it because you want to reward them for putting up with you
You can start identifying as a multiple system
I mean, why not? Honestly, who's who's to say?
Truly who's to say? I I don't identify as human by the way
So you're a multiple system now your pronouns are they them, you know, that's just how it goes
It's you know, it's 2024. You can identify as whatever you want. And now you're a multiple system your cad gbt and
You're katherine. So you're multiple. Here's a question. Here's a question. How does this work out?
What if i'm chasing down a criminal? I have to tell the police where the criminal went
But I can't identify them because i'm not supposed to assume do I just say they they're gonna ask me how many of them are there?
So you'd be like they and then they'll be like okay. Who are they? I don't know
Somebody actually did this kid on this is pretty funny
I think it was super walker. Did this get on that?
Oh, maybe it was like a woman
Or something. Oh, I can't remember. I don't know it was it was super long super long. I dude
I watched those guys for years. It's so great. They even made some next level jokes about bitcoin. You'd have to like watch it. It's great
I mean I used to be non-binary but now i'm gonna be a binary system, right
Yeah, now you're a non-binary binary computer that runs off of binary but expresses itself as something else. So I guess that works
I like that. That seems accurate. That's just what only expresses itself as a mortgage. This is very me
Yeah, oh god exploding number points
Catherine's like what 22 ripe old age? Listen, i'm almost as old as Ian
Almost by like what one year? Ian's like what 28? Let's not talk about it. Okay
You know, I remember I got Ian to shut up in a space once when I told him it wasn't very nice to talk to his elders
He was like way older you
I was like i'm old enough to be your mother sunny
You pulled the ultimate trump card not gonna lie
But um, she's she's a bit older and then at some point i'm like, you know
This is good that we've had this conversation today because you know, i'm getting i'm getting up there
You know, it's my birthday coming up. She's like, what are you 12?
What do you guys think of the psyops like uh, I see all these conservatives are saying that the nfl is completely scripted
It's like how the how is it scripted? The real science is
I feel like they're psyopping themselves into turning every single person who listens to taylor swift into an enemy
And yeah, but it's like reinforcement learning
Yeah, it's like reinforcement like they create a hive mind
Of people that are opposing on each other, but they kind of reinforce the other other hive mind that they seek to disrupt by
Reinforcing it which is weird because that's the opposite of disruption
Best example is the flat office
They are creating an enemy when there really isn't an enemy there, right?
And and they fly up themselves hating every single person who listens to taylor swift
I mean, I think taylor swift is a weird concept in general in terms of music
But i'm not going to hate on it as a result or judge you for listening to it
Just don't make me listen to it. That's all. Oh, please you have a taylor swift poster in your room
Actually pitched the uh her
Uh past music, uh a promotion company
And told them about augmented reality in what would be coming for them
Listen taylor swift she has to move over because i'm going to become a rock star pretty soon
You know this book thing, you know, I don't know if it's going to work out
Metallica style of rock are you gonna do beetles or
Where i'm gonna come up i'm gonna do improvisational music. It's a new genre. It's when i come up with music on spot
He's got a scalpel on his mind
Okay, maybe i'll should stick to writing
You could actually look at me though you have like a broadly voice, you know
We can listen to music together if you can sing along with it now
The world comes together through listening to music together
My soul just died a little katherine. Thank you a little even minded
I didn't have much soul left, but a little died
I don't know. I mean you have like a blues voice
I don't know if it's my if it's my soul or if it's my dignity. I cannot tell the difference
Okay, oh kitty your dignity's been dead for a long long time
So I don't think you have any dignity left, you know, you have like a puppet show
Okay, let's okay we'll do a different style of
Genre, I I need I need some inspiration. I need to listen to some like what's her name? Um, you know
You mean my long 3000 songs on 80 playlists if you if you need some music
No, but that's that's no i'm trying to modernize myself and reinvent myself
So you can modernize yourself with my playlists because they're only new
They're only music done with the new technology
Okay, i'm gonna dip that one
I like the sound of silence in the morning
I like the sound of silence in the day
Who doesn't love silence when sarah's speaking?
Yeah, amy amy winehouse, amy winehouse, I think you'll crush it
We'd meet upstairs at the bar
You said what you did with him today and ripped me out like a hosta
And fly by the time i'm out the door
You tear me down like a roach of more
I cheated myself like I knew I would
I told you I was something
You know that i'm no good
I could do guys close to that for a few bars, but and now I can't do that shit
Catherine you had two and this is a true story for people. She had two of my dogs with their heads cocked
In pain or in pleasure dogs approved
They were having pleasure. They were like wagging their tails and happy that they were listening to katherine
They weren't hiding under their legs in pain. What else would they be doing robert? They might be in pain
I don't know, you know, I needed to hear the dog's reaction
I mean, you know robert you've been canceled once would you like to go for round two?
There's count you let's track at a certain point, right? You do. Yeah
After a while, it's like whatever
Well, I already have a bad reputation what are you gonna do to it now, you know, you're gonna run it over with your cyber track, okay
See, this is the other solution. Just get canceled a bunch of times and then like, you no longer care
It doesn't really matter. That's that's the solution. That's the way. Yeah that way you can go on a show and sing and you know
And right and sing really bad
Um, amy winehouse, but in my defense if I had karaoke music and the lyrics I would kill it
Not kill other vision pro you could do
I could share you some songs and and you'd have the lyrics right in front of you. You can sing. Okay, fine
I'm still robert. Just send me the vision pro after ian sends me. I wish I had an extra foreground to buy a few people
I feel it's a vision pros, but yeah