Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
How did we get that so wrong?
Feeling overwhelmed by political noise and media echo chambers? Join me and my husband, David, on the Why Smart Women Podcast as we unravel the emotional and cognitive biases that cloud our judgment, especially around Trump's re-election and its ripple effect on Aussies like us. We candidly share how our media habits, from tuning into Stephen Colbert to Seth Meyers, boxed us into a distorted reality, making us question how we're influenced by confirmation and availability biases. It's time to face these biases head-on, step out of our comfort zones, and open our minds to a variety of perspectives.
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I think we have to tone down the language a little bit. You may, I won't be. Oh, okay, I won't be toning down my language.
Speaker 2:I'm furious about it. You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and, as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though. I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Well, hello smart women, and welcome back to this week's episode of the why Smart Women podcast.
Speaker 2:Last week, two very important things happened in our lives.
Speaker 2:One was that Trump was re-elected as President of the United States, which may seem like an odd thing to mention considering that we are in Australia and he's in America, but for us here in Australia, it is a very large, impactful and disturbing occurrence.
Speaker 2:And secondly, david and I sold our house and bought something else, but we're not going to talk about that this week because we thought, while the whole Trump disaster is still so fresh in our minds, we thought we'd discuss that and then next week we'll get back to how David and Annie sold their house and bought another one, all in the one day. Anyway, for anybody who's listening, who happens to be a Trump supporter, I'm sorry about what we're about to discuss, but there you have it. You don't have to listen, but if you did want to listen, it might challenge some of your deeply held beliefs about him. So, first of all, america made a decision to elect a felon over a prosecutor. Now, why they did this is complicated and deeply depressing, but there it is, and David and I are going to talk about it, aren't we, david?
Speaker 1:Yeah, look we are, and I guess I'm trying to sit in a place where I don't want to rummage around too much into the idea that it's a disaster.
Speaker 2:It is though.
Speaker 1:There's got to be a reframe, and I think the first thing that I wanted to say was I'm sorry, I made a terrible mistake.
Speaker 1:Oh, you really did, I did, I did, I made a public mistake. A public mistake, actually, before Harris was even pushed into the position of being the candidate. I was saying to my friends, when there was all the consternation about Joe Biden, I mean, surely it is time for a woman to be the President of the United States? And I was thinking, you know, this has got to be different from the disappointment of Hillary Clinton's campaign. I mean, we've had a Trump presidency so we kind of know a bit what he was like. We've had the whole Me Too thing happen. I thought there were so many factors that were pointing towards going forward progress, not going back, and I was absolutely wrong.
Speaker 2:In fact, David, after we'd seen Harris's launch at the Democratic Convention, David made a very big post that said I'm calling it and that was for a Harris win. And what we're going to do as we discuss all this is look into the cognitive biases that affect our thinking, Because what was the cognitive bias, David, that affected your thinking?
Speaker 1:Oh look, I think this probably comes along as optimism bias. It's confirmation bias, it's confirmation bias.
Speaker 2:Primarily it's confirmation bias. It's primarily it's confirmation bias and, of course, we know that confirmation bias is where you cherry pick the environment, cherry pick the data that is available to you and then come up with a conclusion that supports what you already think. But you know what else it is. It's also the availability bias, because we live in a bubble, we all live in a bubble. We all live in a bubble and what was coming through our television set right was pro-democratic rhetoric, because we tune in to Stephen Colbert and we listen to Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel and Brian Taylor-Cohen and Tim Miller from the Bulwark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And the Midas Touch Network.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I mean look, this is.
Speaker 2:And Politico, I listen to Politico.
Speaker 1:This is the danger of your YouTube algorithm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:It kind of worked out that this is the stuff that I wanted to look at and I looked at it Again. You're right. Yeah, availability and confirmation. Yeah, I can't fault the Harris campaign. I thought she came out of the blocks brilliantly. You know, I thought her first speech as prospective candidate was absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 2:The Democratic Convention was amazing. Agree, agree, agree, agree.
Speaker 1:They had Dick Cheney, harrison Ford and who was Luke Skywalker, mark Hamill, all endorsing Harris. You know, darth Vader.
Speaker 2:Well, liz Cheney, I mean Dick Cheney's daughter, she was also. I mean there were very high-profile Republicans supporting her.
Speaker 1:Raffenberger.
Speaker 2:Because they knew that Trump is a maniac.
Speaker 1:The chief of staff. I think we have to tone down the language.
Speaker 2:A little bit you may, I won't be Okay, I won't be toning down my language. I'm furious about it.
Speaker 1:I mean we can ask is he the best option for the people of the United States?
Speaker 2:Well, clearly not.
Speaker 1:It's clear to us, but it wasn't clear to the. I don't know the 80 million voters that voted for him.
Speaker 2:Of course, the other thing that you're looking at is the deep, deep level of disengagement with American voters. A lot of people did not either do a postal vote or get up out of bed on that Tuesday morning and go and cast their vote. Is that right? People didn't vote. It's not compulsory. I know it's not compulsory.
Speaker 1:Of course, people didn't vote.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not compulsory.
Speaker 1:I know it's not compulsory Of course they didn't vote I mean the Dems have been banging on about. You know, get your voting plan sorted out. And you know vote together. And there are all these you know videos of people in large crowds. You know marching down to the polling centres together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but again, that's just the availability bias is what we're looking at.
Speaker 1:Okay, so they didn't actually get out the vote.
Speaker 2:That's correct. I mean there is, and this comes down to the fact of whether or not compulsory voting is a good thing and like, of course it is. Of course it is because it means that people's inertia, you know, they just don't have the chance to be inert about it. They actually have to do something about it, which means they would have got up out of bed and voted for someone, but unfortunately, because of the non-compulsory voting, they just didn't. So you don't have the numbers voting that should vote. You've got people's brains influenced by statements, by simplistic, large, simple statements. And we know and David will talk about that now we know that these large emotional statements have more cut through because they're just simply easier to understand, and that's the sad truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 2020. Hindsight. I should say also that as soon as we discovered that the election was going to go to the Republican Party instead of the Democrats, I couldn't bear to watch any of the channels that I had been watching. So I have indeed been in a media and a social media blackout when it comes to the election.
Speaker 1:So the opinions that I'm about to share about what happened, why it happened and what went right for one party and what went wrong for the other are not informed by anybody else's post-mortem. So should I just launch into this and sort of make a few comments for discussion?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:I mean the first one was that the election wasn't decided on a rational basis. It was purely decided on emotion.
Speaker 2:And that is the way of the human brain and that is what myself and every other sceptic on the planet, that is, what we're trying to communicate to other people, is that most of our decisions, all are emotional and unless we are schooled in critical thinking, we are going to make decisions that arise out of the limbic system, part of the brain, and post-rationalize them. And when you're in front of a charismatic person and whether you like him or not, trump is charismatic- he's got his Hollywood star. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Clearly he has power through the media. He has charisma.
Speaker 2:Yeah, clearly. And what he does with that charisma is what David the three card trick? Yeah, exactly, so I he does with that charisma is what David?
Speaker 1:The three card trick? Yeah, exactly so. I did a TEDx talk earlier this year where I described something that I call artificial integrity, and that's when someone projects that they are intrinsically motivated to serve you or the electric, when in fact, their actions serve themselves. And the way that it works is that the person who uses this strategy relies on delivering three psychological actions. Now, psychological actions are different to physical actions. Physical actions you can see. Psychological actions you can't see. It's what people receive from a speech, from a word, from an image.
Speaker 2:And this idea of psychological actions harkens back to our careers as actors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, as actors, we learn that a character is the sum total of the actions that they play. Some of those actions are physical, some of them are psychological, but this is how human beings operate. In order to get what we want from other people, we play psychological actions.
Speaker 2:They're invisible, though, right, they're invisible.
Speaker 1:You can't see them, you can't.
Speaker 2:So play one on me now.
Speaker 1:Okay, welcome, Annie. It's great to see you.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you so much, david, for welcoming me onto my own podcast, exactly.
Speaker 1:What are you wearing?
Speaker 2:What do you mean? What am I wearing?
Speaker 1:What's with the Nana jeans?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, oh my god, so rude, I'm so given up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because it's a podcast Also.
Speaker 2:We were looking at furniture yesterday, just to digress, talking about giving up and because we are moving, which we'll get onto next week. But we are moving and of course I've had a recliner now For 20 years and I want to replicate that and my friends are like you cannot have a lounge that reclines Because it's like giving up a nana and I'm like I don't care, I am having that recliner lounge and I don't care.
Speaker 1:You're such a rebel and I'm going to wear nana jeans in the recliner lounge. Okay, okay. So what's Annie doing at the moment? She's asserting her rights. So what's she doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what is that action that I'm playing? I am doing this, you're defying us.
Speaker 1:I'm, I'm playing the action to defy.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel defied yeah, and what action were you playing when you said what's with the nanogenes?
Speaker 1:what's with the nanogenes?
Speaker 2:well, that would be to action to diminish no to tease to tease, action to tease you get it? Do you get that? Listeners so. And this is what goes wrong with communication generally is people think that it's the words that you say that make the difference.
Speaker 1:Now, it's partially the words, and we certainly can't diminish their importance, but it's also what is driving the words and the emotional hook in the words Yep, that's right, yep, that's right and look, if ever you have been excited by something or amused by something, or frightened by something, or destabilized by something or encouraged by something, that is because either the environment or a person in that environment has been playing psychological actions on you. Now, the three psychological actions that were core to the Trump campaign, number one was to destabilise. You know it probably synthesised into their eating the dogs that whole thing about how immigrants are bad. Other countries are emptying out their asylums. They're sending us the criminals. We have open borders. You know this is all about destabilizing people, worrying people, frightening people.
Speaker 2:And that is very much in the playbook, is it not? Of dictators? You know everybody. If you are a dictator, then what you need to do is to other somebody.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And so we in this, you know, we're very tribally brained, so we in this tribe, we are not homogenous, we are deeply varied, interesting moral people them over there. The others, they are of one mind, right, and that one mind is generally, you know, evil, so it's just the classic scapegoating Right, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and, and what's you know what's pernicious about it is? It doesn't have to be terribly sophisticated.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't sophisticated.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, the. You know the. The Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating the dogs. You know you should be worried about that. You should be destabilized by that. Are eating the dogs, you should be worried about that.
Speaker 2:You should be destabilized by that. And, interestingly enough, no matter how much the residents and the mayor and all the comedians the very high-profile comedians undermined that particular message, it got through. So the truth in this regard, there was absolutely no respect for the truth. But you see, what people like is when it's somebody else's fault, so it's somebody else's fault that we're economically stressed, we can't get a job, we're not getting paid enough, and so what Trump's campaign successfully did was blame the other. And it is so dangerous and so terrible and so evil.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it is right out of the. I mean, it's exactly what Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s blaming the Jews? Yeah, absolutely, and that's how he took power and then he executed a Well the Holocaust.
Speaker 2:We know we've just lost the argument because we've mentioned Hitler, but in this regard it is sort of true, it's sort of true, it mentioned Hitler, but in this regard, it is sort of true.
Speaker 1:It's sort of true, it's true. Okay, so that's the first psychological action that one plays with artificial integrity.
Speaker 2:Which is what Destabilize. Destabilize the world's a dangerous place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're coming to eat your grudel. They're coming to eat your grudel and everything. This country, it's a failed nation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a failed nation, Quick fix it. Yeah, the Harris campaign really invested in the optimism. We're going forward, we're going to be progressive, this is the kind of America that we want to be. And Trump didn't really bother with that. It was all about the company's going to hell. It's garbage, it's terrible. And then we move to the second psychological action, that is, I and I alone can fix this. I and I alone can protect you. And that's a reassuring message. And that's what the strongman politician does. He stabilizes people and then says I have the strength, the power to fix this. I am the only one. And you know.
Speaker 1:once again. We saw this being played out all throughout the year and, yes, my optimism bias, thinking oh look, really we can't be that silly. But no, unfortunately the theory is right, rationale gets kicked into the gutter and the emotions hold sway.
Speaker 2:Belief comes first, reason comes second. It holds sway Belief comes first, reason comes second. So people want to believe that he is one of them, that Trump's holding up his Bible, which has probably got misprints in it, is actually one of them, and of course, they're anti-elitism, right, his followers, because he's co-opted the blue-collar workers. They want to believe that he is one of them and he's just a New York billionaire. But somehow and maybe that was partially maybe the JD Vance story. So JD Vance, the vice, who's arguably as vile or viler than Trump? What? Well, I'm telling the truth.
Speaker 2:It's my podcast. I don't have to stand here and try and vanilla up my language. They're awful people, awful people and they are. And JD Vance with his hillbilly elegy. You know that anybody and this is the most infuriating thing this idea of the American dream that anybody who works hard enough can come up from the gutter and then be a hedge fund broker and be a millionaire, it's all attitude. And this idea that it's all attitude, as opposed to the fact that it's structural in the way that the society is organized, is pernicious and dangerous and wrong. Did you want to say the third thing? Well, okay, so the first thing is what is organized is pernicious and dangerous and wrong. Did you want to say?
Speaker 1:the third thing? Well, okay, so the first thing is what the first thing is to destabilize people. Our America is going to hell and there are bad people who want to come and they want to hurt you. The second action is to reassure you. But I, and I alone, can protect you. I'm made of the right stuff. I'm just like you. I'm not like them. I'm made of the right stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm just like you, you know I'm not like them.
Speaker 1:I'm not like them, I'm not like the Dems, I'm not like you know the bad people. I and I alone can protect you. Then the third action that you play is to coerce. The only way I can protect you is if you put me back in the White House. The only way I can protect you is if you vote for me, and it's only fair that you do that, because, well, I'm doing all of this for you. You know I took a bullet. You know two assassination attempts.
Speaker 2:I must confess, that day that he got shot I was like, oh, this is not going to go well, because he looked heroic.
Speaker 1:Right, this strategy of first destabilize, then reassure, then coerce. It works best in environments of high drama and that was my concern as I was watching the Colberts and the Seth Meyers and the Jimmy Kimmels getting stuck in and gleefully getting stuck in, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, just also, just because we've got some people that people listen to this podcast all over the world. So who are those people you're talking about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, these are the late night talk show hosts From America. Yeah, fundamentally John Stewart as well, and all the other people on the Daily Show. They are politically engaged comedians and, goodness gracious me, there was a lot of comedy available in looking at all the missteps and miscalculations that appeared to be coming out of the Trump campaign.
Speaker 2:And they will be. They've now got four more years of material. So, even though they'll be devastated that he's been elected, they've got four more years of I don't know trying to poke. Well, there's so much fodder in Trump right?
Speaker 1:Well, this is the thing Whenever you attack the person who is using artificial integrity, they just become stronger. Is that?
Speaker 2:why you want me to be nice about him. It's too late now. I don't have to be.
Speaker 1:I know I know, and you're not going to be part of the voting bloc next time anyway, no wish I could have, but. I will say something. I do think that there's a warning in this for Australia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, they're saying, now that the Libs are now going to, that Dutton's going to start looking at the Trump playbook, Yep, and that means everybody out there. That means that we will start to see rhetoric where somebody is to blame and it's probably going to be migrants and it's an absolute. It's disgraceful. Leave the migrants alone. They are the backbone of our country.
Speaker 1:I think, the most useful takeaway. I do think that our interest in what happened in that election is not misplaced. Yeah, I agree, because Australia follows the United States into battle, be it Korea, vietnam, iraq. We are tethered to them and you know, goodness knows, we suffer dreadfully economically because of the last trade war that Trump launched on China. I think we're right to feel that this does influence us in some way, but our capacity to influence it back is fairly limited. I think that the best thing that we can do is work to keep the temperature down in all of these contexts I mean, obviously, the American elections done and dusted, the Australian elections, you know, the next time it's happening here. I think that the best thing to get the very best outcome, an outcome that is sensible and that is wise and that is based on truth, will be one where there's less drama.
Speaker 2:I know you think that.
Speaker 1:Anyway, back to me. Back to me. Could you see that? The more people attacked Trump. What appears to have happened is that those who supported him just became more emboldened and more defensive of him, and they got up to vote. That was the first red flag that came out of the early voting, and that is that the Republicans were voting in larger numbers than the Democrats.
Speaker 2:No, he just said that that wasn't true.
Speaker 1:No, no, just said that that wasn't true. No, no, it was true.
Speaker 2:Was that true? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Look, it was definitely true. You know that was one of the.
Speaker 2:Also, what about this classic that all that business about they're going to steal the election? They're going to steal it? And then when he won, where did that particular idea go Gone? No one was talking about. And notice how Harris you know reasonable, you know democratic Harris just passed the baton on. There was no drama, it was a peaceful transfer of power because she's a reasonable human being. But of course, reasonable isn't everything. And if I can just quote my very good friend, lucinda Armore, whose opinion letter to the Sydney Morning Herald was the most respected, and just the points that she made I thought were so salient on how it happened, read it to us. I'm not going to, I'll just talk, okay. So online influencers and we know how absolutely one was. Online influences, you know, right wing, heavy hitting online influences, um, joe rogan, joe rogan, oh my god, seth rogan, the, not seth rogan oh, the other one yeah, um, you know they're very, very, very influential.
Speaker 2:Um, you know the the Elon Musk, elon Musk's of this world. So he's a billionaire, right? I noticed that Gina Reinhart came out saying what a wonderful resurgence it was, of Trump as well, anyway, so Elon Musk, another billionaire with nothing to lose, is looking for the next shiny toy backing Trump. I mean these and the lack of recognition in the voters, in the minds of the voters, is just astonishing, because I don't know that the MAGA voters, the Make America Great Again voters, were the main problem.
Speaker 2:I think, and even after they're eating the dogs and eating the cat statement, I think, latino voters, especially male Latino voters and I don't mean to talk to them like they're a monolith, I know that there's a variety of countries that they come from, but there is something in it and Lucinda talks about this that when you have second-generation immigrants they've often it's very easy to trigger them into this is our country. Now you'd better come in the right way, right? So I think, I think, we think that was part of it and I would totally agree with that we did it hard and therefore they have to do it hard, even though it was a lie.
Speaker 2:Um, you know this notion of the misogyny that ran through the entire campaign they would rather any day have a white man, even if he's in his late 70s and probably on the edge of dementing, than a black woman or any woman. So that deep, depressing sort of ream of misogyny that runs through the community and they think that there was quite a big black male vote towards Trump, and so you'd have to look at what was driving that thinking.
Speaker 1:I remember, after 2016 and Hillary Clinton lost, friends of ours from the United States said look, you need to understand how mistrusted the Clintons are by so many Americans. You know that there was a real animosity to the Clinton brand and that contributed to her loss. And you know, again back in my days of delusion, I thought that, unencumbered by that, oh, that she'd be fine, that she'd be fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's not Completely underestimated what I think is the level of misogyny. And look, there were these moments when Harris herself, when Michelle Obama, when she spoke on behalf of Harris, they sort of they kind of transformed a little bit into that straight-talking African-American woman matriarch. You know, like you go, girl, and you get yourself out. Well, you know, I just wonder whether, emotionally, that triggered some of the young black gentlemen and they went. Well, you know, don't talk to me like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could easily be, and I think the other thing is… you know, mum's had enough power, I'm going to take it back off her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also I just think… um, women especially, um, in the bible belt. I mean the fact that he was selling bibles, trump bibles, the fact that he has all those felonies against him, the fact that he's a convicted rapist, made absolutely no difference to the christian vote. I'm not saying no difference, but clearly the Bible Belt still backed him. That is an astonishing display of confirmation bias. I have decided I'm only going to listen to the things about him that collide with my own beliefs about Jesus and Christianity and I'm just going to absolutely discard and it didn't even hit the frame the reality of who he is. And I wonder if there is something in there about women, especially with the notion of headship. As we know, that's very, very prevalent in those evangelical communities that the male is the head of the family and is in charge of decision making. Don't you try that, david.
Speaker 2:That's probably not going to work with me what you making decisions and being the male head of the family, Did you split off then? Were you not listening?
Speaker 1:to me. No, I was listening, I was imagining what that might look like. Yeah, it wouldn't be good, would it? Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't go well the notion that a woman at the head of the table there needs to be a male. And when he came out with that story he decided you do want to be in charge?
Speaker 1:No, no, I was just going to say. So what you're saying is that the gender bias was expressed in a lot of women and a lot of Christian white women are you saying Well, I'm saying Were those the numbers. This time Did they.
Speaker 2:Well, and a lot of.
Speaker 1:Christian white women are you saying Well, I'm saying Were those the numbers this time? Did they Well? Yeah, I mean, I know that college-educated white women deserted Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we were hoping for. They thought that older women remember we were a bit hysterical and we thought that older women was going to get us over the line and it wasn't what happened. So, yeah, there's just all these elements, I think, that came into play. That just pretty much knocked our socks off, and now you know.
Speaker 2:The people that were lied to about the state of the economy and what he was going to do to fix it are now going to see the reality of what it's like goodness gracious I mean and that the you know one of the big things and as as um any listeners who um listen to this regularly know, I'm a paid up member of the australian skeptics and I'm plugged into skeptics. Um, and aceptic is simply someone who seeks the evidence. I'm plugged into sceptics from all over the world and now you've distracted me. What are you doing? David's now stopped and is now looking at beds. No, I'm not.
Speaker 1:You were.
Speaker 2:You were looking at beds because we need a new bed to move into our house. And now he's going to say something really intelligent.
Speaker 1:I've got it, I've got it, I've got it, I've got it, I've got it, I'm back. What I was going to do is to say that Skepticon 2024, which is the 40th Australian Skeptics National Convention yeah, and I'm speaking at it. It's actually going to be in a couple of weeks, November 23rd and 24th, Saturday and Sunday a fantastic weekend of brilliant presentations and things that will stretch your mind in extraordinary ways.
Speaker 2:Look up skepticonorgau and yes, Thank you for that plug, Dave. That's very, very very kind I'll be speaking Carl Krzyniewski. They'll be really interesting speakers.
Speaker 1:Really really good Robin.
Speaker 2:Williams, yep, really good speakers, including me. I'll be great. And what I'll be talking about on the Skepticon conference is the bias that we have to use alternate medicine because it comes under the banner of natural in our brains. So we are more likely to use a supplement or a vitamin or go to a naturopath or go to a homeopath because in our minds they come under the banner of natural, whereas a doctor comes under the banner of not natural. And then what happens is and I am about to get back to the election that then what happens is there's this sort of and this is especially online this, this story, this narrative, this very persuasive story of don't take pharmaceuticals, don't go to your doctor, go to a natural, go to somebody natural. Have some Himalayan salt, pink salt, that you'd have to actually take seven kilos of it to get the minerals out of, seven kilos of it to get the minerals out of. But anyway.
Speaker 2:And the thing is that natural medicine supplements, vitamins, tinctures are not tested. They do not go through any testing and there's no body that oversees them, so they can pretty much put anything in them, and often they they interact badly with medicines, so they're either ben. And often they interact badly with medicines, so they're either benign, or they interact badly, or they can actually do damage to you because of this notion of not being tested. So RFK is about to be appointed. What minister? What do they call?
Speaker 1:it, but is he?
Speaker 2:Well will he be.
Speaker 1:You describe who he is Well. I mean this is the thing about the Trump appointees is he gets to choose who heads up these particular departments. The department that takes care of health, so I guess it's the Food and Drug Administration.
Speaker 2:That's the FDA. It's not that.
Speaker 1:The Environmental Medical.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Anyway, he's going to be.
Speaker 1:He's going to be like the health minister. He's going to be. He's going to be like the health minister. He's going to be the health minister.
Speaker 2:RFK is likely to be the new health minister? Yeah, and he's a member of the Kennedy family, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he carries that sort of illustrious name, but he's a lunatic. So he's a rabid anti-vaxxer, which is going to be a disaster Because, as we know, which is going to be a disaster because, as we know, covid is still knocking people flat. And interesting data about COVID as well interesting and sort of awful is it kills more men than women, and not because of anything they do, it's just that in the gene it actually affects men more than women. So he's anti-vax, which is an absolute disaster. But also he's talking about taking fluoride out of the water because apparently it's damaging. Fluoride's a naturally occurring substance, so that's not right. I don't know how he's going to do that. Maybe with a big straw, maybe he's going to stand around with a straw and try and suck the fluoride out of the water. But it's very, very dangerous if the Trump administration starts to move towards untested, invalid conspiracy thinking measures that are followed by people like RFK, because, as we know, if we can't move forward with science, we are lost. And yeah, really, really dangerous.
Speaker 1:The great American experiment of democracy will rumble on and we will find out what happens.
Speaker 2:Oh, are you ending this? You don't get to end this. No, I'm not ending it. Well, it sounds like an end.
Speaker 1:Well, it was just a little bit of a segue. You've got that endy sound. Okay, so maybe this is the last thing that I was going to say.
Speaker 2:All right, go on.
Speaker 1:Why does it matter you?
Speaker 2:see, I knew you had that indie sound. You've taken over. You want headship, don't you Go?
Speaker 1:on. I know that you're going to have the last word, so I thought I'd just slip this in. I do think it's important to watch these dynamics because they are repeated at every level. We can see it happening in the United States and there is a concern that a similar campaign that minimises truth, maximises drama and divisive drama could lead to a poor result here in Australia. But it doesn't just happen at the level of politics. It happens in business that people use this artificial integrity strategy.
Speaker 2:I knew you'd do that.
Speaker 1:You know that. Go on, Isn't it worth discussing? Yeah, it is Okay. So you know, business leaders, business leaders who over-egg the dangers and also have an eye, and eye alone can protect us, kind of way. You know it's got to be my way or the highway, and so you must support me and that's at the heart of it.
Speaker 2:Pretty prevalent isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's at the heart of a lot of toxic cultures that tend to, you know, worship the boss, thereby reducing the collective intelligence that is, you know, that's in the organization. But this artificial integrity integrity, sorry. It also happens in personal relationships. You know men who say to women you know, you're a danger to yourself, I'm the only one who can look after you, and you have to tell me exactly where you are and what you are doing. It is also another manifestation of it, which brings me back to this idea of being sensitive to psychological action. We can't see it as clearly as we see physical action, but if we see psychological action where people are destabilizing, you know, fraudulently reassuring and then coercing support, then we've got a red flag and, unfortunately, the instinct to make a bit of drama about it is actually the worst thing that we can do If we observe it happening. Cut the drama, disarm the story, and I think that that's how we get better outcomes.
Speaker 2:Well, all that requires critical thinking 100%. Nobody is going to do anything while they're still under the thrall of the emotional part of their brains and unfortunately, critical thinking is not taught in our schools and even when I go about my day or give a talk about it, people actually say to me what is critical thinking? Because it's unfortunately not part of our lexicon. And man does it need to be.
Speaker 1:What can people do to keep in touch with the possibilities of critical thinking?
Speaker 2:Read my books. Oh, listen to my books. Oh, listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, there you go.
Speaker 2:Why snot women make bad decisions. Why snot women buy the lies? I wrote them because I get so disturbed by the fact that people can say anything and then people go. Yeah, that makes sense, you know, and you've got angry, disenfranchised people like American male voters who are having a rubbish time. Of course, of course they're going to go. Yeah, I want this guy because he's going to fix my life. Unfortunately, he's not, so, um, that that's us on the Trump thing, um, and a little bit on the me in the um recliner lounge and the Nana Lounge, and we will talk more about how we wrapped up our lives in our current abode in the next couple of weeks. Thank you very much, david, and it is really really good to hear David's thoughts on artificial integrity, because it was a very, very good TED Talk and it is very, very salient. We are very easily manipulated by these three card tricks, so thank you for talking about that.
Speaker 1:That's great and very pertinent. Now would you like me to bring you some Bovril before your nana nap?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, Bovril, bovril. Actually do you know what, though, listeners? I am currently wearing slippers. I'm quite tired because we've been packing up the house and we've been frantic.
Speaker 1:I'll make you a cup of tea.
Speaker 2:Thank, you, Thank you it would be great. And thank you to Lucinda Armour for her intelligent analysis and her thoughts on why Trump won the election. So thank you so much for Don't yawn you yawned.
Speaker 1:Who would have known that I yawned if you hadn't called it out then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, true Okay.
Speaker 1:Cut the drama. Annie Shut up David.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much for tuning in listeners. We hope that that was interesting and just remember that these flaws in our thinking don't just happen at um, at a on a large scale. The flaws in all our thinking is happening every moment of developing as a human being. Okay, lovely, enjoy the rest of your day wherever you are in the world. See you next week. Bye.
Speaker 1:It's going to be okay.
Speaker 2:Bye. Thanks, David, he had to have the last word, he's a male. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to why Smart Women with me, Annie McCubbin. I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day.
Speaker 2:Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home, please, please, respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women? See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, Annie McCubbin.
