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Jakub Ferencik
1.3k Plays1 year ago
SRTN's visiting Philosopher, Jakub Ferencik is back!
We first heard from Jakub Ferencik in Episode 60. Then Jakub wrote another book (!) entitled Beyond Reason: Why We Fail at Understanding Each Other. Jakub and host Ken Volante discusssed that work in SRTN Episode 130.
For this episode, Ferencik helps engage complicated topics such as censorhsip, hate speech, and free speech with attention to the complicated engine of modern social media.
Enjoy this conversation and help formulate the conceptual backdrop for these important conversations.
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Transcript
Introduction of the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Delante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer. We've got Jacob forensic here. I wore my special sweater for you, Jacob. I recently received an Avengers holiday sweater, which is the only
00:00:32
Speaker
how I understand things right now. This makes a lot of sense. Amazing. I love it. I should have. I should have matched you. I have I have my Philosopher King's t-shirt. So, man, I'm trying. I'm trying, man. I think if you outdid me already, damn, I try. Yes, the Philosopher King t-shirt. Here I am going big time Avengers.
00:00:58
Speaker
But obviously the Avengers would be felt by the great wisdom of the Philosopher King. So you win. I take it. Jacob.
Exploration of Free Speech and Cancel Culture
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, we've got we got Jacob forensic, as you know, our podcast resident philosopher, almost a correspondent of sorts. And we've been we've been we've been chatting, of course, be able to check in with Jacob. But we came up with the topic that I've been thinking a lot about. And and thankfully for us, Jacob's been thinking and writing and analyzing, too. It's about
00:01:38
Speaker
kind of, you know, historical topic here of free speech. And one of the big things I've been wondering about some of the questions we exchanged back and forth, Jacob, is
00:01:52
Speaker
some speculation whether things have changed, you know, nowadays in talking about free speech. But I know for myself when I was thinking about this is tied to an artist is very important to my son and that I've listened to Kanye West. And I'm a huge fan of his industrial hip hop and Jesus and
00:02:17
Speaker
You know, in culture, we see a lot of talk about, you know, cancel culture. We see the rise in what we would say is hate speech or problematic speech, harmful attitudes towards others. So, big topic, Jacob. But what's going on right now? What's going on right now in these debates?
00:02:47
Speaker
Where are we? Where are we? Because it feels like things are changed and intense. And it seems like we're encountering, at least in the United States in other years, more speech that seems injurious or problematic or racist or xenophobic. So how do we deal with all this right now, Jacob? Big question. Sorry about that. I think this is a great place to start because, yeah, I really think that
00:03:17
Speaker
The debate hasn't changed in the sense of people are either kind of for or against free speech. This is the two categories that we tend to create when we talk about free speech. People on the right typically now will take a more of a kind of pro free speech attitude because they have some issues with cancel culture as they define it. And that really has been in the public eye.
00:03:47
Speaker
because of quote-unquote left-wing censorship for the past five to ten years, but cancel culture is not new, right? It's just manifested in different ways. Cancel culture was very prevalent in the early 2000s from the Christian right, for example, and you know, Harry Potter was canceled as, and now it's canceled for different reasons, right?
00:04:07
Speaker
Back then it was canceled because of yeah Sorcery and witchcraft and just yeah paranoia witchcraft Yes, and and so could the Christian right was the worthy arbiters of morality at the time and early 2000 so they were the ones canceling so I think you know people tend to forget that like these things have manifest in different ways over the years right now we have some people on the writer and
Misinformation, Truth, and Cultural Shifts
00:04:32
Speaker
quote unquote scared or they have some concerns about left wing censorship on social media. I am less concerned with those things. I think some of that is overblown. You know, thinkers like Steven Pinker and writers like JK Rowling and others have signed this, this letter in protest of this censorship. So that's kind of some of the, some of the rhetoric has been playing out in this ideological space, but
00:05:02
Speaker
I think we have to move away from this demarcation between for and against free speech. I think we have to start talking more about the prevalence of misinformation, disinformation in the public arena. And that's when we, I think, start realizing that, you know, this is it's not as simple as as the right and the left have proposed in the past in different ways.
00:05:29
Speaker
And I can get into some of my concerns there later on. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wanted to, and I think the backdrop is very useful because, you know, I've experienced as, you know, being engaged with what's going on.
00:05:49
Speaker
culturally. I do recall those pieces. I think back when I was younger, I was around kind of the advent of, you know, I was breakdancer into rap music when I was a young kid and seeing how the cultural shift happened around rap and hip hop and looking at things like 2 Live Crew and being illegal
00:06:13
Speaker
crime to sell that album to hand over that CD to somebody for money and You know ghetto boys getting things released it released in the early 90s, but a lot of that I Can't get it out or it's illegal to get it out. So even in recent just kind of American culture. It's been Where this has come up. This is filthy. It's degraded. It's It they're wrong and we can't share
00:06:44
Speaker
what they have. I think the big piece that I wanted to dive into what you had said, Jacob, that helped me think about it was, it isn't just, the dichotomy probably doesn't work, free speech, not free speech, but the dynamic piece of information and the question of truth as a philosopher is something that I know in talking to philosopher ribbon vexed lately about, like,
00:07:10
Speaker
I believe there are some true things to say or you know that there's an amount of misinformation or maybe thinking about cultish type of things and echo chambers in the strong dynamic of persuasion within social media. Is there an issue, a strong dynamic tied to this about the type of information that people end up expressing? Was that part of your point? Yes, I think what you're referencing there as well is kind of the
00:07:39
Speaker
tied against postmodernism that was you know in academia from the at least the 70s maybe slightly before then and beyond some thinkers were having an issue with postmodernism and some associated lines of thinking such as more relativism and so forth and so some some were kind of raising concerns about okay so
00:08:06
Speaker
There's no there's no truth. So what does that mean? Everyone has subjective interpretations of events. And so then, you know, is a hijab moral and these kind of these questions that don't really mean anything really is a hijab moral wealth.
00:08:20
Speaker
you know, it depends, it really depends. Like, is something being oppressive? And if it's not, and in many cases, it's not, to my knowledge, you know, a hijab can be a sign of sophistication, for example, in some interpretations, and for many women it is. And in some cases, it has to be oppressive. So I think that's one area as well where
00:08:41
Speaker
You know, but you it's difficult to universalize Speech and things in general like you can't say that okay eating meat in every context is Immoral, you know in some cases it very much well maybe you know in some cases there's cultural leanings to these specific things and so these have an emphasis on but a lot of people have been talking about that and for myself, I think that
00:09:09
Speaker
Once again, I do not tend to enjoy the dichotomy between relativism and objectivism on the one side. And so I think you can make moral judgments, for example. And I believe that in some kind of utilitarian view, I think eating meat is immoral because I think consequences matter. And I think that moral suffering is kind of a catalyst
00:09:35
Speaker
that is relevant here. And so I think that that is something that you can, quote unquote, universalize, but, you know, enforcing it is a different thing. Some of these things are quite complex, right? So that's another way I think we can look at this debate in the sense of
00:09:52
Speaker
I don't think there's just truth and non-truth. There are a lot of different moral questions, and a lot of them are morally significant for different purposes. And when you apply them to specific scenarios, then you can talk about each case scenario. They tend to be quite complex. The world is nuanced. The world is difficult to talk about. It shouldn't be easy to talk about. If we're making things easy, then that's probably a sign that we're misunderstanding it.
00:10:21
Speaker
in the first place, you know, so So that's one kind of further delineation I would put there Yeah, the talking about the I'm talking about the the dichotomy I you know, we're talking about framing and You know the pros free speech, you know or censorship, you know this dichotomy does doesn't work. How do we frame?
00:10:51
Speaker
How do we begin to frame the idea of beliefs around free speech? Because I'm not saying necessarily that we end up there, we think in categories as philosophers who try to be like, how do we frame this debate so people can engage in the debate? And what I hear you saying, and I agree with, is that the
00:11:15
Speaker
I'm for free speech. I'm against free speech really doesn't get us anywhere. As a matter of fact, it might impede progress. So what's, what's the frame for entering into this?
Framing the Debate: Free Speech and Controversy
00:11:25
Speaker
And also if you wish to include it, does it, does that where we bring a hate speech, the question of hate speech into the discussion? I think unhelpful way of framing it is, or at least one way that people have been framing it and
00:11:42
Speaker
I want to kind of flag it as not particularly helpful is people tend to believe that humans are kind of a tabula rasa, you know, this blank slate, the John Locke notion that everything they hear, they believe, right? I don't think that's correct. But
00:12:01
Speaker
there is an aspect to it that is true. I think that's when the misinformation, disinformation stuff comes into play. So I think often we are rational agents, we have to give credit where credit is due. A lot of people who engage in social media, they're rational agents, they have educations, they have years of experience. We can't just call everyone intuitive, walking, irrational,
00:12:26
Speaker
people, you know, because that on the one side of that is elitist, you know, to say that everyone who's engaging in social media is now a possible demagogue or possibly liking demagogues and harming democracy as it is. I don't think that's true, although I really do believe that intuitions shape a lot of our thinking. And so that's why
00:12:49
Speaker
the way I would frame the debate is not for or against, but rather where are areas that are particularly harmful that need censorship because there's a proclivity to believe hate speech or misinformation or disinformation. And so in that setting, there are, for example, let's talk about recent news, Kanye West or Yay or however he wants to be called nowadays.
00:13:17
Speaker
has recently been quite anti-Semitic. I don't recall the specifics, but he was doubting the uniqueness of the suffering of the Jewish people and the Holocaust, among other things. Some of his clients on Alice Jones, when he platformed him, but also elsewhere.
00:13:36
Speaker
The a-hystericity or anti-hystericity of those statements is one thing that we don't have to get into. But for anyone who wants to read about that, Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands, fantastic book that I actually just finished reading that talks about really the unique suffering of Eastern European Jews who were a large victim
00:14:00
Speaker
but also just Jews elsewhere in Europe as well. But they were really transported to Eastern Europe and six million Jews were killed there. And so that's a fantastic book for people to read. But really what Kanye West has been doing is
00:14:20
Speaker
He's been allowing or platforming or giving permission for people to be anti-Semitic. Some of this is quote-unquote harmless. So like Jewish jokes, you see them in mass popular culture.
00:14:38
Speaker
in the movie Neighbors, for example, with Zac Efron and Seth Rogen. The first movie has some Jewish jokes about having a Jew in the oven, quote, unquote, talking about pregnancy, right? And so those are kind of morally interesting debates around that of like, is this harmful? Would Seth Rogen, who is Jewish,
00:15:05
Speaker
Admit this if he it could is he platforming anti-Semitism in those cases. Those are all interesting questions and In some cases, I think you really could say that this is That it allows anti-Semitism, but that is something about humor There's something about comedy that is just difficult to talk about right? Like this is what a lot of people have dealt with what they talked about comedy and the ethics of comedy but in Kanye's
00:15:31
Speaker
case, you really saw an uptick of violence against Jews. You saw an uptick of outspoken anti-Semitism and so forth. And so that's where I think you have to draw the line. John Stuart Mill, we're talking about hate speech, John Stuart Mill has this principle that he talks about. And what his understanding is that when your
00:16:01
Speaker
when you are being hurt or injured or there's violence against you as a physical being, that's when the free speech ends or where it should end. That's where your swing should end if it touches your nose and so forth. I think that's a good one. That's a useful one, but there are potential limitations of that phrasing. You know, it's really hard to draw lines in certain situations,
00:16:29
Speaker
That's for the philosophers, for the trained philosophers to come up with. And they have, you know, a lot of essays on this. I've read some of them during my undergraduate days. But in Kanye West's case, it's clear how it's harmful. It's clear how it's platformed, hate speech, anti-Semitic speech. And in other cases, it's less harmful, right? Like in the neighbor's case, in the movie, it's not entirely clear
00:16:56
Speaker
to me how that would promote vitriolic anti-Semitism. Maybe it is somewhat true. I personally am not particularly fond of that joke or kind of anti-Jewish jokes that reference the Holocaust and being in ovens. I mean, as someone who has been learning about the Holocaust, I've been a teaching assistant for the semester in a class on the Holocaust, it doesn't ring
00:17:27
Speaker
in any way interesting or it doesn't ring funny to me at all, right? And so maybe it's just because it's really fresh to me. I'm sure that some Jews would find that joke may be funny and so difficult, right? It's very difficult, but yeah. Well, and I think part of it too is
00:17:53
Speaker
some of the influence from you. And I have some recent reading myself, Ollo Medor, Ukraine Famine. We had some overlap UNI online and reading about that. And I think there is something about
00:18:14
Speaker
the context of it, right? That the offense seems to rise when the scope of hatred is so pervasive, provable, showable in a massively destructive human event. Then when folks poke around in that area, the sensitivity for carrying humans, the Jewish people, or anybody who's experienced this type of thing,
00:18:42
Speaker
The offense is palpable. The Holocaust denier, the odd physiological feelings I have in my body hearing things like that are real.
00:18:54
Speaker
And I think it speaks to the impact or the notion impact of where the harm is. It was interesting for me intellectually to then follow after Ye had said those things, the debate within the African-American community, because you see these historical antagonisms that sometimes being from the East and New York City knowing about
00:19:24
Speaker
uh you know kind of conflicts or portrayed conflicts between jewish people and black people and black people and korean people a place you know and please please uh place into this um but i think like you said with your read recent reading or historical understanding the uh damage that can be done to the unleashing of falsehood and or if we define it as his speech
00:19:54
Speaker
is of such a human concern that that's why I think this debate comes about. Jacob, best try at this.
Hate Speech and Legal Perspectives
00:20:05
Speaker
I follow Southern Poverty Law, tracking of hate groups, activity, things like that. But what is hate speech? Because if the debate is normally framed,
00:20:19
Speaker
You know, your hate speech is this and these, you know, whether it's liberal and all these things that they want, they hate us Christians and us trying to live a proper life. Like what, how do we frame that? What is, if something's getting to hate speech, what are we doing right there? What is hate speech? I don't have a prepared definition for you, but I think some
00:20:45
Speaker
type of hate speech is just going to happen in society. It would be difficult to outlaw hate speech as such. What you can outlaw, definitely, is speech that is
00:21:00
Speaker
causing or calling for violence. And there's these examples of, okay, you're in a crowded theater and someone shouts fire, right? And this is used as an example historically as that's illegal or something. And actually in the US, to my knowledge, that's not illegal. As it's kind of used as as like an incorrect example, as, you know, something that isn't really illegal. Yeah.
00:21:29
Speaker
There are other things that would be illegal, you know, but it depends on the country to country. I mean, in the US, it's not illegal to deny the Holocaust. In Slovakia, my home country in Europe, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. In Germany, it's illegal to deny the Holocaust. And, you know, people have been publicly tried for such acts.
00:21:56
Speaker
and I don't recall what the law is in Canada and so you know there are like kind of these unique cases that you can point to but I think outlying hate speech will be difficult for precisely the same the reasons that you outlined it's very difficult to
00:22:12
Speaker
cause define hate speech or you know Chappelle Dave Chappelle show has comedy specials every other month now it seems and in a lot of them he says things that a lot of communities have described as hate speech and I agree
00:22:33
Speaker
vaguely with a lot of the concerns of those communities. You know, Dave Chappelle seems kind of, what's the way to put it, ambivalent perhaps to the suffering of specific communities. And here we're talking about trans communities specifically. And so, you know, and I personally find a lot of those jokes unsavory. I find the rhetoric around it concerning. A lot of people have been calling
00:23:02
Speaker
That speech as hate speech. I think rightfully so but do you outline? I'm not entirely sure that would be conducive to any any kind of I'm not entirely sure it would be conducive to that speech not occurring at all, right? Like and that's one of these arguments known Chomsky has been a famous Holocaust
00:23:27
Speaker
deniers. He's not been a famous Holocaust denier. He's been a famous supporter of the speech of Holocaust deniers because in his view that would
00:23:40
Speaker
permit speaking truth to falsehood and accuracy to blatant historical. Yeah, I could see that Chomsky has been someone who's defended and you know Chomsky more recently as of Putin's full scale invasion of Ukraine has defended Russian disinformation to my knowledge. He's defended that being available in the US. A lot of places have made RT formerly known as Russia today.
00:24:06
Speaker
and Sputnik and other Russian disinformation channels illegal. In Europe, you can't access them without a VPN. I don't know about the US, but I recall it being not accessible or something along those lines. And Chomsky has once again said that you should be making those things available because
00:24:29
Speaker
because that speech is just going to be around in general. And I don't know if I entirely believe that, actually. I would be more on the side of the fence of, let's disallow the chief orchestrators of this speech. We can allow people discussing that speech amongst themselves, or we can allow people believing
00:24:50
Speaker
Inaccuracies you just can't police people's beliefs in that way. It's just not going to work this or will it or wellian fantasy It has been tried, you know And it just doesn't work. We can't police people's beliefs But you can police people's ability to share that and you know that I think there's a strong argument for censorship because
00:25:15
Speaker
People tend to believe some of this stuff and it's harmful. Some of my family members have believed Putin's lies and I wouldn't call them idiotic or senseless. I would call them very, these are intelligent people. So we have to approach them with that in mind. These are rational agents. It's not enough to just say that we can't
00:25:43
Speaker
that they can't make up their own minds. They can. We should allow speech. We should allow them to discuss things. But at the same time, I think there's a strong case to be made about censorship because of the prevalence of disinformation, because of how it's influenced democracy.
00:26:01
Speaker
And the state of politics, you know, in Brexit 2016, that happened with Trump's election as well, right? Like a lot of narrative centered approach to speech that is persuasive, that is also disinformation and misinformation. You know, immigrants are not stealing jobs, unfortunately, it's more nuanced than that. But those things are persuasive for a lot of people.
00:26:25
Speaker
And so you have to you have to allow that dialogue. You can't tell people that that's hate speech and now it's illegal. That that just is a recipe for political disaster and and instability. Yeah, you'd mention around Brexit had this interesting experience that I happened to be in London.
00:26:50
Speaker
leading up to that election a few years back. And wow, what an experience to see. I experienced shock at what I saw as overt racist posters by political parties with caravans of brown people coming into England. It was just so overt to me. I mean, it was like
00:27:17
Speaker
I know there's not much subtlety in U.S. politics sometimes around these matters, but I was like, whoa, that's wrong. And around that time, the next two days later, British MP, the Member of Parliament, was assassinated. And I think it was a rural part right there. But it was just I was like, what, you know, I was just right around it. And I was in there A and B, right, this racist rhetoric.
00:27:46
Speaker
You know, and it doesn't happen that often that a member of parliament shop, but it was assassination right around the same time. And so it was a big shocker. And I think when you mentioned that and some of the political changes that we saw in Europe and talking about Trump in the U.S. around 2016, I found it all rather shocking in a certain sense. I've been around, you know, I'm 50 now, but I've been around lots of different people, which means around a lot of racists and xenophobes over time and come in contact with it. But I was like,
00:28:16
Speaker
Holy shit, this is bigger, bigger, bigger and more dangerous than, you know, than, than, than I seen or recall going to the social, social media piece. Let's talk about the Chomsky bit, right? So we got Chomsky and, and, and I think we could definitely as intellectuals understand the point of him saying, like the shit's going to be out there is obviously a terrible way of expressing Chomsky, but it's going to be out there. It's going to.
00:28:42
Speaker
It's gonna be out there, but I think I sit back and I say Two things and thinking about that idea that Chomsky is the preeminent analyzer of the the mechanisms and the power of media to to move and persuade and If the things are different now or we see in different behaviors tied the social media The monster
Impact of Media and Social Platforms
00:29:09
Speaker
is bigger. The monster is stronger and
00:29:13
Speaker
And I think that problem of ties is, you know, I, I love the idea that Chomsky puts forward. Um, but I wonder if it's quaint, uh, and on the basis of his own analysis, if, if, if it's quaint, given the power of social media right now. So is there something different about our Instagrams and our Twitters and other things? Yeah, because I think that's, you know, you hit the,
00:29:42
Speaker
hit the target on that one, I feel with the problem with Chomsky's argument is that Chomsky I think is analyzing this from the perspective of, okay, we've got rational agents and we're making up the best and everyone's persuaded by reason. It's true that we are rational agents. It's true that people can make decisions and people should be held accountable for these decisions. But at the same time,
00:30:07
Speaker
from social media, we can intuit that people really engage with specific types of media. And this is why the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all of these TikTok now as well, they favor
00:30:25
Speaker
outrageous content. You know, Candace Owens, Trump, Shapiro, and others have really utilized this. They know it. They know it very well. They're like Candace Owens. I'm pretty, I'm
00:30:40
Speaker
believe, actually, that Candace Owens just has people around her who crunch the numbers and just say, OK, say the most incorrect claim you can make in any given moment. And it doesn't matter that, you know, they know that her popularity is not going to go down with that tweet, if anything, that's going to be bolstered and it's going to grow. So in the early stages of the invasion, she had this amazing take that Ukraine does not have a history.
00:31:08
Speaker
And that Russia is completely in the right to invade Ukraine, you know, and so everyone from Ann Applebaum, you know, journalists to historians to observers to Ukrainians, everyone has basically just said, look, Candace, that is so incorrect that
00:31:30
Speaker
it has to be some sort of outrage machine. And I probably was. It probably was Candice just being like, okay, what can I say that is so incorrect that we'll get engagement and we'll further my accounts to more users.
00:31:45
Speaker
And you could credit Trump to a similar tactic, but I don't know to what extent with Trump it's just accidental that anything that he says tends to be incorrect or tends to be, you know, yeah. So I think a lot of these people, they use this Shapiro supposedly. I've heard Shapiro described as nothing like what he is on camera, that all of it is a show and that show is
00:32:13
Speaker
look we're gonna we're gonna create outrage we're gonna create um like kind of straw man arguments that purposefully outrage people so they engage how stupid is this Shapiro you don't you don't understand a thing about my view yeah well that's the point he's not trying to understand your view this is it's not even entertainment right it's just
00:32:34
Speaker
It's just how do I get the most numbers? How do I get the most engagement? So the best way to deal with that is just to block all the users who tend to outrage us. I don't ever look at Candace Owens. I've blocked her. I've muted other accounts that I think that
00:32:52
Speaker
utilize similar things. Luckily, I've been blocked by some people who do that. Eric Metaxas, this Christian right pundit of Trump lately, he blocked me because I was engaging with the content. That's great. Other people are, you know,
00:33:07
Speaker
tend to block a lot as well. So that's something we have to take into account. That's something that Chomsky I don't think is really reckoning with as much as you should. These people, they are only looking at engagement. They're looking at numbers. And how do you maximize engagement? It's by creating outrageous content that is fake, purposefully, or
00:33:31
Speaker
or it misrepresents truth purposefully so that others retweet it. This is such a dumb take. How can Tucker Carlson believe this? Well, now that you've said that, now that you've retweeted that, now you've fed into the machine that is Tucker Carlson. That is his business plan. That's his algorithm. He doesn't care that you don't like his content. He just wants you to share that you don't like his content because that promotes him to other accounts.
00:34:00
Speaker
You have an opinion. Now you have an opinion on it. I don't like this. Sorry. Everybody's engaging in their opinion on it. And it's part of that maybe other side-ism too. I know when I've worked on political campaigns and you have a campaign going and one
00:34:20
Speaker
Yahoo down the street says, I am the opposition to that measure and they get 50%, you know, uh, you know, of the, of the coverage because we think, okay, you know, and, uh, I think that is fascinating when I think as a philosopher, you know, when you see things starting to be debated that you thought settled, you know, we're settled. And I think some of these questions are like that. I thought these matters, uh,
00:34:48
Speaker
We're settled in, you know, they're they're not and things change. And I think one of the things of value that you made me think about and even at the outset, too, about thinking how not necessarily political parties, but like political movements, how work has been done on a certain category and then the other party coops it for me.
00:35:08
Speaker
For me, like the whole Trump media thing, for me, an experience in sense prior to like in the 90s where the the left in the U.S. was like, look, this is corporate news. It's tainted even your New York Times in order to turbo. So there's this strong push for a long time saying this is all business poop we get in the news, like basically. And and that was
00:35:37
Speaker
pounded upon. Nothing wrong with that, being critical, but that was pounded into a pulp. So when Trump said, that shit's fake, well, everybody been saying it's fake or misinformative for quite some time. So as a political positioning, I don't think the left could have been like, wait a second, for all these years we were saying it was a corporate, it was true. And I really think it made a mess, at least as far as
00:36:07
Speaker
a political, political opportunism around it. I think, I think Trump had just taken the work that the left had done and seen, see, they told you it was crap. And I'm telling you, it's crap too. It's crap. So a lot of the work had already been done for other purposes, I think, but left us, left us where we are.
00:36:31
Speaker
hard transition, Jacob, because you never get a chance to ask you, have you here? How's the guitar playing going? Well, you know, I actually just today saw the beautiful Ibanez blue guitar that I had. So that's how my guitar playing is going in a nutshell. You know, I'm now for I have my guitars on different continents. Basically, I have them on the West Coast. I have them in Slovakia. I don't have any guitar with me in Montreal.
00:37:00
Speaker
And so I've got my Vic Firth practice pad here with my Dave Wekel signature signed Vic Firth 5A drumsticks. And that's what I do. That's how I spend my musical energy now. And unfortunately, I don't have a guitar with me. It's just, it is sad. I picked up a guitar the other day and I was just kind of playing and I was like, oh, I don't feel it. I feel like I play so much worse than I used to. So,
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's just yeah Give it months No, it's great. I know uh, everybody Jacob does does some stuff with music and I think what's been really cool is when we had you on the show Jacob is like Yeah, we know we could talk about like a whole bunch of things, but I in general I've always appreciated you being able to come on and talk about sometimes a lot of times it's like rate what I'm
00:37:54
Speaker
what I'm thinking about. And when you mentioned Apple Bomb, I love the ability for us to share some things intellectually and some really important reading. It's a special opportunity. I wanted to know, I do the show and you hit some of the harder philosophy, but you're an artist and you think about
Culture, Art, and Current Reads
00:38:15
Speaker
art.
00:38:15
Speaker
What about just general speculative thoughts as far as, you know, how's this, I mean, we are talking about art, we're talking about musicians. You've seen anything like artistically, like you have to respond to in this realm or is it different and dynamic of creating controversial content or provocative content rather, but
00:38:43
Speaker
You see, it has some thoughts about in the art realm, some of these dynamics formally taking place. I don't think that in the art realm, there are a lot of artists who tend to be political in a way that yea was. So I don't tend to respond to them. I don't tend to kind of engage with them that much. And also just my attitude in general is
00:39:08
Speaker
If there is controversial content, I tend to kind of steer clear as much as I can. I didn't directly click on, I make sure not to directly click on a content that is kind of controversial or I block it immediately. I mute it. I just say, I don't want to engage with this.
00:39:24
Speaker
You know, I think we have to reposition our way of we can't be passive consumers of social media anymore. You know, like it's harming us too much. You know, we have to really like when I'm on social media, I try to be actively engaging. I try to really.
00:39:39
Speaker
Like, okay, now I'm hanging out on TikTok for a second. Let me see what's on TikTok. And then I leave TikTok and I don't passively engage. But when it comes to artists who should be on the lookout because of how awesome they are, let me give you one. At least Polyphia has been fantastic. It's kind of this instrumental rock
00:40:07
Speaker
if we can call it that, instrumental metal kind of math rock or something. I think some of the kids are calling it. Yeah. Yeah. So Polyphia has been releasing really exceptional music. I forget the main guitarist's name, something like Tim or Ted or something like this. And really good stuff. I mean, I've been I've been a fan of John Mayer's nostalgic album, his sub rock, kind of a homage to the influences that have shaped him.
00:40:38
Speaker
And I think in general, it is an exciting time for music. It is an exciting time for this. And I think that all of these musicians, they've really been utilizing social media in a good way. And I think most of them tend to steer clear from purposefully of being controversial like EA.
00:40:58
Speaker
and so that's that's good to see but I mean at a certain point we will have to ask ourselves like are others going to be like yeah are they going to try to say uh inappropriate things on sway and other news sources so that they can can garner um discussion about them and I'm you know I think
00:41:20
Speaker
It's likely that that if if it doesn't have a real real backlash and he's had some backlash, okay adidas has uh, Canceled him so to speak but he needs more backlash 100 because a lot of people are definitely in support of that Yeah, yeah, I hear you it's it's it's it's it's a tough topic and it's a it's a it's it's a really good topic, um
00:41:49
Speaker
Yeah, Jacob, I really appreciate you taking the time and, like I said, connecting around the books. I'm reading right now Cormac McCarthy's two new books, long awaited 15 years or so. The Passenger, the first one, and Stella Maris, which I've read as a
00:42:13
Speaker
philosophical physics discussion, the nature of the universe set in 1972, Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Those are my nonfiction or late in the year. Um, but, uh, before I let, before I let you go, I mean, you're a big book guy like me and I get to indulge my, my, myself a bit, um, uh, for let you go. What's, um,
00:42:39
Speaker
You gobble up those books pretty regularly. What do you see as being something you've run into right now or going into 2023, the type of thing where you get your head ready intellectually for what you see coming? Yeah, I appreciate this question a lot. So as I was mentioning, I just finished Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands, which I found
00:43:05
Speaker
quite informative, people have been critical of it because, quote unquote, there's a Polish bias. I didn't see the Polish bias in it. I think he's fairly balanced. I would want him to focus a little bit more on the ethics of collaborators in the kind of Ukrainian Polish Belarusian collaborators, but he talks about it briefly. I've really been enjoying From People's Intonations by John Connolly. John Connolly is this titan in the Slavic studies. He's a historian.
00:43:34
Speaker
and he talks about the history of Eastern Europe. Really good book that just came out was by Maria Ressa, I think her name is pronounced. She's a journalist out of the Philippines. Her book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, I found quite good. It talks about some of the stuff that we've been talking about in social media. And I actually recently bought Zelensky's collection of speeches, which
00:44:02
Speaker
I'm trying to look at it something like a message from Ukraine is the title of the book. Yeah. And that's just a collection of speeches. All of the proceeds proceeds go to an initiative that supports Ukraine. So that's that's also great if people want to.
00:44:21
Speaker
Check that out. But I mean, as you're saying, there's so many, I have a collection of Ian Kershaw, a historian, two books that he wrote on the 20th century that I really want to read. I want to read The Future is History by Masha Gessen. Ben Rhodes is After the Fall. There's so many, I mean, so many books, the holiday seasons.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's why I hit you up for them. Like I say, and particularly we've talked, this is the third time you're on the show and it's like when we share some things, it's really helpful because at times you end up in different communities.
00:45:06
Speaker
you know, directly, you know, in the university atmosphere for about a decade. And then you drift off and you do certain things. It's nice to connect and be like, hey, what's popping in your brain? What the what do I need to read now? So we got our field correspondent here having reported Jacob forensic. Where are you right now? I'm telling the Montreal doing Miami, McGill, Montreal. Beautiful, beautiful. I've really just tremendously enjoyed it. I love much.
00:45:36
Speaker
Incredible University of their McGill Montreal what a city. I've only been there in the cold Jacob I have to say I've never been in Montreal and felt Warped the warmth from the people and everything around but no Wild winter they're telling me now which I'm happy about but snowed recently and Yeah, just treading through that snow. It's it's difficult even though Metro is the the means of transport the snow here is
00:46:05
Speaker
It gets pretty intense but the fall if you can ever visit in the fall That it was a stunning really stunning experience the fall in Montreal Thanks. Thanks for the recommendation. I've never been in their flight after I've gone there three or four times and always in the
00:46:27
Speaker
deep dark of winter, but I still enjoyed myself. It was just a great city, Montreal. I found it to be very cosmopolitan, arts-oriented, music is good, and you can smoke some decent cigars if that's your predilection as well. Jacob, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having me again. I mean, third time, yeah. This is great. I love our correspondence. It's amazing.
00:46:57
Speaker
Is is is super too and and the thing is I don't know if I had every formally bestowed it but you
00:47:04
Speaker
field correspondent philosopher on the spot So, you know, I might need to call you sometimes when the the world gets a little bit goofy and I need some Yeah, I mean I wear the philosopher King t-shirt But I will have to tell listeners who got to this point that I am NOT the biggest fan of this elitist notion of philosopher kings, you know, so I'm not one of those who I actually know
00:47:30
Speaker
You're not if I didn't think Jacob forensic for those Plato folks out there is a fan of the noble lie and miss of social placement from the ancient Greeks. Fascinating, wonderful work by Plato, the Republic. I recommend that everybody reads it, but I still give props.
00:47:54
Speaker
to Jacob's Philosopher King shirt. Well done, except for the elitist notion that everyone did it. Jacob, it's been a pleasure, and thanks for connecting with the listeners again. We appreciate you. Thanks for having us. It's been fantastic. I really appreciate it. This is something rather than nothing.