In this episode of listenN, we invited award-winning author and social commentator, Alan C. Logan back, to talk all things ‘Post Truth’ . Highlights include:

How the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year 2016 was ‘post-truth’.

Exploring ‘post-truth’s definition: The circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal beliefs.

How in 2016 scientists sat upright and said, “We have to study what’s going on here”.

How the immense power of the ‘corporation’ (in the 80’s and 90’s) turned what is real and what is not real upside down as everything became about image.

How image is all around us, and everything has been blended into one; and now take that and put it on steroids with social media—that is the rise of post-truth as we know it today.

We’re living in a pandemic AND an infodemic of misinformation according to the World Health Organization.

The introduction of the term: Illusionary truth. If people have been deceived by a conman they are not going to concede that they have been fooled – “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Mark Twain

How the ease at which we can find others in echo chambers, who share our same views and support our cognitive biases has exploded with social media.

How we’re a species that does not want to know the truth.

How deception has become a common way of life.

How we’re storytellers and we value the skilled storyteller above all else.

How our health always sits on a continuum: Person, Place and Planet, and how the disadvantaged bear the brunt of this.

How propaganda framework and techniques are similar: from selling unhealthy foods to pounding a podium.

How a lie told once is a lie, but told a thousand times it will become the truth–repetition solidifies misinformation and disinformation.

How we’re living in the age of distraction, and research shows that when you increase levels of distraction it leads to falsehoods being included in decision making, as if they were factual even when they have been labelled as misinformation up front.

A discussion of Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show. In summary it’s about how combining disinformation with amusement we’re less likely to have our guard up, hence the Trump Rally.

How people prefer power over the truth and once in power they no longer value truth.

That we tell stories to curb our anxiety. But it’s really important to update our knowledge and beliefs. Right now with social media it’s so easy to get entrenched into a camp.

How a tiny two inch article in a local newspaper about a pilot started his journey on uncovering the biggest Hoax ever sold.

His new book The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can and how Frank Abagnale conned everyone from the American people to Hollywood to Broadway. And the proof that nothing is as it seems.

How it’s a great case study and a parable for our times, and looking at these stories though our post-truth world we’re living in is essential for our progress.

How the con person assembles a couple of tiny grains of truth which then allows for the colossal holistic falsehood – “by using some accurate details to imply a misleading picture of the whole, the artful propagandist makes truth the principle form of falsehood.” Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism.

Jean Twenge’s research shows an uptick in narcissism and decline in empathy (starting in the early 2000’s), and how that is not a healthy state for society.

How research has shown that narcissism is at play in the conman.

How it is so important to ask whose science/what science? when it comes to trusting science. We need to understand the source.

The importance in early life education on understanding how misinformation spreads and how propaganda is constructed. We challenge Alan to connect with Jill Biden to encourage her to pick up educating teens on power dynamics, and how propaganda is constructed and to make it her FLOTUS education legacy!

When you teach young people (teens) about power dynamics they’re more likely to take action.

How in regard to the search for truth we cannot do that with a stone-like rigidity because if we do that, if we’re unwilling to accept truths as approximations based on the limits of a certain knowledge, at a given time we end up with authoritarianism.