Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Get Schooled by Dr. C in a Cape.

00:00:00.000 class is in session welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session guys today i'm incredibly lucky to have

00:00:10.200 dr c from tiktok from north carolina not just from tiktok he actually lives in a place

00:00:15.160 professor pop culture analysis tying it into the way the world works dr c tell us a little bit

00:00:22.300 about yourself and welcome to unlearn 16 yeah so i go by dr c on tiktok in in time and space i am

00:00:28.420 Dr. Cruz, Dr. Gabriel Cruz, but folks can call me Gabe or Gabriel or whatever else I've been

00:00:32.220 called worse either way. Uh, and I teach at the college level have been for almost a decade at

00:00:37.820 this point. Um, I, uh, teach mostly communication studies and mass communication, uh, sort of stuff.

00:00:44.480 So like mass media, my research, uh, focuses on, um, critical media and, uh, race, gender,

00:00:50.640 and class analysis of superhero narratives. Yeah. So, um, so that's, that's fun. My

00:00:58.000 secondary area of research is white nationalist propaganda, because I'm determined to not have

00:01:02.760 good days anymore is really what that boils down to. So I am a, I'm a Chicano for those that don't

00:01:09.320 know that's a Mexican American. In my case, I'm, you know, from the American South. And it's it's

00:01:15.320 so all those things intersect quite a bit more than I'm honestly comfortable with. But here we

00:01:20.480 are. So yeah, I'm excited to talk to you today about, you know, pop culture and what have you.

00:01:24.740 oh my god i'm so i don't even know where to start so i like we we have a we had a plan of what we

00:01:30.700 were going to start about but now now after i heard the gender race and superheroes now i need

00:01:36.660 to ask you one very important question why did everybody hate captain marvel so much 0.94

00:01:41.640 after she wore hair i mean was it the haircut it just pushed people right off of it so she had a

00:01:50.320 lovely like sarcasm to her it's it's it's so okay it first of all we got to recognize the the the

00:01:58.040 sort of production aspect of it in that in terms of like the mcu screwed carol danvers over that

00:02:03.400 was that's her origin story what left a little to be desired it well i mean just in terms of the

00:02:09.020 placement if nothing else that movie should have been 10 years prior right in terms of when they

00:02:12.800 were releasing these movies and we're getting to know these characters and we're developing

00:02:15.260 relationships because what happened was is they introduced it and then they had her show up in

00:02:19.000 end game right um and so people are like well it seems to rush that's uh that's on the production

00:02:23.940 company but i think a part of it's the usual run-of-the-mill misogyny right people are like

00:02:28.680 oh well you know this is a woman who is um doing all these things and she's a mary sue and anyone

00:02:33.060 who uses the term mary sue on the internet in my perspective doesn't usually know what that means

00:02:37.140 and so it's okay to not take them seriously what what what do people when people you say mary sue

00:02:42.180 what are they talking what are they insinuating so uh a when people say a mary sue what they're 1.00

00:02:47.960 usually talking about is well this is a woman who's just too good at everything as though people

00:02:51.780 like indiana jones don't exist as though james bond doesn't exist as though these male archetypes

00:02:56.460 that we love and adore who have been like literally maxed out in every capacity don't exist

00:03:02.360 right yeah um at this point whenever i talk about stuff on like tiktok or instagram or whatever

00:03:07.960 people if someone says well you know she's a mary sue you know what i don't care good we need 10

00:03:11.820 more like honestly do you think it's because in her movie okay so end game aside everybody gets

00:03:19.520 maybe upset with how that plays out in end game but forget that let's talk about her actual movie

00:03:25.620 do you think it's because there really isn't like it was you know everybody else has like a

00:03:33.040 an achilles heel everybody else has a point at which you they humanize them marvel does a

00:03:38.660 relatively good job i think for the most part of of humanizing even the gods where their point is

00:03:45.000 and do you think like carol danvers what what is hers like her very weird relationship with with

00:03:52.440 what's her face the mother figure in that what's her name ah the name escapes me but i know you're

00:03:58.680 talking about yeah like is that it do you think they didn't humanize her enough in that way like

00:04:05.680 what is her you know what it reminds me of um so this is a bit of attention but it circles back i 0.97

00:04:10.500 promise uh so a few years ago there was an instance where there were three women uh serving

00:04:15.160 in the u.s military who were uh they were hit by an ied and ambushed and two of the women were women

00:04:21.080 of color and they died uh on the spot very tragically and the one woman who survived was

00:04:26.480 a white american woman and her and some other soldiers were taken hostage um by the uh by the

00:04:31.700 terrorists, and then they were rescued. And the way that the media framed that narrative

00:04:35.780 was that this was a damsel in distress type trope. Bear in mind, this is a woman who has served in

00:04:42.480 the military, who is combat proficient, who like is a soldier for goodness sake, but the way that

00:04:48.260 it was framed was very much a damsel in distress, white knight, special forces rolling in and saving

00:04:53.400 her and saving the day. Also worth noting, usually left out any sort of significant mention of the

00:04:59.840 women of color who died that being said so then so you have that trope so then when you have a

00:05:05.400 woman in the air force who goes through all this sort of stuff who is in some ways a damsel in

00:05:09.760 distress who ends up rescuing herself and that bothers people because it deviates from a norm

00:05:14.620 so one of the one of the ways that i examine uh media and whatnot is through what's referred to

00:05:19.500 as narrative the narrative paradigm analysis which basically says stories are inherently

00:05:23.720 persuasive they propose moral logic to them that we either accept or we reject and uh of the

00:05:29.700 of the components to factor into it one of them is coherence whether or not the story makes sense

00:05:34.020 internally and then it's like if your friend tells you a lie and you're like that doesn't

00:05:37.860 sound right something's wrong here the coherence is off the other aspect is fidelity the degree to

00:05:42.420 which it resonates with our own lived experience the degree to which that like we can find some

00:05:46.420 sort of emotional connection here carol danvers is resonant for a lot of people but there are a lot

00:05:51.620 of other folks usually ill-adjusted men who say that well that doesn't make sense because it

00:05:57.540 it doesn't match their own experience right sure uh so i think that's a component of it as well

00:06:02.700 that was a her story was a deviation from these other stories that we often see propagated and so

00:06:08.560 it you know it was great for that reason but also faced some degree of backlash for it and

00:06:13.660 and people are going to find a reason to dislike um brie larson and carol danvers and

00:06:18.960 like her in real life i think she took a lot which is hilarious because a she's at a phenomenal i

00:06:26.340 don't know if you ever seen United States of Tara like she's a fantastic actress oh you should watch

00:06:30.980 that oh United States of Tara um it's about a woman with split personality and she goes off

00:06:35.900 her meds to figure it out okay she's like forget it and then her whole family just has to go on

00:06:40.280 the ride to figure out and she's constantly transitioning anyways um yeah I think because 1.00

00:06:46.440 then I started thinking about other female heroes right and other you know other archetypes like

00:06:51.700 that and i and i'm just curious why this one and i guess you're right the only reason is

00:06:57.020 she needs no rescuing she's not a minor character you look at like you know um i don't know some

00:07:04.600 other marvel what what well i guess it also it's also a matter of the character the people who were

00:07:09.220 fans of the character and what they brought to the table or who are familiar because carol

00:07:13.360 danvers is a character who i have not read a whole lot of but what i have read she's often

00:07:16.920 given a raw deal in the narratives there was a wild and convoluted story from like the 1970s i

00:07:22.680 want to say the 80s where she fell in love with an alien the alien took her back to her home to his

00:07:28.680 home planet uh she got pregnant she had a child and then she escaped and came back to our world

00:07:35.160 and the avengers are like facilitating all this along the way because they're like oh great carol

00:07:39.080 that's awesome you found someone to love this that and the other then you find out that actually what

00:07:43.720 happened was he mind controlled her uh so took away agency basically kidnapped her we have a

00:07:50.920 term for what happens when you engage in sexual contact without consent in order to in order to

00:07:56.120 give birth to himself she in the process which is all kinds of trauma like because he's trying to

00:08:02.120 reincarnate himself he's some like pseudo alien god she comes to her since she like snaps out of

00:08:08.280 it because of all the trauma you know breaks her out of the spell she escapes and she comes back

00:08:12.280 and her friends are like, what are you doing? And she's like, what are you doing? You, why did you

00:08:16.040 not help me? You should have been able to, I was being, you know, horribly abused all the way.

00:08:22.440 Yeah. And, and it was like, but there was when in the writing of it, there was no like,

00:08:28.200 oh, this is clearly a story about like sexual assault or survivorhood. No,

00:08:31.160 it was a weird story to tell that somehow still managed to put Carol in a bad light.

00:08:35.560 um so and then like you get into like civil war 2 uh where they have you know she's basically a

00:08:44.260 damn near fascist and you know a future police and all that kind of stuff it's a whole thing

00:08:47.740 um so there's a lot of like priming in the comic uh community for this character which is again 0.99

00:08:56.740 not all bad she does a lot of great stuff but they do weird things to her character it's wild

00:09:01.860 as hell didn't she used to be a dude wasn't captain marvel a guy before am i wrong i'm not a huge

00:09:08.100 person so uh in dc they had captain marvel who was created in the same team actually uh that

00:09:14.260 captain marvel i think came before carol danvers dc and marvel consistently like steal ideas from

00:09:19.380 each other amazing the fact that they grabbed captain marvel though makes my heart sick it's

00:09:25.220 so funny like how dare you and then captain marvel in dc became shazam he changed his name so i guess

00:09:31.300 he lost the fight uh so yeah and became the worst superhero um okay so when we're talking about all

00:09:41.380 of this stuff it's interesting because your your life's work and i mean i realize i teach history

00:09:45.700 and society and stuff but talking about the importance of that pop culture narrative i think

00:09:50.820 is is really fascinating because i think it really ties into what a lot of people think and what a

00:09:56.660 a lot of people feel and especially when it comes i'm gonna ask you a question right now we're gonna

00:10:01.500 put it on the table because you can't go any further who's your favorite superhero oh uh god

00:10:07.300 almighty um lantern i'm gonna have to end it all right now no no no green lanterns no um well i'll

00:10:14.840 say this john stewart is my green lantern all right okay all right so justice league john stewart

00:10:20.700 because he was always the adult in the room no matter what room he was in um how can kick rocks

00:10:25.300 uh but uh for me it's like my go-to is like um probably nightcrawler from the x-men like what

00:10:32.720 yeah i like it mine's so much more mundane you're not going to enjoy mine oh what's yours it's

00:10:38.540 it's superman okay and not because not because of what he can do not because of what he can do

00:10:45.060 but you just alluded to something that i find very interesting and it probably goes to my heart

00:10:48.720 right you were talking about how they wrote carol banvers as a bit of a fascist because she got to

00:10:54.180 because she had so much power she gets to be that that totalitarian kind of dictator whereas

00:11:01.900 watching superman movies and again i never read the comics but watching those movies i'm

00:11:07.080 christopher reeves sure in my um watching those movies he always did what was right

00:11:13.280 he always that power you know the play with the whole batman versus superman always infuriated me

00:11:20.000 because even he died he died he let himself get killed because he had to do what was right not

00:11:28.440 what he could do he could have wiped back off the planet and so that's the element that sort of

00:11:35.100 draws me and i think it's my internal idealism maybe so i mean i like i like that in that vein

00:11:42.420 um i i'm going to give you a recommendation for superman because i i have had an off and

00:11:47.780 on relationship in terms of caring about superman i grew up with my superman was the um dean kane

00:11:53.180 version of superman uh well i'm sorry it's not aged well listen as a as a young as a young

00:12:02.060 as a young uh biracial child uh seeing a superman who was like olive skinned and black haired i was

00:12:09.620 like oh this is cool now as an adult that the actor is like you know art is like uh tweeting

00:12:15.140 at fema and criticizing them for putting out psas in spanish that's who he is yeah yeah um anyway

00:12:21.000 but but the um there's a graphic novel called kingdom come it's four issues it's a standalone

00:12:27.800 you don't need to read anything else to understand it and it starts off with superman retiring

00:12:33.460 because he's become jaded with the state of fighting crime wow i like it already the new

00:12:40.020 heroes at the very start are more vicious they're more violent they are less like they as someone

00:12:46.760 puts it in the comic they uh the newer generation cared about the fame they didn't care about the

00:12:51.980 morals and uh so there's a little bit of a cogity old you know get off my front lawn kids kind of

00:12:57.900 thing but what i love about it is it's a story about superman refinding hope um and i it's it's

00:13:04.100 awesome like i said it's only four issues it's self-contained you don't have to read anything

00:13:07.020 us to understand it and it's it made me care about superman again i want to read it right now

00:13:12.600 because i feel like you've just described the political system in a nutshell i feel like

00:13:18.600 that's and that's why i love pop culture and that's why i love especially you know sci-fi

00:13:24.980 and that kind of stuff i i very much love that element because i think that it's that it can be

00:13:31.020 such an incredible reflection and i don't think drives society i think there's two people that

00:13:36.900 think that the movies and television and whatever drive us like it's supposed to inspire us i don't

00:13:42.260 i don't think it does i think because minds only can work so well and they're trying to make money

00:13:47.380 and if they're trying to make money they need to reflect what is now because if they're reflecting

00:13:50.980 what's now people are going to relate to it right you know shows that were great and would have been

00:13:57.380 blockbusters had they been released five years later sure right sure because they were ahead of

00:14:02.820 their time and that's you know anyways um because right now i feel like politicians

00:14:09.540 some in your country well let's be honest in your country some in my country want to be famous and

00:14:16.020 the way they're going to be famous is being more extreme being more violent with their words being

00:14:22.100 more extreme in their thought and their decision making and we're left with destruction we're

00:14:28.580 across the board so in that vein um uh because this i'm drawing a couple connections here the

00:14:37.040 first is a lot of the politicians in my country are old as hell um and that is not to say that

00:14:42.340 they can't have anything relevant to say but it does mean that they are products of the environment

00:14:45.680 in which they were raised and going back to the idea of uh pop media and its relationship with

00:14:49.440 society from the 1940s until the 1960s mid-60s or thereabouts uh the dominant idea within mass

00:14:55.980 media studies, which had just started in the 40s. Actually, mass media comes out of the

00:15:00.540 attempts of developing effective propaganda in World War Two. So that's a weird spot for

00:15:04.900 us. It was perfect. Yeah, it was how can we how can we create a more compliant populace

00:15:13.020 basically. But it was the hypodermic needle model of mass media, which was basically you

00:15:20.100 inject it into society, it comes back out one to one, right? They found out after about

00:15:25.440 20 some odd years that is not how it works what mass media does do and then like from the 60s

00:15:30.840 into like the late 80s they were like well maybe it doesn't do anything and how do we know and then

00:15:35.180 in the last maybe 40 years or so um the prevailing idea has been and supported by the evidence that

00:15:40.800 it media doesn't tell you how to think about things it will be influential but it is not

00:15:46.500 determinate it will be it will cultivate perceptions that's like um so cultivation theory says that if

00:15:52.660 you consume because it was invented in the 80s if you consume more than four hours of tv a day

00:15:56.800 which is constant uh which constitutes uh heavy viewership right child right um i had a student

00:16:05.060 who was like i had eight hours a day he's like my guy that's a full-time job um also you you need

00:16:09.700 to turn in your work now now that i know uh but now yes um but the the cultivation approach says

00:16:18.460 that well it will do things like it'll tell us what to think about right media will create the

00:16:23.720 social boundaries of our reality and it will tell us what to think about it will suggest that we

00:16:28.740 think about it in certain ways and to the extent that we accept that or reject that as a very

00:16:32.180 personal thing for a variety of very complicated cognitive reasons but basically um it creates the

00:16:38.400 soil in which we consume this or we grow and consume this media um and that's why when i talk

00:16:43.620 about pop culture with my students and it's like um oh geez oh geez who was it was dean kane again

00:16:49.660 going back to superman who was saying it was like a year or two ago it was hold on it was like a

00:16:59.160 we're gonna quote dean kane i don't know if anyone's ever done that go right ahead

00:17:02.800 i'm gonna paraphrase he said something asinine on fox news along the lines of like um you know

00:17:08.780 you can't even have superman say truth justice in the american way anymore and what i loved about

00:17:12.900 that was the response to it from uh the guy who was writing superman at the time whose name escapes

00:17:18.260 me at the moment but he also wrote venom uh and he said uh you asked that i had him say that

00:17:24.660 literally in last week's edition like it and he has a screenshot of like superman flying away

00:17:29.220 saying truth justice in the american way um so when people talk about like the politicization

00:17:35.060 of this kind of stuff or what effect it's having um 19 mid-1970s i was like 1976 maybe 1979

00:17:42.740 uh captain america had a uh multi uh a multi-issue arc where that culminated with richard nixon

00:17:50.660 committing suicide in the oval office because he was a criminal uh and that was his way of not

00:17:55.860 getting he was like part of some conspiracy to take over the world and and it literally like

00:18:00.980 there's a bang off camera and then like that's it in the oval office right and you're describing

00:18:08.500 comics now i want to read i've never read a comic really and at all and i don't know if you know

00:18:14.020 this as a history teacher i'm sure you would there was not a rash of like violent political extreme

00:18:19.300 uh extremist activity against politicians in the 1970s to that extent um it might have radically

00:18:27.380 maybe should have been they're a little slow yeah but yeah so like does it maybe put some ideas in

00:18:33.940 in some kids heads about maybe we should question our government absolutely but does it determine

00:18:38.560 where they're going to fall on the political spectrum no i think it's fascinating like i

00:18:42.920 think what you've described and i mean if i simplify it too much please correct me but if

00:18:48.500 you're going to go look at a painting right that painting was painted in a context in a time it's

00:18:53.860 painted with a specific it's it's been allowed to be hung in whatever museum you're on so there's

00:18:58.520 all sorts of gatekeeping that have gone on there your interpretation of that painting isn't so much

00:19:05.020 going to be just derived from what they did it's probably going to be more derived from what you

00:19:09.900 brought into that room as you're looking at it what your history is what your childhood what what

00:19:15.480 you know about art if anything right like somebody like me looking at the Mona Lisa walks away

00:19:21.080 thinking you know maybe a handful of things and I think and I think that's super super important

00:19:26.780 And why do you think it's so hard? Because this really is hard to the right. I don't know some people on the left. Well, maybe a lot of people on the left as well. It's so hard for people to admit one simple, I think one simple truth, which is there is no objectivity. None. I don't believe that objectivity exists.

00:19:46.980 We all bring subjective bias into every single room we ever walk into.

00:19:53.800 And it's us, it's up to us to sort of put them on the table, right?

00:19:58.500 It's to put them on the table and say, here's where I've come from.

00:20:01.220 Here's my background.

00:20:02.420 Here's probably why I'm going to look at that painting and see butterflies and not snakes.

00:20:08.560 But why do you think people have such a hard time admitting that outside of they think

00:20:15.060 that they're the only ones that admit it so that their opinions aren't valid anymore so there there

00:20:19.960 are three things that come to mind with this the first is um humans have every person has a

00:20:26.020 relationship with uncertainty and subjectivity is uncertainty right sure objectivity the illusion

00:20:32.020 of objectivity uh because i would suggest it does exist but not nearly as often as we say it does

00:20:36.120 um it it the idea is that it offers some degree of right or wrong answer which goes back to the

00:20:41.720 second point, which is like a product of the enlightenment. The enlightenment did a lot of

00:20:45.340 great things. It also did, it also created a lot of problems. One of the problems it created was

00:20:49.960 this idea of what we call in critical, in critical scholarship, knowledge from nowhere. Knowledge

00:20:55.100 from nowhere basically says that if I have all the facts, it doesn't matter what the actual case

00:20:59.580 is, I can figure it out without having any personal experience with it, right? So it would, to put it

00:21:04.300 in, to tap into some of the things going on in our own world right now, as a man, I can have all the

00:21:10.080 factual information about women and then come to the best decision about women without having been

00:21:14.500 a woman or a trans person or non-binary person or something along those lines, right? And that's

00:21:18.840 wrong because it completely removes the fact that there is subjective experience that is valid,

00:21:25.560 that is necessary and important data that can't be transferred necessarily on paper to somebody

00:21:31.980 else, right? And so there's part of that as well. The enlightenment sort of primed us to think in

00:21:36.420 that way the other aspect of it is and i would imagine i don't know how it is in canada with

00:21:40.460 the school system there but i know here uh there's always that push towards stem right

00:21:45.260 and don't be wrong it's technology yeah yeah and don't be wrong i love science big fan of science

00:21:52.400 uh i like medicine vaccines are great um yay einstein yes but stem isn't everything uh

00:22:01.180 And the hard sciences, natural sciences rely on objectivity, but not even objectivity in a way that most people understand, because the scientists will tell you the reason we have metrics, the reason we have methods of quantifying and calculating data is because as humans, we inherently bring a subjective perspective to everything.

00:22:22.000 we need an external form of measurement. Objectivity doesn't mean that something is

00:22:27.300 universally true. It means that anybody using the same form of measurement can come to the same

00:22:32.580 answers. Therefore, we can affirm that it exists in time and space. I enjoy doing this thing with

00:22:38.640 my students where they think I've lost my mind. And that is, so since the pandemic, we have these

00:22:43.440 Clorox wipes in all of our desks, in all of our classrooms, right? Ours are coming a big old

00:22:49.260 bucket you get like costco or something big white bucket and so i'll walk over to it and and teach

00:22:53.740 my research methods class to my students i say okay what color is this bucket and they're looking

00:22:57.660 at me like has dr cruz gone blind or has he had a stroke what's happening here why is he asking this 0.98

00:23:01.900 stupid question and so they'll say oh well it's you know white i said yeah how do you know that 0.99

00:23:09.500 and well because it's white no no no how do you know that and we go and usually sometimes 1.00

00:23:14.060 we'll take a few minutes and they'll eventually say someone will say because i can see it's white

00:23:17.420 exactly you can see it's white but here's the problem you have three cones in your eyes right

00:23:24.220 the the things that shape your the color you perceive however one in 81 in 100 people will

00:23:29.900 have a fourth one which means that objectivity and the ability to measure the external is dependent

00:23:36.140 on the measurements we use which are by the way products of the human mind and we have to keep

00:23:40.380 that you know as a part of this um well that's what keeps science revelatory and humble so that

00:23:45.580 that we can understand and improve as we keep going but if you are a person who has that fourth

00:23:49.740 cone in your eye if we go outside and i ask you what color is the is the sky um the correct answer

00:23:55.180 is carolina blue because the good lord above loves unc chapel hill uh i'm kidding i don't care about

00:24:01.900 sports but that joke usually plays well um but if you have a fourth cone in your eye if you are a

00:24:08.220 tetrachromad um then you'll see blue with a slight tinge of pink right and that's every bit as valid

00:24:15.780 as everything else uh you know and it's funny i do a similar thing with my students when i'm

00:24:21.220 talking about this although i never knew about the fourth cone so i did i i've done i've done a

00:24:25.040 like a you know a wish version of your lesson because i'll say well look at the color blue on

00:24:30.480 my wall and and we will talk just in generality about what color blue is that now leave the

00:24:36.120 classroom and go find a blue that matches it and bring it back. In 19 out of 10, people bring

00:24:40.940 completely different blues back to the room. I say, what if we all see blue differently? I'm

00:24:46.840 going to expect that we see and we, for whatever reason, my eyesight's not as good, whatever your

00:24:53.520 reason is, we might see shades of difference. And even in something as obvious as the sky is blue,

00:24:59.700 it's not right so i get stuck in this subjectivity and our our educational system does the exact same

00:25:07.060 thing right we we are very much math science those are the real things that's what's going to make

00:25:12.640 you money if you do everything else you're going to die porn alone um and what's so i mean there's

00:25:19.020 clear things that are damaging about that but the interesting part is how we're losing the

00:25:25.720 humanities and if we lose the humanities I don't think the sciences matter anymore because now

00:25:33.420 we're not connecting them the way they should be connected I believe it's so funny everybody's

00:25:38.240 talking about changing the education system how do we change it how to and everybody's very much

00:25:42.340 focused on getting the kids really good at math and science or whatever and I'm like to hell with

00:25:48.660 that can we stop trying to just make the kids get a 97 and start trying to make them more holistic

00:25:55.700 people can we stop dropping music stop drop like in canada in ontario you you never after grade nine

00:26:04.300 you never have to take phys ed you never have to take drama you never have to take music you never

00:26:11.160 have to take art you never have to take anything that we we as a whole collective consistently

00:26:20.380 connect with think about what we really connect with in our life music television art all of

00:26:26.740 these things and we tell kids they're not really that important for you to continue to continuously

00:26:31.480 take and the reason we tell them that is well if you're not really good at art you should stop

00:26:36.080 taking it and i'm like i'm sorry is education broken because if we're not good at something

00:26:41.440 shouldn't we take it more yeah right and there's the disconnect right absolutely that's my for

00:26:48.920 today but well and and to your point i feel like there's something here that a lot of people who

00:26:53.160 are not in education and some who are may not understand about the distinction between your

00:26:57.080 job and my job um as a teacher your job is to teach students i'm very speaking very fundamentally here

00:27:03.960 uh is to teach students to learn how to learn right like you the the the methods the pedagogical

00:27:11.080 approaches the methods to instruction stuff that teachers use in public systems uh or at

00:27:16.920 and not necessarily, I mean, in like K-12 systems are usually centered around how to help students

00:27:22.300 learn how to process information. That is not my job. My job is to provide them information that

00:27:28.260 they are then supposed to already know how to process. And things like the arts are hugely

00:27:33.020 important to helping students learn how to process information. And if they don't have that, then they

00:27:37.960 get to my class and they can't string together, you know, a reasonable argument because the idea

00:27:43.240 how to actually process that was not done up until that point. And then I have to do that.

00:27:48.200 And that's not to say that, you know, like teachers aren't doing their jobs or anything.

00:27:50.760 What I mean to say is the systems are not facilitating that effort in teachers,

00:27:56.840 in K-12 education, and it is having down the line negative effects.

00:28:02.680 Yeah. I had a chemistry teacher that would always say, and then I promise to my listeners,

00:28:07.400 we're going to get back to superman um i would always say joanna stop doing it for the 90 just

00:28:14.600 start trying to understand it he was my chemistry teacher and and i to this day i wish i could go

00:28:21.000 back because in grade 12 chemistry all i cared about was getting the right mark so i could get

00:28:26.760 into university so i could graduate from university so it was all just a stepping stone yeah and

00:28:31.640 understanding what the hell a mole is never even occurred to me to understand it fundamentally but

00:28:38.360 funnily enough to understand a mole fundamentally or a lot of science concepts fundamentally

00:28:44.680 you got to be a little bit of an artist you have to be in a little bit of an abstract mindset in a

00:28:50.520 in a theoretical mindset not in a practical if i do a b and c i will get the right answer

00:28:57.640 and again people forget that all those things are connected in our head right yeah math is

00:29:04.200 philosophy math is math is argumentation and if then statements that are supposed to lead us to

00:29:09.920 an outcome and that it is intrinsically tied to philosophy but you were saying back to the comics

00:29:15.060 back to the comics i'm so sorry but maybe we'll do a second podcast on fixing the educational

00:29:22.100 system. So going back to how it's a reflection, I think really, you know, significantly how it's

00:29:29.120 a reflection of and why that's important to look at. You know, we were we started this when you

00:29:35.080 and I started speaking. Originally, we were talking about civil war and we were talking about

00:29:38.860 that particular element of the Avengers and how everybody chose sides and how I can very cleanly

00:29:46.480 stand probably in my head on both sides at any given moment so maybe let's just frame the thought

00:29:54.340 process here for a second because i think holy crap it has direct application to our political

00:30:00.540 system right now so if i can frame it in a in a simplistic way you have captain america's team

00:30:06.380 who says the government doesn't do what's just that they're doing in their self-interest and if

00:30:13.100 we let the government control us, then all we're going to be is an arm of the UN or the arm of the

00:30:20.440 American government or the arm of whoever has the most money at the time. And they're going to tell

00:30:25.300 us what we can and can't do. Therefore, our purpose is non-existent. And then you have Captain

00:30:32.020 Iron Man side who says, listen, but this is a, we have unlimited, we are a nuclear weapon as a

00:30:41.600 person we have unlimited power and unless we have a check on that power which is hysterical for

00:30:46.740 iron man to say it is but i think that i think that's his character talking unless we have a

00:30:51.640 check on that power i'll be the population as at large because like the argument in in civil war

00:30:59.360 was never the u.s that was going to run them it was the un and and unless there's a check on that

00:31:06.460 then the people don't feel comfortable. And as Vision said, because he is the man or whatever he

00:31:12.380 is, that kind of power breeds fear. And with fear comes contest, right? Comes people wanting to go

00:31:22.640 up against that. So if we don't give up some of our power, which is by the way, why I eventually

00:31:27.680 side with Iron Man, because I think Vision's always standing on the right side. If we don't

00:31:32.680 side with that right it's just going to perpetrate or create more power now you're you're a captain

00:31:39.020 america guy i am i am i'm team cap all day every day but in fairness i have to acknowledge my

00:31:43.720 weakness of uh suspending my critical thinking in order to follow steve rogers like it it is 0.98

00:31:48.240 a largely emotional thing but but but to your point so he does have america's ass i can't i 0.97

00:31:56.920 will never Chris Evans has done wonders for the beardless community um in his role as Steve Rogers 0.98

00:32:03.640 uh so no but so uh actually you know what I appreciate about about uh Captain America is that

00:32:10.400 you know what's funny I loved him the most when he had his beard that's when I became a little

00:32:15.080 more Captain America oh no no absolutely like I you know that's what I love oh no I see his dark

00:32:21.200 side now he's grown up yeah that's it yeah not that guy anymore i'm sorry i get it trauma is

00:32:26.680 attractive i understand um the no but really and truly uh so when it comes to this argument um i

00:32:35.740 first of all we have to we we do have to acknowledge the conceit that the binary is a bit

00:32:39.980 artificial here right that's not usually how these things are but they get they got to tell

00:32:43.040 the story but there's also a huge distinction in the way that plays out in the movie versus how it

00:32:47.180 does in the comics um the comics the comics were written in 2006 and the basic premise of like uh

00:32:54.200 of um Tony Stark being pro-registration on one side and Captain America being anti-registration

00:33:00.240 on the other is true to form and there are of course divisions uh what's interesting is in the

00:33:06.260 movie in particular they talk about like well there's the issue of like what do the actual

00:33:10.160 Accords mean what are the actual regulations all that kind of stuff and Steve has this line you

00:33:15.060 know what happens when the government tells us who the bad guys are uh and that's a very fair

00:33:20.580 concern um it's also worth noting that this happens after winter soldier uh occurs so like

00:33:26.980 shield has been horribly compromised steve is having some doubts about things at the same time

00:33:31.780 to tony's point like yeah there's there's a body count that accompanies all these missions like

00:33:37.060 innocent civilians die uh and also there's the question of to what extent do they have the right

00:33:43.140 to apprehend these people or to take their lives in those situations. But what I appreciate

00:33:51.900 about Steve is that he tries to be on the right side, whether or not he actually is.

00:33:55.660 In the comics, it's very different. In the comics, it was written in 2006, which I'm-

00:34:02.180 Hot minute after 2001. Yeah.

00:34:05.700 Well, and following along with the, I think it was the renewal of the Patriot Act was

00:34:09.660 coincide with this and by the way you know canada has an act called the anti-terrorism act that is

00:34:16.620 way worse way more intrusive than the patriot act most people don't know that most people say oh the

00:34:22.500 united states they are the ones that are intruding in the government whatever canada doesn't even

00:34:26.940 know what we have until you're caught up in it yes i just side note no no uh i i heard i've heard

00:34:33.000 somewhere that canada is america with a nicer hat and there are there are days i don't disagree

00:34:37.560 So, but in that story, what's interesting about that is, so it was a six or seven part

00:34:45.160 main story arc, because the way they do it is there's like the main core issues, and

00:34:48.360 then there's a bunch of tie-ins.

00:34:49.740 But in the last issue, and this was intentional, they started to place ads for the American

00:34:57.380 military.

00:34:58.680 Of course they did.

00:34:59.400 Right?

00:35:00.120 Issues like one through five or one through six, none.

00:35:03.080 The last issue, when you have Captain America surrender.

00:35:06.120 and the reason he surrenders because he doesn't surrender in the uh in the films right he continues

00:35:11.660 the fight he goes on the run that kind of thing right isn't there that moment where he almost

00:35:16.240 does remember where he almost signs something he thinks about it yeah yeah he you think there's a

00:35:21.500 moment he's gonna buy in and then something happens yeah the comics he gives in because

00:35:26.160 while the two sides are fighting and the two sides it's worth noting in the comics are broken

00:35:30.480 down among like you have tony stark and people like him that is to say a lot of like rich

00:35:35.100 scientists white dudes those kind of folks uh your um hank pym uh reed richards all them kind

00:35:42.620 of guys uh and then on the other side you have cap and the quote-unquote street level but also

00:35:47.740 a lot of minority characters you have like luke cage hercules daredevil um folks like that uh and

00:35:53.980 actually dr strange refuses to get involved because as he puts it whatever side he chooses

00:35:57.720 will be the one that wins and he can't bear that responsibility which is the one time he's acted

00:36:01.020 with some common sense in the comics um and he's yet to show that kind of thinking in the movies

00:36:06.780 um but it's true at the end steve gives up because he sees that he they're causing so much collateral

00:36:14.000 damage that this fight is hurting civilians uh so much so that even the civilians are attacking the

00:36:19.900 heroes trying to get them to stop and he's like you know what this is too much we can't do this

00:36:23.200 anymore like there's got to be a better way to figure this out and then he's executed in like

00:36:27.660 two issues later um uh by a uh by a sniper i mean he gets better but you know they kill

00:36:32.520 captain america for a brief bit but that is a very different message than from what we see

00:36:37.460 in the movies and what's wild about the movies is when he delivers that speech at peggy carter's

00:36:43.960 funeral and he says um you know you have to at some point just no he doesn't do it sharon does

00:36:49.080 it uh you know you plant your feet and you say no you move right you have to stand up where you

00:36:52.740 believe in but the problem is as other people have pointed out that's not really tied to a

00:36:56.660 certain ethos or morality. And that's a dangerous perspective in the wrong minds. For example,

00:37:03.740 Kyle Rittenhouse, right? Who thought he was doing the right thing when he took the life of two

00:37:12.220 people or in an even worse situation in Buffalo, New York recently, right? With the guy who thought

00:37:18.500 that I'm defending my people. I've skimmed his manifesto. He legitimately thinks he's on the

00:37:23.500 right side uh or at least i won't suppose what he actually thought but the narrative he puts forth

00:37:28.480 is one of defending people right and like that that perspective without being grounded in anything

00:37:35.480 um more so in the text of the movie is one that's easily manipulatable if that makes sense right

00:37:41.400 yeah yeah no for sure because there's this i mean we're obviously talking about superheroes here

00:37:46.280 because there's an underlying belief structure that somehow you know very spider-man with great

00:37:52.100 power comes great responsibility and most of them carry it beautifully you know what i mean

00:37:56.100 most of them make decisions at the end of the day and most of them end up on the right

00:38:01.860 relatively speaking moral and ethical side and if they don't then they're a villain anyways they're

00:38:07.240 not considered a superhero anymore um and i think that that's incredibly you know significant which

00:38:13.740 is why because i'm always thinking about how this applies which is why i do stand somehow with

00:38:20.060 registration i do stand somehow with more heads that are in the room makes for a smarter conclusion

00:38:26.520 yes i period and and by more heads i don't mean more people who look and think like me

00:38:31.940 you know i i would love you and i have i mean i we could talk for hours i have no doubt and i will

00:38:38.580 ask you to come back many many a time but you and i probably i think fundamentally kind of

00:38:44.260 saddle up with a similar perspective on a lot of issues but i i am starved and i think the people

00:38:51.620 of the united states and canada are starved for seriously divergent opinions to be able to sit

00:39:00.100 in a room and have that conversation because what's happening right now and i use the word

00:39:05.120 civil war without any ill like without any big revolutionary intent this is what we're in

00:39:10.620 we are we are you stand there with them and whether they are pro-life or they are anti-vax

00:39:18.220 or they are pro-gun and big border walls or you stand with them who are and i excuse my

00:39:24.860 vernacular here but are about killing babies and about everybody gets the same thing or the

00:39:30.460 communists because that's the divergence right that's the that's where you need to stand now

00:39:36.180 that serves no one yeah and nothing and right and to the point of the comics it does create a lot of

00:39:43.560 collateral damage among people who are just trying to make their lives so it's so a little bit about

00:39:48.720 um myself so i was raised so i'm catholic uh and i was raised by you know parents who are catholic

00:39:55.020 and generally speaking i'd say right of center but they also raised me on like pbs and npr and

00:40:01.000 public radio and broadcasting and stuff. They affirmed the value of science. And I am a first

00:40:07.440 generation college student, but they were very much like, get your education, all this kind of

00:40:10.180 stuff. Because it was always, and it was never in my house, it was never enough to know the answer.

00:40:15.200 You had to know why you thought the answer was right. Which I will tell you now is extremely

00:40:21.640 frustrating to have a parent who does it with the Socratic method. It's frustrating as hell. You

00:40:25.960 just want a right answer sometimes, but there's a lot of benefit to it. That being said, I imagine

00:40:30.580 my surprise when I, you know, come of political age in my, you know, late teens, early 20s,

00:40:35.780 and I figure out, oh, that's not how, that's not how all conservatives are.

00:40:41.540 Or, or Democrats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that, that's not how people think. Um, so

00:40:47.780 that being said, when we come back to this idea of like the, the, what is the value of a story

00:40:53.200 like this in our, in our time, as you say, we have this, like you have to be there or you have to be

00:40:57.660 here uh kind of binary and binary thinking is almost always wrong um always at the very least

00:41:04.780 it's very reductive right yeah um because i would like to have known like uh or we think about even

00:41:12.060 like wakanda and their role in all this because they do play a factor into it uh in in the civil

00:41:16.300 war but yeah it's hopefully gets us beyond this point of like it's one or the other because at

00:41:23.260 the end of civil ward um cap is on the run bucky's on the run and tony stark is devastated right

00:41:31.580 there's not a whole lot positive that's happening yeah bucky doesn't get murdered by by iron man

00:41:37.020 that's a good thing but it's also deeply traumatizing um for a lot of people and

00:41:41.740 hopefully that's a successful takeaway which as opposed to in the comics post-civil war what

00:41:45.740 ends up happening is like um think of all the stereotypes about anti-war protesters and that's

00:41:50.220 kind of how they write the the people who are still holding out cap surrenders but a lot of his

00:41:54.820 team does not and they they succumb to infighting uh they become counterproductive uh their missions

00:42:01.120 uh fail and often get people hurt that kind of thing so it's very much a pushing the y'all need

00:42:07.140 a rally uh we need to come together as they say but on our terms the pro registration side um and

00:42:13.300 also in that version tony stark ends up being the head of uh shield um and so he's in charge of all

00:42:20.400 this stuff so there was one thing that i really wish they would have put into the mcu which they

00:42:25.900 didn't have because of you know the property stuff and who gets to be in what movies but

00:42:29.820 um in the comics there's a scene because they're running the raft uh in the in the comics like

00:42:36.060 they have in the movie where they're locking up superheroes and that kind of thing and they catch

00:42:39.980 daredevil uh now we would later on find out that this was actually not matt murdock from uh as

00:42:45.340 daredevil was actually one of his friends helping him as a disguise but basically the line it still

00:42:49.180 reads pretty well when um they capture daredevil take him to the raft and he like spits out a coin

00:42:55.480 a silver coin at um tony sarkin says uh there's your piece of silver uh you can collect the other

00:43:01.800 29 when judas when you're ready and i would love to have seen that on on screen but all right yeah

00:43:08.960 why wouldn't they have they could have put that in anybody any character's mouth that would have

00:43:12.400 been perfect yeah judas the escape anyway um so yeah yeah yeah there's a lot there to be sure

00:43:19.480 um how do you feel i mean i'm gonna skip i'm gonna skip out of this a little bit i mean

00:43:25.260 religion be growing up catholic and growing up in a predominantly catholic family my family was

00:43:30.580 not religious i literally people say all the time joanna you're religious i say no they're like are

00:43:35.280 are you spiritual? I say, no. And they get very upset by that. And I said, I don't care. I go,

00:43:41.920 I don't mean I don't care about your faith. I don't care about your beliefs. I hope you care

00:43:47.060 about them. But the notion for me about caring about what comes next just doesn't, I think I'm

00:43:53.100 a very, maybe I'm a very close of the box. This is what it is right now. I'm going to do my job

00:43:57.720 here right now. And that's about all I got. But what I find interesting is somebody that grows

00:44:03.220 up predominantly in a household that is you know built on that and that fate um and then immediately

00:44:10.860 my mind goes to dogma have you seen you've seen dogma yeah right yeah it's probably i hate the

00:44:16.580 fact that harvey weinstein has anything to do with it and kevin williams will never will never have

00:44:21.420 release of it again which again i i it's all horrible because it's such a good movie um but

00:44:27.700 that there's an idea in that movie um and i think the line's delivered harshly but it's delivered

00:44:34.000 by kevin rock who says you know belief is scary belief causes if you have if you have a belief

00:44:41.160 in something you're going to stand on it you're going to die for it but if isn't really you know

00:44:46.840 it shouldn't really be that objective you should always just have a good idea and i thought there's

00:44:52.320 never been something more simple and i feel like your parents believe in whatever it is they believe

00:44:58.420 but they're like let's just make sure we have a good idea first right let's stand and entrench

00:45:03.660 ourselves in that so it's it's interesting with them too because um like my dad is a mexican

00:45:09.000 immigrant and there is a there is a genre of thinking as there are in any culture you could

00:45:14.040 think about like different dominant perspectives and in his culture the one that he subscribes to

00:45:18.460 is like very fatalist the world is going to be how it is i'm just here to like raise a family the

00:45:24.060 powerful the elite they're going to do what they're going to do we can't trust them we can't change

00:45:27.740 them you know go to work and keep your head down kind of thing it is it is the it is the mentality

00:45:32.620 that keeps the world spinning in in some significant ways um whereas my mom picks fights

00:45:38.460 fights with everybody uh fights with cops uh recent several times i've got a few podcast i 0.99

00:45:44.220 I got a few episodes or videos on my tick tock about her picking fights with

00:45:48.160 cops. So, because usually because she suspects or knows that an instance of 0.90

00:45:53.180 racial bias is happening and she ain't about it.

00:45:56.520 My mom likes individual police officers, but you gotta be comfortable with the

00:46:00.740 cops. Anyway, but that being said, like, so dogma dog was interesting for me.

00:46:05.120 Like I, I love listening to Kevin Smith speak.

00:46:08.100 I love when he like does interviews and stuff.

00:46:10.220 I don't really care for his movies mostly because the humor just,

00:46:13.840 it like some stuff hits some stuff doesn't and so is whatever um it's very very like jay and

00:46:19.780 silent bob i mean he has a very strong jay and silent bob soul yeah which is fun and that's what

00:46:25.180 all the guys like a lot of the young guys like to watch but you're right it doesn't necessarily

00:46:29.880 but what i liked about dogma watching it as a younger person because i was probably in my teens

00:46:34.420 or whatever when i saw it and um i didn't really care for it at the time other than like some of

00:46:39.480 the fun, you know, being the crude humor of a teenager, but it really did help me understand

00:46:45.160 this thing of like, okay, it's fine to believe this stuff, but like, it's weird. Like if I'm

00:46:51.760 of the mind that if you have a faith practice, if you have a religious perspective and you don't

00:46:55.580 acknowledge that at least parts of it are weird, then you're taking it a little too seriously.

00:47:01.080 The stuff that I believe in that I believe with conviction is wild as hell.

00:47:05.820 and and for that note like it and it would be um i enjoy really talking to people who have

00:47:14.360 a different beliefs for me to help uh because i find that there's a lot of commonality and

00:47:19.380 understanding there um one of my two of my favorite tiktokers are uh nov the poet and uh

00:47:24.380 rabbi uh comics who is rabbi rabbi net herzog um but yeah we we talk about you know faith and

00:47:30.780 stuff from time to time uh and they you know they but they underscore this thing of like yeah like

00:47:36.280 it's it's good to believe in a thing but belief isn't certainty and that's that's what scares

00:47:41.180 the hell out of me is certainty and in part you can't you can only be in education for so long

00:47:47.980 and before you start to think there's just so much i don't know right yeah right well that's that's

00:47:53.700 the thing how very socratic right the more i the more i learn the more i realize i know nothing at

00:47:58.800 all and it's so so true yeah and i think that why can't we all admit that why can't we all you know

00:48:06.660 we have these politicians walking around thinking they know everything or the or at least presenting

00:48:12.640 presenting it as though there is certainty in it and wouldn't i love a politician to sit up there

00:48:19.460 and say, this is my best guess, guys. Could you imagine watching a debate or watching

00:48:27.700 anything, any sort of speech, a debate, it might not work so well because they're all 1.00

00:48:32.620 absolute morons. It's circus. But watching a speech and somebody going, listen, 1.00

00:48:38.920 Canadian healthcare, it's expensive as hell. We have to charge a lot of taxes to make it run.

00:48:44.760 am i willing to give it up no am i going to restructure it this way boom boom boom hope for

00:48:54.980 a better result yes i hope for that person they could wear a blue shirt an orange shirt i don't 0.95

00:49:01.380 give a crap i'd vote for that person seven days a week and twice on sunday but we have been stuck 0.79

00:49:06.960 in this trope and maybe it just makes people feel better where you know somebody says just 0.99

00:49:14.220 like superheroes right don't worry ma'am i got you um you know and and i know i've got all the

00:49:21.800 answers just just back me just believe in me just support me and i'll make sure your kids go to

00:49:28.420 college you have food on the table and you have a house a roof over your head i got you and i guess

00:49:34.720 our belief which comes down very philosophical which is one of my favorite unfortunate

00:49:40.080 philosophers, which is Hobbes, which says, I'll give it all up for security, right? I'll give it

00:49:47.320 all up for, not even for security, for the pretense, the possibility, the promise of security.

00:49:57.160 And I think that's where we are. It is. And it's also why people, I think that's part of why

00:50:04.280 superheroes are so big right now. It's because they offer a degree of security. So the way that

00:50:10.040 like to think of superheroes in the in the mainstream sense and this doesn't always apply

00:50:13.720 but i think it it often does uh a superhero is a character in the present that is a vision of

00:50:19.400 our future that is also struggling against our past um they all those things are intersecting

00:50:24.200 and a lot of our anxieties are present in them when you think about like steve rogers for example

00:50:27.880 a man out of time how many of us have how many of us have felt dislodged or unmoored from our society

00:50:33.560 where we feel like the the world that i left behind as a child is no longer real and it is

00:50:39.880 no longer here and in truth it never really existed right but that's also a hard thing to

00:50:43.920 grapple with as well um and at the same time thinking about like tony stark who offers that

00:50:49.600 certainty we think about like age of ultron um ultron was created to be certainty for security

00:50:56.000 right in response to a traumatic invasion from an outside force and we see where that certainty goes

00:51:02.540 So they are dealing very much with our anxieties, but, but to the point of politicians, um, when

00:51:08.300 Sanders, when Bernie Sanders was running for president the first time, um, so yeah, that

00:51:13.560 was, that was 2016, right?

00:51:15.560 Uh, the whole book together at some point, um, when he was running for president, I,

00:51:22.980 you know, some things I liked about him, some things I didn't, that kind of stuff.

00:51:25.860 But one thing that really stood out to me was he went to, to Liberty university.

00:51:29.360 And for anyone who doesn't know, Bernie Sanders is a Jewish man who also is a, you know, open atheist. And he went to Liberty University. And if you don't know what Liberty University is, it is a religious Christian college created by Jerry Falwell, who was effectively a Protestant Pope, like he had an outsized influence.

00:51:50.620 he is largely responsible for the creation of the moral majority and the conservative christian right

00:51:55.820 as a political force in the united states going back to the 1980s um and he founded that college

00:52:00.700 and his children run it that kind of thing and bernie sanders went there and spoke and just that

00:52:06.700 willingness to do it alone was wild to me and and certainly commanding of respect and then they

00:52:10.860 started talking about abortion and people said the guy he's talking to says well you know we

00:52:15.020 you know what do you say to people who are pro-life because you are very much pro-choice he

00:52:18.300 he goes, and I'm paraphrasing, he says, I understand and respect that there are people

00:52:23.800 who believe in, you know, life from conception, this, that, and the other, and that needs to

00:52:28.040 be protected. He says, I obviously, he says, believe in the idea of a woman's right to

00:52:32.200 choose. That being said, I think there's common ground we can find about trying to reduce 1.00

00:52:38.340 the need for abortions, which will help protect life. And again, I'm paraphrasing, but that

00:52:43.000 willingness to engage in quote-unquote what we would call the enemy's territory right uh from

00:52:49.240 his perspective or from uh folks in less perspective and then engage in the actual

00:52:53.240 conversation was so like i was like i'll cast the ballot right now i'm down i'd for whatever

00:52:58.680 other my hang-ups are about him he's willing to engage um well that's right and and it's funny

00:53:04.600 because but i think it's that very decision to engage where he loses both sides of the aisle

00:53:11.960 yes yes that's what he won't it's insane to me the very reason that he would be incredible is

00:53:20.200 the very reason he won't get elected because people want certainty yes people want the shield

00:53:28.660 people don't want the conversation they want the end belief so they can get behind it so they can

00:53:34.740 wrap themselves in it tuck themselves in at night go to bed knowing exactly what's going to happen

00:53:39.180 tomorrow you would think that covid would have physically shook us out of that reality

00:53:45.580 but instead what it's done is it's had people re-up you know what i mean forget that's why i

00:53:52.880 think people to be honest and i sort of coming to this point a lot of anti-vaxxers i think

00:53:59.400 really do want to embed themselves there because if they're anti-vax is if it's bullcrap to begin

00:54:06.900 with, if it's control. And you know what? I can still predict the world. I still know what's

00:54:12.140 going to happen next. I still have full control over my own body because we're so terrified to

00:54:17.000 admit the truth. Which is, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. You don't know. We're

00:54:24.140 all just rolling the dice, getting into our car, hoping we get to work on, you know, safe and sound

00:54:28.900 going from there. And that's a terrifying, terrifying place. So in the absence of rational

00:54:34.820 thought we would rather live in well this is what i believe and it makes me and and so it goes a

00:54:41.520 little bit back to i'm going to circle back to what i said earlier about the narrative paradigm

00:54:44.580 and analysis so the there's a lot of different uh narrative uh critiques and methods of using

00:54:50.240 narrative analysis but the uh person who created the narrative paradigm or popularized it is a

00:54:55.340 Walter Fisher he did it in the 1980s and his response was to uh it was a response to the

00:55:00.880 logic world paradigm, which basically says humans see the world as a logical puzzle that we can

00:55:05.880 figure out. And if we can decode it, then we get the right answer. Right. And he's like, that's not

00:55:10.460 how humans operate. We do. Sometimes we have that perspective to some problems, but often we use

00:55:16.940 good stories to create good reasons. Right. And so he goes, that's where he comes up with the idea

00:55:22.620 of like narrative rationality, which is coherence. Like I said before, plus fidelity, which a note

00:55:28.160 fidelity i know you i see you have a star wars shirt on and i'm sure you're aware of like all

00:55:32.080 the critiques of um of uh you know ray skywalker and you know how could she fly a a spaceship in

00:55:38.640 the first movie and all that kind of stuff and what i what when i see damn it when i saw that

00:55:44.320 in the movies and i heard people were like talking about it like oh how could she do that i said well

00:55:48.080 i thought well my grandmother was uh driving a stick shift pickup truck at 12 years old on

00:55:53.040 back country roads scans to me it's fine and that's a part of my narrative fidelity with that

00:55:59.200 movie so but going back to this idea of like the pandemic and it also goes into like the conspiracy

00:56:04.720 theories about politicians as well um it his argument that you know we use good stories what

00:56:10.320 constitutes a good story and that is entirely subjective right because coherence the logic of

00:56:14.320 a story is subject to the standards we have in our own head um it is so much more comforting

00:56:20.240 because a narrative and we see this also with people like uh your your countryman uh jordan

00:56:25.600 peterson um hey hey don't be swearing at me on my own podcast if i if i have to admit citizenship

00:56:32.960 with ted cruz all right it's i don't think he's gonna move i'm hoping he's gonna ted cruz gonna

00:56:44.320 offer him citizenship and he could just go down there oh god so but these i listen to him constantly

00:56:51.200 because i feel as though unless i listen to him i can't critique him and i and i need to understand

00:56:56.700 him to understand why he has five million people listening to him on youtube um but i'm telling you

00:57:02.200 it eats it eats away at my soul i'm go ahead continue but what these people do uh is they

00:57:07.780 offer a narrative that is a delivered truth that people can believe in that offers a lot of security

00:57:13.640 And it's the same thing with the pandemic. If you have a narrative you can believe in, if you believe that it came from a lab and that it's only engineered to do certain things and there's ways to game around the system, which is like a weird warped application of the logic world paradigm, but within a story structure, then you can disguise or you can, what's the word I'm looking for, hide the fact that this is a rampant pandemic that kills indiscriminately, which is a horrifying place to be.

00:57:42.120 Horrifying, yes.

00:57:43.640 No control. No, nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:57:49.280 Dr. C I know that you have stuff to do. Listen,

00:57:52.100 I could talk to you for the next 10 hours, but I know you have stuff to do.

00:57:55.280 We've been on for an hour already. Um, I,

00:57:58.260 that was probably my most favorite podcast ever done. Uh,

00:58:02.800 I would love for you to come back.

00:58:04.540 I would love for us to have as many times as you want to come back.

00:58:08.260 You call me and say, Joe, I'm bored on a Sunday. I will make time.

00:58:12.600 um i really appreciate it uh i'm gonna put all your stuff in the bio dr c on tiktok he is

00:58:19.460 amazing please go check him out um but only if you promise i'm only gonna go if you promise to

00:58:26.440 come back absolutely absolutely okay why not i do a podcast as well and i would love to have you on

00:58:32.560 um yeah so i do a podcast called office hours with dr c it's my um my colleague barry thornburg

00:58:38.500 who is a media production professor um and we have people on we talk about stuff and uh

00:58:43.300 and what have you so yeah no that would be a lot of fun this was this was

00:58:47.620 because you just a little bit of backstory you reached out to me on a video that i had almost

00:58:51.780 stopped checking comments on because it was it was the it was a ben shapiro one that i made

00:58:58.100 uh and at least you got hero yeah no that's true we do um ben and joe and those are yours yeah so

00:59:08.100 but so but that video like went it may be my most uh viral video and at some point he was like i

00:59:13.860 can't i can't do this anymore and then i saw your comments like oh well this is nice

00:59:20.260 it's a nice comment on this yeah yeah so um so thank you for that but yeah uh anyone who wants

00:59:25.540 to know any more about the stuff that i do so i do tick tock at doctor dot underscore c i do

00:59:30.260 i'm on uh twitter a little bit and instagram as well at uh gacruz underscore phd and i do a

00:59:36.660 podcast called office hours with dr c and what have you so yeah all of that just so if everybody's

00:59:43.380 heard that they're trying to pause and write it down i'm going to put all of that in the

00:59:46.500 description underneath here on on youtube so and on spotify or wherever it is you listen to it

00:59:52.340 dr c thank you so much thank you so much and i can't wait to talk again to be honest thank you

00:59:57.380 very much and listeners thanks for hanging out with us we'll see you next tuesday 7 a.m same bat

01:00:04.180 time. Same bad station. Have a good day, guys. Dismissed.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - May 24, 2022

The One Where I Get Schooled by Dr. C in a Cape.

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