The forces of media, technology, and even the wiring of our own brains seem aligned to draw people toward extremism. But never fear: Asher, Jason, and Rob unpack why we're so susceptible to wackadoodle viewpoints and offer ways to tamp down extremist thinking and behavior in ourselves, our communities, and across society. Along the way, they tour the worlds of extreme sports, extreme politics, and extreme yogurt. They even question their own decidedly non-mainstream views on the environment and the economy.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Kevin Roose’s article in the New York Times “A QAnon ‘Digital Soldier’ Marches On, Undeterred by Theory’s Unraveling”Definition of extremism from the Anti-Defamation League
• Concepts of “malignant bonding” and “scarcity mind” in the article “Widening the ‘We’” by Colin Greer and Eric Laursen
• Zeynep Tufecki’s 2018 article in the New York Times “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer”
• Kari Paul’s 2021 article in the Guardian “‘It let white supremacists organize’: the toxic legacy of Facebook’s Groups”
• Peter D. Kvam et al., “Rational inference strategies and the genesis of polarization and extremism,” Nature, May 5, 2022.
• Statistics on rising levels of hate crime in the United States
• Statistics on domestic terrorism in the United States
• Statistics on antisemitism around the world
• Crazy Town episode 78, which includes the six questions Megan Phelps-Roper developed to challenge her entrenched beliefs.
• Rapoport’s Rules for constructive criticism
• Post Carbon Institute’s Deep Dive on Building Emotional Resilience
• Diane Benscoter’s nonprofit, Antidote.ngo, which runs recovery groups for people caught up in disinformation.
• Thought reform consultation
• Crazy Town episode 89 on escaping individualism, in which we discussed mutual aid networks
• Lawsuit to allow social media users to control their algorithms
• Ranked choice voting

Support the show

Rob Dietz

Hi, I'm Rob Dietz.

Jason Bradford

I'm Jason Bradford.

Asher Miller

And I'm Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town, where the school board just banned every book except one, "The Flat Earthers Guide to the Cosmos."

Melody Travers Allison

Hi, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in season six we're exploring escape routes, pathways that just might get us out of Crazy Town. In today's episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher are escaping extremism. And here's a quick warning, sometimes this podcast uses swear words (LANGUAGE!). If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about Crazy Town. Now, on to the show

Asher Miller

Jason and Rob, it's lovely to see you today.

Rob Dietz

Great to be here in Crazy Town.

Asher Miller

Beautiful spring day.

Jason Bradford

Oh, it's stunning out there.

Asher Miller

I brought my dog Willow.

Jason Bradford

Willow is so cute.

Asher Miller

Our listeners, if they tune in carefully, might hear him in the background.

Jason Bradford

Little pitter patter.

Asher Miller

Little pitter patter, a little maybe of his collar jingling.

Jason Bradford

Kind of pretty attached to daddy.

Asher Miller

I needed to bring him in today because the topic of this week's episode is pretty heavy.

Jason Bradford

You needed an emotional support animal.

Asher Miller

I did. I did.

Jason Bradford

You're pretty attached to Willow.

Asher Miller

I am pretty attached to Willow. He's pretty attached to me. Yeah, so let's just dive in. Okay, and I'm going to start with a question for the both of you, which is what is the first thing that comes to mind when you guys think about extremists?

Jason Bradford

Oh, Scoville units.

Asher Miller

What?

Jason Bradford

Hot pepper contests.

Asher Miller

Got it.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. Unbelievable. People eat this stuff. And I just - million Scoville units or whatever. I don't even . . .

Asher Miller

How do people even come up with that?

Rob Dietz

I like to get the ghost pepper juice into an eyedropper.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I think of, we have a shop here in town, Yogurt Extreme.

Asher Miller

That's what comes to your mind?

Rob Dietz

Yeah, they have extreme yogurt.

Jason Bradford

You can pile the goodies on top.

Rob Dietz

It's like every time we go there, it's always a big joke. You want to get some ice cream, like extreme yogurt.

Jason Bradford

What is it with gummy bears on top of that stuff? I don't understand how you would mix gummy bears with soft serve.

Rob Dietz

That's a kid thing.

Asher Miller

You definitely sound like an old crotchety man.

Rob Dietz

Well no, he wants --

Asher Miller

It's like Andy Rooney over here. "You know what I hate? You know what I really hate? Those red worms on frozen yogurt." Wow, you guys are being surprisingly benign with your forms of extremism.

Jason Bradford

You told us you were sensitive so I was trying to . . .

Asher Miller

Thank you.

Rob Dietz

You know, I have listened to the Long Shadow podcast and a lot of Leah Sottile stuff on the rise of the far right and the patriot movement. So, I could go there. But I'd rather talk about frozen yogurt.

Asher Miller

Rob Dietz

Does she say stupid things into a microphone a lot?

Asher Miller

Well, she did say quite a lot of stupid things. We'll get to that in a second. I don't know if she ever did it into a microphone. You know, when she was a Harvard she worked with Conan O'Brien at the Harvard Lampoon. She was like a self-described mystic. You know, she cared about environmental issues.

Rob Dietz

What is that? A self-described mystic?

Asher Miller

I don't know, but I would love to be one. Especially if it's lucrative.

Rob Dietz

That'll be next season.

Asher Miller

Jason Bradford

I've known people like that for sure.

Asher Miller

For sure, right?

Jason Bradford

Yeah.

Asher Miller

Well, then she came across something online and went down into the QAnon rabbit hole.

Jason Bradford

Eww.

Asher Miller

Okay. So she came across a pizza gate conspiracy theory. I'm not going to get into pizza gate, but maybe some of our listeners have already heard pizza gate. But it basically was one of the sparks of the QAnon kind of weird online cult thing that was going on.

Jason Bradford

So weird.

Asher Miller

Yeah. And I think a lot of what popularized QAnon on was sort of a combination of the sense of community that people felt because it was like, I'm privy to this conspiracy theory that nobody's paying attention to. I found the truth, and I've connected with other people. And they would signal each other. In fact, there's some elected politicians that would do a nudge, nudge wink, wink to people referencing Q. I also saw somebody describe it as like, having the appeal of a massive multiplayer game because Q would like drop these cryptic messages and people would sit there trying to decipher it together. It's like building a puzzle collectively online to try to understand what was going on. And for whatever reason, this really drew her in to the point where she kind of became obsessed with Q stuff. Posting about it all the time. She called herself a digital soldier for QAnon to the point that by the time Roose met her, she quote, "explained that Hollywood elites conducted Illuminati blood rituals behind closed doors." Of course. "That former representative Anthony Weiner's laptop contained a video of Hillary Clinton committing murder." As makes sense, as you would. "And that photos from a recent meeting between Mr. Trump and Queen Elizabeth II prove that he had secretly dethroned her." That was my favorite part.

Rob Dietz

I am kind of flabbergasted. Like, I know you said something earlier about how we're all susceptible. And I'm sure I'm susceptible to being in some extremist group, but I can't imagine falling for any of this crap. That just seems like . . . I don't know. How do you make that turn?

Jason Bradford

And this is three -- He's listing like three basic, or four basic things at the QAnon . . . But there's 100 crazy -- There's like pages that could go on of each one of them nutty like this. And that's what's astonishing.

Asher Miller

Yeah. Like JFK Jr.'s son still being alive running with Trump. You know, harvesting adrenochrome from scared children.

Jason Bradford

Well, I think Baron Trump is actually the love child between Trump and Princess Diana, by the way, who is still alive.

Rob Dietz

Okay.

Asher Miller

Alright, anyway.

Jason Bradford

It goes on and on.

Asher Miller

It's easy to mock this stuff. It's also kind of freaky and puzzling is I think what you were saying, Rob. But, you know, there's a real consequence to some of this stuff. Not just the extremism that might direct people to do in real life. But also, you know, Valerie wound up losing most of her friends. She became estranged from her family. Like really sad, you know. And I'm not sure where she is in her life now. I did try to look her up. I think she's probably gone offline, understandably, because, you know, this was a big profound New York Times. She probably got attention elsewhere. I hope that she dug herself out of that rabbit hole and came out into the sunlight, but I just don't know.

Rob Dietz

Well, the whole concept of extremism could be a pretty big umbrella. You know, how do you define what's extreme and what isn't when you're not talking about the yogurt world, of course. So I thought it would be helpful for us as we get into this to get a definition from a good source. So the anti-defamation League has a pretty good nuanced definition. And I'm just going to go through it real quick for you guys. Extremism is a concept used to describe religious, social, or political belief systems that exists substantially outside of belief systems that are more broadly accepted in society. So it's, you know, I guess the easy one-word opposite of extremism is outside of the mainstream. Extreme ideologies often seek radical changes in the nature of government, religion, or society. It can also be used to refer to the radical wings of broader movements, such as the anti-abortion movement or the environmental movement. So you know, you can think of environmentalists who are out there doing peaceful protests or, you know, I guess we would call ourselves environmentalists. But then there are ones who are out blowing up buildings.

Asher Miller

Ray Kurzweil. Not Ray Kurzweil. That was an interesting Freudian slip.

Jason Bradford

Ted Kaczynski.

Asher Miller

Ted Kaczynski.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. And then, you know, not every extremist movement is necessarily bad, right? The abolitionist movement is one example of an extreme movement at the time that had admirable goals that we would say should be mainstream. But most of the extremist movements are kind of outside of the mainstream because their views are objectionable. You don't want them.

Jason Bradford

Or their tactics are. Their tactics get violent, let's say, This is the risk then because you brought up abolition. And so this is a major challenge what society decides to call an extremist movement is susceptible to the subjectivity of whatever is dominant power structures at the time. And can be used as a tool then to silence or sideline through propaganda, right. So you can imagine, like the Red Scare, right, you know, way to flush people out in the McCarthy era, for example. So there is a serious risk by labeling people as extremists that you create censorship, that there's a loss of freedom of expression that occurs because of these labels that that really follow people around.

Rob Dietz

Well, and this time too, it seems like an extremist point of view can become mainstream. Like QAnon, or you know, you've got people in Congress that are buying in.

Jason Bradford

It's scary.

Rob Dietz

So it's almost like -- Yeah, that definition can be pretty squirmy, pretty wiggly.

Asher Miller

Yeah, there's that, and there's also just who gets to decide, right? As you were saying, Jason, labeling opposition, as extremist has been a ploy of authoritarian governments, and it's definitely a fraught landscape to try to navigate. Along those lines, I think it's just worth differentiating for a second, extremism and polarization. You know, because I think sometimes people wonder like, if you have a polarizing view, or polarizing perspective, like where does it get into extremism? Some people call it toxic polarization, right? So toxic polarization can lead to a form of extremism in terms of political views, for example.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. And then there's almost the flip side of what I was saying before. It's that sometimes what mainstream society would say is extreme, might actually be the right course, right? It's the factually or morally correct way to proceed. I mean, we already said abolition, but you can think of a real specific case like Galileo, right? Or Copernicus. Here are astronomers who understand from observation and evidence the way the universe is laid out, and they get thrown in jail or locked up.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. Well think about what happened to the authors of "Limits to Growth." How much they were gone after by mainstream economists, right?

Rob Dietz

Who we would call extremists.

Jason Bradford

Who we would call extremists. Right. So all our friends who are ecological economists are probably considered the weirdos, maybe the extremist economists. And think about Crazy Town as a podcast, right? How much of what we say would be so far outside of the mainstream.

Asher Miller

Yeah, I mean folks in our camp are often just labeled luddites, or neo-Malthusians, or whatever, as a way of dismissing our views as being extreme, right? Which they are, of course. Let's just be honest.

Jason Bradford

Well, researchers have actually identified that there's different drivers that lead to extremism. Sometimes this can be things that relate to mental health, you know. So that can be an important one, right? People who are having mental health crises may be more likely with neurologic conditions or trauma to be susceptible, okay? But there are also a lot of social factors, including group dynamics that get involved. And we'll go into more detail. Or just when there are stressors in your environment, there's a lot of uncertainty, you're more susceptible to grabbing on to extreme views probably to create a sense of closure and certainty.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, there's a couple of really interesting other drivers that I found when we were coming up with the ideas for this episode. And over on resilience.org, we had published an article called "Widening the We" by Colin Greer and Eric Larsen. And they had two important drivers of getting to an extremist mindset, or a toxically polarized mindset. And one of those drivers, this one really struck me, it's called malignant bonding. And what it is talking about is we all have this need to belong to stuff, to be in groups, to bond with others. It's kind of an innate human trait, right? But sometimes we will fulfill that need by getting into groups that we really shouldn't be, right? That are malignant. So hence, the term malignant bonding. Another driver that they pointed out is the scarcity mind. And you could say that this is a product of evolutionary biology. You know, we're all out searching for resources that may be scarce, but then capitalism, which we have an episode, please go check that out, but it puts this into hyperdrive, right. This idea that you got to go out there and compete and get what's yours. And that competition mindset then, it's easy to get into an escalation where your behavior becomes more and more extreme. And then, you know, in the capitalism one we talked about how psychopaths probably make the best capitalists.

Asher Miller

There's a dynamic, I've been thinking about this just quite a bit. And I wish there was a term or something like Godwin's Law, you know, that was created to sort of capture the dynamic basically of people shitting on each other online, on the internet.

Rob Dietz

What is that Godwin's Law? Someone's eventually going to compare you to Hitler, or something like that.

Asher Miller

Yeah, exactly. So I wish there was a law like that that could be coined to describe the dynamic of how virtue signaling leads to more and more extremism, often within groups. So you know, you were just talking about malignant bonding. But within a group, you know, if you're feeling uncertainty or stress, or you feel like you need to prove that you belong to the group, there can be a tendency of people to signal by going to more extreme ends, to really show their adherence and their loyalty to the group, right. And then that kind of shifts basically, in some ways, the overall window of the group itself to that extreme. So that becomes the new center of the group. And hopefully it's not like the second law of thermodynamics, which is, you know, inevitable like entropy. But it feels in some ways inevitable that these views become more and more extreme over time.

Jason Bradford

And then I think we needed to talk about the role of modern technology, particularly social media and the influence of algorithms for spinning people off into into more extreme views. There was a sociologist and columnists Zeynep Tufekci. I think that's two words. Zeynep is the first name and then Tufekci is the last name.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, she's an awesome writer.

Asher Miller

She's a well-known columnist.

Jason Bradford

Rob Dietz

So I find that fascinating, the whole like vegetarianism to veganism, jogging to ultra marathoning, I get the same thing on YouTube. Like, I wanted to see how do people fish off the jetty at the Oregon coast. Because we go down to Newport every once in a while.

Asher Miller

I can't wait to see where this takes you.

Rob Dietz

Well, it's like you catch these lingkod or surf perch, or these little fish.

Jason Bradford

Nice.

Rob Dietz

And then you know, the next video I'm getting is, see how I caught a 600 pound sturgeon in the Columbia River. The biggest freshwater fish ever, you know? It's just like these more and more extreme fishing, you know. It's like yeah. It knows that sensationalism catches eyeballs. And then yeah, next thing you know, like, I'm not happy catching a surf perch. I have to catch something that --

Jason Bradford

You have to get a megalodon.

Rob Dietz

I've gotta get something that can eat me.

Asher Miller

Rob Dietz

Look at all the extremists we connect.

Asher Miller

It's incredible. So he wrote, More than 1 billion people are active members of Facebook groups, but most don't seek out groups on their own. Friends send invites or Facebook suggests them. If we can improve our suggestions and help connect 1 billion people with meaningful communities, that can strengthen our social fabric." Yeah, so people did get connected to a lot of fantastic groups. They also got connected to a lot of insane extremist groups. Particularly, right wing militia groups and other kinds of -- We won't get into the details of horrible groups that that people were recommended, or incidents that were directly sparked or organized on Facebook.

Rob Dietz

But it happened to me because after I was watching those YouTube videos, I went to join Oregon Coast Fisher People's group. And the next thing you know, it's like neo Nazi stuff.

Asher Miller

It's incredible. There's a big overlap, right?

Rob Dietz

Totally.

Asher Miller

Venn diagram of those two. Sorry fishermen. This is not fair of us.

Jason Bradford

Not fair at all. What are you guys doing?

Asher Miller

Basically, like their algorithm, there's a lot of evidence to show that that Facebook's algorithm kind of saw things like, "I support non-GMO stuff" as being in common with things like, "I'm anti-vax." Because they're both fringe, according to the algorithm. So like, oh, since you like the anti-GMO stuff, you must love anti-vax stuff, right?

Rob Dietz

Well I bet you that's kind of how Valerie, your original story, happened. It was little baby steps.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. Venn diagrams overlapping.

Rob Dietz

And then suddenly, you're believing in whatever happened in the pizza parlor and on Anthony Weiner's laptop.

Jason Bradford

Yes.

Asher Miller

Rob Dietz

How come Zuckerberg didn't wax poetically about this? You know, Nothing brings our members together like hate. It's a beautiful tool.

Jason Bradford

Join your local birding photographers group, people. I tell you, it's so sweet. You get pictures every day of the greatest birds in your area from top amateur photographers. And everyone's like, "Oh, that's beautiful. That's lovely. Oh, how cute." That's all you get. It's wonderful.

Rob Dietz

Uh huh. Uh huh. Pretty soon, you know, Jason's gonna be out there in the streets doing something extreme.

Asher Miller

Killing cats. This is going to lead you to anti-cat groups.

Jason Bradford

They'll probably recommend the birds aren't real group.

Asher Miller

Rob Dietz

More money, right?

Asher Miller

Exactly.

Rob Dietz

Well, so we've been talking about what drives people towards extremism. And it's probably not that big a stretch for folks to think like, okay, social media plays a big role in this. Especially with the evil corporate overlords that run those media empires. Or maybe things like malignant bonding, or if you have mental health issues. But one of the really surprising things that drives somebody to take extremist views is about making decisions in a rational way. So let me explain. So this is a thesis by a researcher named Cauvin. We'll put that in the notes. But the idea here is that when there is uncertainty, it's very hard to make a choice. What's the better choice if I don't have sort of these black and white or binary inputs. But if I have kind of an extremist view versus another extremist view, it's easy for me to say which one I prefer. And so, I just go that way. And it's our desire to not be stuck in uncertainty, our desire to be able to make a decision easily and painlessly.

Asher Miller

And maybe even quickly.

Rob Dietz

Yeah.

Asher Miller

In some ways you could say it's rational, right?

Jason Bradford

Yeah, that's what they do in rational decision making. Okay, so let's summarize. The key takeaway here is we have multiple drivers coming together, uncertainty and stressors in the environment, the existential drive for bonding and belonging, maybe personal trauma, perceived or real scarcity, and the rational desire also to simplify decision making, all being supercharged by the Internet and modern technology. And so it becomes very difficult for people to counteract these forces.

Rob Dietz

Oh that's bad. That's bad for all of us.

Asher Miller

Well, so let's talk a little bit -- Hold my beer. Let's talk a little bit about what extremism looks like in the wild, right? Or out in the world.

Jason Bradford

I'm going to look at your dog for a minute to calm down. Willow is so cute.

Rob Dietz

Let's just talk about extreme yogurt. Can't we? Come on.

Asher Miller

Or extreme haircuts on dogs?

Jason Bradford

Willow is extremely cute.

Asher Miller

That's true. Let's just talk about the rise of hate crimes and extremist violence.

Rob Dietz

Alright. Yeah, let's go there. Let's do your thing.

Asher Miller

Rob Dietz

Do you think when Apple was coming up with the iPhone, Steve Jobs was like thinking of these kinds of statistics as he remotely possible.

Asher Miller

They almost called it iHate.

Rob Dietz

But they didn't.

Asher Miller

Rob Dietz

Go environmentalism.

Asher Miller

Yeah. Although I gotta say, there's been a lot of reporting on the fact that the security apparatus, you know, Homeland Security had focused for a long time on environmentalists in particular as a major threat. It wasn't actually very successful.

Rob Dietz

Okay, so we've done a little tour of hate. I kind of want to back us out a little bit because those kinds of stats are really alarming. And this, what you summarized Jason, all the different drivers that lead to extremism, something that strikes me is that extremism has caused less of a shitshow out there than I would have expected it sort of given all of this. And that the reason I say that is, I feel like I've been at times in places where extremist behavior has happened, and it was really easy. So the thing that comes to mind, I lived in Washington, D.C. when there was a serial shooting spree going on. These two guys were driving around in a vehicle and they had cut holes in the trunk, and they were sniper rifling people. And I don't actually know what their motivation was. It seemed pretty random. But it really shook people up. It shut down the city. It changed -- this was one of those things where the infrastructure of having shooters around change the policies. Like they started changing when kids could be out on playgrounds and stuff like that. So basically, like, super low tech two extremists changing the way a city was operating. I feel like if there were more extremist thinking we would see more of this kind of crap going on.

Jason Bradford

Jason Bradford

Right.

Asher Miller

Well, I think it's a good point. I do think it's a bit of a narrow scope, right. So in a sense, you're talking about violent extremism or extremism that's taken to the extreme extent.

Rob Dietz

Yes. Extreme extremism.

Asher Miller

I was going to say terrorism.

Jason Bradford

Okay. Yeah. Extremism and thought leading to terrorism.

Asher Miller

Yeah. So, talking about hate crimes in this case. So you're talking about these guys in D.C. That's a form of terrorism. But you could look at it in a different way and say that, look at political extremism rhetoric that we're seeing. We've had lots of, sometimes they turned into violent, but extremely heated protests that have happened in different places. We had a riot in the Capitol.

Jason Bradford

Unbelievable. It has gotten to this point where it seriously has affected our ability to govern ourselves.

Asher Miller

Yeah.

Jason Bradford

Yes. Even though it's not day to day, or whatever.

Asher Miller

So maybe not as much like direct violence, you know, but it's there and it's clearly on the rise.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I will side with you there. It's amped up, which is why it's worrying.

Asher Miller

I think you're putting out how easy it could be --

Jason Bradford

Yeah, for it to get worse fast. Right.

Rob Dietz

Now I've depressed myself.

Jason Bradford

Alright well, let's change -- Let's go back to some like more fun examples of extremism because --

Rob Dietz

Okay, this is up my alley.

Asher Miller

Yogurt. Are we going to talk about yogurt again?

Jason Bradford

I got one. I got one. Sports extremism.

Asher Miller

Oh.

Jason Bradford

Okay, my favorite are like the Red Bull sponsors. All this extreme sport. You can see the videos of people like jumping off cliffs and doing flips.

Rob Dietz

Oh yeah. I love me some Red Bull mountain biking down cliffs.

Asher Miller

Or in those cities where they're going in those ---

Rob Dietz

Yeah, yeah. Like in South America They're going down alleys and stairwells.

Jason Bradford

Asher Miller

And didn't even have to make like a penis shaped rocket to do it, right?

Jason Bradford

No, it was a helium balloon. Yeah, he free falled faster than this --

Asher Miller

Falled?

Rob Dietz

Free fell? Free felled?

Jason Bradford

He free felled faster than the speed of sound. He got up to 143 miles per hour.

Asher Miller

Wow.

Rob Dietz

To what?

Jason Bradford

Sorry, 843 miles per hour.

Asher Miller

Wow.

Rob Dietz

Okay.

Jason Bradford

There's almost no air so it became actually difficult to control his body. And so he ended up doing this flat spin, where he's spinning like --

Asher Miller

Oh my God.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, he's flying like, you know, 800 miles an hour and he's spinning.

Rob Dietz

That's an awesome merry go 'round.

Jason Bradford

The worry is that if you spin too fast the blood starts gushing out of your eye sockets.

Asher Miller

Oh, lovely.

Jason Bradford

Because there's no air pressure, right?

Asher Miller

Right. Jesus Christ. I thought this was going to be light hearted.

Jason Bradford

He pulled the special rip cord that had like a -- It wasn't a parachute but it slowed him down. And it was able to create some control. So it gave more air resistance. Drag device.

Rob Dietz

I just want to go back to your point, Asher, that Jason wanted to lighten things up with bleeding out of the eye sockets.

Jason Bradford

Well, it's sports. I mean . . .

Asher Miller

This is what I was saying about virtue signaling before, right? Everything is a little bit more and more extreme.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, I think this Red Bull stuff is just nuts.

Rob Dietz

It is. I want to talk about a bit of mental extremism.

Jason Bradford

Okay.

Rob Dietz

So a few years back, you guys know the idea of Pi Day? On March 14th.

Asher Miller

March 14th, yes.

Rob Dietz

So 3.14, the number of Pi --

Jason Bradford

Rob Dietz

Yeah, whatever. So you're doing it right now.

Jason Bradford

That's about as far I go. I don't even know if I'm right.

Rob Dietz

So this friend of mine is a science teacher, and they were celebrating Pi Day and making pies. And then there was a contest who could memorize pie to the most digits, okay? And my wife prepared for this. She came in and did 100 digits of pi.

Jason Bradford

Are you serious?

Asher Miller

No way!

Rob Dietz

Jason Bradford

Incredible.

Rob Dietz

But, sorry Honey.

Jason Bradford

Not very extreme.

Rob Dietz

The extremism here is the record is held by Suresh Kumar Sharma who recited 70,030 digits.

Asher Miller

What?

Rob Dietz

In 17 hours and 14 minutes. So that's an average of one digit per second for 17 hours.

Asher Miller

Oh my God.

Jason Bradford

I don't understand. What else does he do with his life?

Rob Dietz

Yeah.

Jason Bradford

Oh my gosh, the brain.

Rob Dietz

I can't stop here with mental extremism. I gotta go back to your sports example, Jason. So okay, guys. Bear with me. There are a lot of people who are opposed to martial arts type sports like boxing and MMA, mixed martial arts. And I get that. They're very violent. I don't know. It's hard to watch sometimes.

Asher Miller

Sure.

Rob Dietz

But at least those guys, they can duck and weave and block and move.

Jason Bradford

They can tap out.

Rob Dietz

Try to stop the other guy. So there's a new sport called slap fighting.

Jason Bradford

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Rob Dietz

It is dumb. So these big guys stand at a table and when it's your turn to slap, you just rear back, and you come as hard as you can. Just slap the other guy across the face who has to stand motionless.

Jason Bradford

I mean, don't you want to go first? I mean, just knock them out and then you're done. It doesn't make -- You flip a coin, I'll go first. Okay, knock them out.

Rob Dietz

I mean, these guys are huge though. Their hands there look like they are roast beefs.

Asher Miller

They probably prepare and they don't get knocked out.

Jason Bradford

Because you're not supposed to hit the temple. I think you have to hit right on the cheek. So, yeah. You don't get knocked out. You just break your jaw, I imagine.

Asher Miller

Great.

Rob Dietz

Image the stupidity and I mean, like, that is extreme. Like, what are we doing? What's up? What sort of society are we?

Jason Bradford

I'd ban that.

Asher Miller

Give me Suresh over those guys any day. Let me bring it back to where we started. A little bit with the kind of QAnon, Trumpy stuff. Are you guys familiar with dear departed leader Donald Von Shitzenpants?

Jason Bradford

Yes, I'm familiar.

Asher Miller

You are?

Jason Bradford

Yes.

Asher Miller

So for our listeners who are not familiar, Michael Cohen, who used to be Trump's lawyer, there's a whole lawsuit that's related to Michael Cohen paying off somebody blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Any case, they hate each other. Michael Cohen has been going after Donald Trump and he decided to call him Von Schitzenpants.

Jason Bradford

Like on Tik Tok.

Asher Miller

Yeah. Which I have to say, I find very amusing. But the most amusing part --

Jason Bradford

Yeah, it gets better.

Asher Miller

Trump's devoted loyal followers decided they needed to show their dogged loyalty to him by now wearing adult diapers in public.

Jason Bradford

This is virtue signaling at its finest.

Rob Dietz

You can get specifically branded Kaiser Donald Von Shitzenpants diapers to wear to protests.

Asher Miller

It's so beautiful.

Jason Bradford

We should start that business right here.

Asher Miller

Let's go. Right now.

Asher Miller

Okay, it's time to hang out with our dearly departed Marvin Harris and look through the memorial lens of doom. Quick recall, Harris's theory of cultural materialism had infrastructure, which is the physical world around us. Structure, which is the rules and the way that we organize society, you know, politically. And then there's a superstructure, which is our belief system and our worldviews. And his particular emphasis on the role that infrastructure plays and kind of shaping those other two. Okay, so we're going to start with the infrastructure. What is the infrastructure that supports extremism?

Rob Dietz

It's big ramps and balloons and other things that Red Bull has for people to jump off of.

Asher Miller

Really huge. Evil Knievel's entire set.

Jason Bradford

Double shocking systems on the bikes. It's incredible.

Rob Dietz

Cannons that fire people. Yeah, that's it, right?

Asher Miller

So I think quickly, I would just say there's the communications infrastructure. We talked about that when we think about social media that's controlled by the corporate behemoths, you know. How they do the algorithms and all that. There's actually the human brain, too. We've talked before a little bit about like human biology as an infrastructure. And I think as it pertains, in this case, as well, because, you know, we have certain cognitive biases. We have a desire for simplicity. In our worldview, we like using heuristics to make complex decisions. Nuance and uncertainty involve high cognitive loads. There's also just like the stress. You know, certain hormones released in certain situations, or the dopamine you get, you know, from falling into conspiracy theories, or whatever. There's the societal complexity, right? There's the fact that the world becomes more and more incomprehensible, and how do we make sense of it. And so, that also does lead us to seek to have simplified narratives, which often can be a form of extremism.

Jason Bradford

I also would want to call back to our episode on individualism, Episode 89. Because this built environment, car centric, living with few people in a household, people have become more and more isolated and lonely. And this culture of individualism leads to a lack of belonging. So that is a risk factor, right, that we've talked about. And that might be harder than to spend hours going down a YouTube rabbit hole if you're hanging out with friends.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Or imagine the echo chamber inside your own skull when there's no other inputs? That's not great. Okay, well, that's the infrastructure. Let's look at the structure here. And what I want to focus on is really the media. So, the media is beholden to rules of profit maximization and increasing market share. And as a result, they know what sells. And of course, it's more and more extreme content, more and more negativity, you know, as opposed to getting people to engage with positive things, or even just neutral things. No, it's the negative and the extreme. And there's something that happened that kind of ramped this all up. You know, we've heaped a lot of criticism on Ronald Reagan and his administration in the 80s.

Asher Miller

I think, Jason, way back in Episode 2 wanted to punch Ronny in the face. Remember that?

Rob Dietz

Jason Bradford

So they would have been basically banned from the air, eventually? Someone would have sued, or whatever.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Or you would have at least had to have the other side represented so it's not just piling on.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. I also think that there's a structure that happens. It's not a formal structure, but it becomes a sort of, you know, groups have bonding rights or rituals. Hazing in frats and sports teams, gang tattoos, cults that require giving away all your possessions and avoiding ties to people outside of the cult. This creates that level of commitment that it's hard to rival. So these minority groups then end up wielding outsized power. Because the effort that per individual, as they put it, is very high relative to mainstream folks. The other thing that's structural is we have laws in the U.S. about protecting free speech, constitutional protections for free speech. So the U.S. government has no legal right to curtail most forms of expression, no matter how vile. Some people argue this is a weakness. Some argue it's a strength. So you other places have structures like Germany that forbid certain types of speech. But no one is sure how good this is in the long term because the forbidden becomes a lure, right? The forbidden fruit. And these things go unchallenged and sort of open mainstream dialogue, the views that are kind of maybe abhorrent.

Asher Miller

Well, it gets back to what we talked about very early on in this episode, which is like who gets assigned in the whole censorship thing.

Rob Dietz

I do think we need to appoint one of us to give the anti Crazy Town viewpoint in each of these episodes. I mean, our extremist view, we keep putting that out there. We need the fair and balanced other side.

Asher Miller

Well, I think we should just ask Shellenberger, you know, to join us for every one of our episodes.

Rob Dietz

Oh how much fun would that be? Okay, well, let's turn to the cultures and beliefs of extremism. And I think, maybe one of the most obvious ones to point out is religion and religious extremism. If you are relying on faith as opposed to evidence in order to know that your view is the right one, it was ordained by God, or whatever, it becomes kind of easier to follow through towards extreme behavior from that. I mean, you see that all over the world. It's a thing that's happened all through history. Maybe going back to what I was saying about the media, and maybe this is also tied to what you were describing, Jason with Zeynep Tufekci's piece about ramping up. This has really happened in what I would say extremist broadcasters. It's like you had a Rush Limbaugh who just sounds like a sane staid voice compared to an Alex Jones.

Asher Miller

Man, that is a low bar.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I know. But that's what I mean. It's like, you can't get as much attention until you start saying, "I will eat my neighbors." You know? Like what are we doing here? Yeah, and I think that, "Join my Facebook group on cannibalism. Join my group with Cookie Monster, nom nom nom." There's that one upmanship that I think, it's a cultural thing. And then we have an episode coming up, actually, our next one on othering, and that's one of the keys to extremism. You can take this point of view, you're either with me, or you're one of those others. You're an inhuman evil pile of shit, right? And thinking that way really helps you to take extremist views and do extremist things against those others. So I'm looking forward to that episode.

George Costanza

Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be.

Jerry Seinfeld

And every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

Asher Miller

Okay, so thinking about doing the opposite around extremism, I think it's worth starting at the individual. Thinking about ways that we as individuals can avoid or minimize the risk of falling into extremism, or extreme views ourselves. We had talked in Episode 78, which was the finale of our season on Phalse Prophets about Megan Phelps-Roper. Do you recall that?

Rob Dietz

Yeah, yeah. She's -- I was really impressed with where she's come.

Asher Miller

Yeah, so she was -- Listen to the whole episode, but she has escaped from her family's extremist hate group, which is the Westboro Baptist Church. And she shared a set of six questions that she came up with, that she uses to challenge her own beliefs and situations because she knows what it's like, right? We'll share a link to that in our show notes. I think it's worth really checking those out, and I've actually been trying to practice them a little bit myself, in situations.

Jason Bradford

Good. Well, I'm part of avoiding extremist positions, both in ourselves and others is seeing the other side. And to help with this, there's what are called Rapoport's rules that are meant to encourage productive critical discourse and avoid straw man arguments. And I liked the terms, you know, what is called steel man arguments. So the idea being that you should attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly and vividly and fairly that your target says, "Thanks. I'd wish I thought of putting it that way." So that's called that steel-manning. You should list any point of agreements, especially if they're not matters of general or widespread agreement. Like you know, the sky is blue, whatever. You should mention -- Hey, Willow. You should mention anything --That's a good stretch. You should mention anything you have learned from your target, and only then are you permitted to say it so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Rob Dietz

That's a toughie. I almost wanted to have a rebuttal to what you just said right there.

Jason Bradford

But you couldn't

Asher Miller

Now you are a stupid idiot, but let me tell you what I've learned from you.

Jason Bradford

Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Well, one of the things that's I think important in avoiding extremism is, this is gonna sound kind of simple, but it's taking care of yourself. In doing that, it also includes the ability to live with uncertainty and also embrace nuance. We talk about that a lot in this show. It's like, nothing is so black and white. It's almost always balance, nuance, you've got to kind of find your way. Another thing we talk about on the show a lot is Windows. We've talked about the Overton Window, what policies --

Asher Miller

I was wondering where you were going with that. We have a window sponsor.

Jason Bradford

We had a show on the history one about plate glass.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, we did. I remember that. Yeah. See, I told you we like windows on the show. So the window --

Asher Miller

That was the one on World s Fairs?

Rob Dietz

Yeah. So the window I want to talk about though, is the window of tolerance.

Jason Bradford

Oh!

Rob Dietz

Which is the idea each of us has kind of a boundary that we exist in. And when our window is big, we can handle more of the crap that's going on around us. When our window gets tighter, it's tougher to deal with. And I want to mention that we're, Post Carbon Institute, is offering a deep dive on emotional resilience. And we're trying to pull together kind of a curated bunch of resources to help people build their own emotional resilience. And some of the basics that we're talking about here to help yourself along the way, obvious one, minimize how much you're doom scrolling, and going down the rabbit holes that you brought up, Asher, on social media. Or even mainstream news. Oh my God. It get so depressing. Pay attention to the Holy Trinity, meaning eating well, getting good sleep and getting good exercise, especially out in nature if you can. And work on addressing your own fear of scarcity. Try to understand what things really are scarce, how much does it affect you, and try not to let it color your entire outlook on the world.

Asher Miller

Jason Bradford

College campuses are a place that happens too.

Asher Miller

So there's a lot of psychological manipulation that happens. And they see it as a public health problem. And so they work on both the prevention side, and on the recovery side. There's also a different approach called like, thought reform consultation, which doesn't aim to do kind of nonconsensual interventions. It's not about like, you know, taking somebody off the street who like let's say disappeared into a cult or something and intervening in that kind of a way. It's usually like a lot more effort. It requires a lot more work on the part of the family or the loved ones. Rather than having like a quote unquote, "professional" intervene, where you're like literally taking somebody and sticking them in some kind of care facility or something. So it's more work, but it's less aggressive. And it is kind of the slow process of inviting people in by asking questions, providing them with more information, doing in a more kind of ethical and patient way. And they found that it could lead to longer term better outcomes doing it that way.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. One of the things that stood out to me in thinking about how would you do this at the community scale is, it's kind of like a community standing up to bullies. So you know, we all can picture the high school bully and you know to take away their power you have to stand up to them and show them that they don't have that power over you. And people who can do that against extremist groups in their communities, I would say to get engaged and be willing to put yourself in these uncomfortable situations, especially if you have the privilege or enough sense of power yourself to be able to do that.

Asher Miller

So there's actions that you could take to stand up to organize efforts or groups that are outspoken, but it can also be much more subtle. Comments that are made by people that are in your life, you know, that repeat something that you sense is a non-nuanced view, it's not an empathetic view, it's a very black and white view on an issue. And there are techniques -- And I think we might get into some of this when we talk about othering that are really around empathetic listening. So it's not just challenging them. You know in some cases I think we have to stand up. Like sometimes even physically put ourselves in harm's way to protect people, especially if we're in a position of privilege to be able to do that. In other cases, and maybe just challenging people with some empathy, with some questions, you know, maybe even following some of those rules that you had talked about earlier, Jason.

Jason Bradford

Right. Someone will like sprout some kind of meme, and you're just like, I understand why -- I hear that. But, you know, it worries me that it's so absolute. And maybe just be empathetic about I see why you'd be upset.

Asher Miller

Yeah. Or even ask him a question of like, what do you think a person on the other side of this would say to that?

Jason Bradford

Right, right. That's good.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. I think there's also, if you're not in a position to do that, to stand up, maybe there are indirect ways that you can influence extremism, to take it down a few notches in your community. And this comes from maybe the infrastructure argument that you were bringing up earlier, Jason, and that's that a lot of extremism has flowed from people who are hurting, and there is a pretty well documented hollowing out of a lot of communities across the United States, right? Like we've discussed this in our episodes about how Main Street got lost, right? And opportunities and small family farms were lost. And so people lose their livelihoods, they get angry, they are more susceptible to extremism. So you could address that infrastructure and that quality of life within our communities with some of the other things we've proposed over time, like rebuilding local economies, making sure everybody has access to good, healthy, nutritious food, and that people are sheltered and helping out with mutual aid networks. All these kinds of things can at least in an indirect way influence how susceptible people are to extremism.

Asher Miller

And we talked about mutual aid networks in the episode we just did on escaping individualism. So there's some resources there for folks who want to look more into that.

Jason Bradford

Now, I think that, you know, we're thinking about the society here. There's a big challenge in responding to extremists or reducing the risk of extremism because again, it raises issues of censorship. Who gets to determine what's extreme? There becomes the violence and control from the state. So there are hints of how to do this, though. And maybe more about the rules of social media. Like, if you were to have laws that forced social media companies to give users control over the algorithms. Open up with these algorithms are. Control or govern my own fee without falling into censorship.

Rob Dietz

That would be kind of cool if you just had a little choice, right? And you're like, I don't want any fish bigger than 400 pounds, okay? We're setting a limit here, people.

Asher Miller

That's a very specific thing to tweak in the algorithm.

Rob Dietz

Think how many little checkboxes you would have to have across your social media feed to dial it in?

Asher Miller

I want videos of big trucks but not monster trucks.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, exactly. No bigger than whatever, a Ford 250.

Asher Miller

Well, you'll be happy to hear, Jason, there is a very recent lawsuit that was filed by the First Amendment, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, arguing that the company is required by law to allow users to control their algorithms, which I think could be a really profound shift.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. Only 20 steps of clicking to get there.

Rob Dietz

Ah. You gotta get that thing in place before everyone's joined an extremist group though. Because then you just get more and more extreme.

Asher Miller

Right. People are just like moving the toggle all the way to one edge.

Rob Dietz

Asher Miller

They're like, do not show me anything from NPR. That extremist media organization. Yeah, another thing I was thinking about is fostering diversity, right? So I do think that what we have a little bit with like politics here in the United States, for example, is we have this kind of binary choice situation, oftentimes, between two dominant political parties. And then the dynamics within those parties, the way they work, especially when you've got a primary system where you're trying to appeal to people that are part of that party, it leads people to sometimes be more extreme in their positions. Again, it's partly to virtue signal that they're part of like this group of people. And so we can see people being elected with more extremist views, or what we're being presented are those two options. And so there has been a push for things like rank choice voting, which is actually about trying to create sort of more diversity within the ecosystem of voting. But it may actually lead to a diminishing, maybe, of extremism if you're able -- So rank choice voting basically means that you basically prioritize the options that are in front of you. You say, "This candidate would be my first choice, but if they don't win the majority of the plurality, or whatever the that's needed, this is my second choice.

Jason Bradford

So if you're running, you're not just running to try to convince the most extreme members of your party, you're also realizing I have to have a crossover appeal so that I'm the second choice candidate for a lot of people, too. I can see how that works.

Rob Dietz

That's interesting. From the candidate s point of view maybe it tamps down extremism, but I was just thinking about it from the voters point of view. It would allow me to vote for the most extreme candidate as my first choice, sort of knowing okay, the odds are, whatever, Kermit the Frog is not going to get elected as president. So my second choice --

Jason Bradford

Miss Piggie.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I can say has a better shot. And so I could actually, I don't know, would it? Maybe it tamps down extremism among the candidates but not necessarily among us voters.

Asher Miller

I don't know. It's a good question. I would love to see, I guess. Because I feel like -- Well, I guess it could get worse at night than a than it is right now, but we've seen a trend towards further, they call it affective polarization, which basically means how much people who identify with one party hate people that are identified with the other party. And that has become, at least in the United States, and I think it's probably true in other countries as well, more and more extreme. Like there are more negative views over time. So let's have more candidates. Let's have more options for people, and maybe that would provide not only crossover appeal, necessarily, but just more opportunities to understand different views.

Rob Dietz

I like it when we're having these conversations and I get an epiphany which is, I'm totally voting for Kermit in the Green Party in the next election

Asher Miller

You should.

Asher Miller

Is Kermit the Green Party candidate?

Rob Dietz

It's not easy being green. Does anyone hate Kermit the Frog? Is there a Kermit haters group out there?

Asher Miller

Whoever was with Miss Piggy before probably does.

Jason Bradford

Right. Yeah, but I gotta ask. I gotta wonder if this episode was worth anything at all, because --

Asher Miller

Our listeners have been wondering the same thing.

Rob Dietz

I should just quit right now.

Jason Bradford

But look at, in some ways, I kind of think to myself, isn't extremism what we need right now? I mean, stay with me right now. You know, there's no politically acceptable responsible . . .

Asher Miller

The nonextremist position so far, the status quo is not really --

Jason Bradford

It doesn't do anything.

Asher Miller

Well, it's sending us over the edge.

Rob Dietz

Doesn't do anything for what?

Jason Bradford

Overshoot. I could barely get the word out of my mouth. Our overshoot situation is so bad. And there's no candidate, there's nobody at any party I can see that has anything to do with it. Doesn't touch it. So no one's even expressing anything about what I think is the most important issue happening right now. So are we doomed to face a horrible collapse and we can't even talk about it? And if we believe this, what should we be doing with our lives, right?

Rob Dietz

We should be podcasting about it, obviously.

Asher Miller

Jason Bradford

A doom. It's nothing.

Asher Miller

But here we are talking about the risks of extremism. And if the alternative is extremism, how's that going to turn out for us?

Jason Bradford

Yeah, I don't know. That's why I'm wondering. This makes me think about actually retreating in a sense and then saying to myself, I should be investing all my time into something that comes after this. This is not going to last. So remember that movie, "Captain Fantastic." Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Yeah with Viggo Mortensen and his family that they live out in the woods somewhere here in the Pacific Northwest.

Jason Bradford

Right, and their kids are incredible. The kids know how to like do everything that no kids know how to do.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, he teaches them how to hunt deer with a spear, and how to rock climb and how to forage.

Asher Miller

We've talked about not dropping out, Jason, right?

Jason Bradford

Well, this is what's so shocking. Every once in a while I'm like, but don't you want some people to drop out so like if it all goes to shit, there's maybe some humans that know what the hell to do.

Rob Dietz

Basically you just want to be Viggo Mortensen is what you're saying.

Asher Miller

Maybe I could give you a slight shift in thinking about this. So maybe our views and our beliefs can be considered by the mainstream, right now, as extremist, right? Because we're challenging the status quo of thinking. But our approach to shifting the conversation, our approach to offering alternatives doesn't have to be extreme in its orientation. So if we seek to have meaningful nuanced conversations with people, we're trying to engage people to live in that liminal space between. It keeps us maybe from taking these really rigid extremist views and entering into a space where we're like, what we're currently doing is not working, right? And we know that this is failing, so let's have a conversation. So maybe it's the approach is not extreme even if some people that are part of the status quo are going to see that the beliefs are extreme.

Jason Bradford

Right. And so I think that's true. If someone is at least kind and nuanced, and listens well, even if they have views that are radically different than mine, I'm much more likely to say, "Oh wow, this person seems reasonable so maybe I should pay attention."

Asher Miller

And maybe if we could be open, maybe we'll learn of ideas or approaches, or different ways of thinking about things that are actually helpful, right?

Rob Dietz

It is tough though. You brought up earlier how ecological economists are the fringe extreme, right?

Jason Bradford

Yeah.

Rob Dietz

But when you talk to other people that know that field or have considered overshoot, they're like, yeah, right on board. Or even if they were just mildly exposed, it's like, "Oh, I've been waiting for someone who could express these ideas."

Jason Bradford

It makes sense. You put it together.

Rob Dietz

And I feel like that can happen in sort of the academic circles or the lecture circuit kind of thing. But to happen in politics requires kind of a mainstreaming of the extreme, and that's the part that's really tough.

Jason Bradford

And do we have time? You know, that's what I think. Do we have time for that process to play out given him what we're facing?

Rob Dietz

Well, I don't know. But the thing to do if you're really struggling with this is go find some videos of dudes rolling their bikes off of cliffs with a triple Lindy backflip, and then they land in a squirrel suit and catch that 1,000 pound fish.

Jason Bradford

Let's put it all together.

Asher Miller

I think AI is working on a video just like right now.

Melody Travers Allison

That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.

Jason Bradford

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