Tag: propaganda

Episode 105 – Propaganda Tips 101: Types of Propaganda & Principles

The Episode:


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The Cash:

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The Story:

As you walk past billboards, TVs playing advertisements, use products with bright logos on display, listen to news radio and read corporate reports, if you’re not paying attention, it might be easily to overlook the fact that every person and every medium that is communicating to you, is attempting to change your beliefs, to alter your perception in subtle ways , that somehow work in their favour. Coca-Cola Amatil wants you to identify as a beach-ball-rolling Coca-Cola man, Pepsi wants you to believe that it passed the Pepsi challenge, and your own government wants you to identify as a patriotic citizen, and to believe that its enemies are raping, bestial monsters.

If everyone dropped their defences completely, letting this propaganda in without question, the world would end up a boring place, with people, instead of being sovereign, independent-thinking individuals, instead resembling pinballs moving around the board, bouncing off bumpers and repeatedly hitting pretty lights. People would adopt the words “Obey” and “Consume” as their personal mantras. Some parts of the world are getting dangerously close to this dystopia – but fortunately, we have the Internet to make people aware of the potential diversity of lifestyles, beliefs and opinions.

How can we recognise the more insidious forms of propaganda? What are the principles which advertisers and speech writers can use to bury their thoughts in our brains, making us believe that they are our own? And what are the costs if we are not vigilant enough? We explore these questions and more, in this mind-penetrating episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Eps:

Episode 103 – Flat Earth Mind Mapping: Imagine A World Deceived

The Links:

Robert B. Cialdini – Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Climategate leaked emails

Climategate 2.0

No, you’re not entitled to your opinion

We Are Change confronts David de Rothschild

Newt Gingrich’s response to infidelity allegations

Episode 65 – The Ghost of Music Industry Past

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

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If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

The Cash:

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.

The Story:

In 1992, Steve Albini wrote his famous piece, “The Problem with Music”, giving the graphic image of a bunch of hungry artists clambering through a trench full of excrement in order to vy for a recording contract with uncertain and questionable terms. He explained how the music industry is full of a special kind of corruption, that takes advantage of the very people which make the entire industry possible by providing them with a healthy line of credit, then selling them back all the services needed to create an album at an extremely inflated price. One figure that has been thrown around is that record companies, on average, have a 5% success rate – 5% of all records go gold or platinum, and 95% well, they don’t. In any other industry, that would send a company down shit creek pretty fast, but in the record industry, most of the costs are borne by the artist, making the record label a rather undesirable business partner.

Music is a powerful tool in manipulating minds. Might some unscrupulous A&Rs decide to change how people think, act, what they glorify? Perhaps by using overt themes in music, or perhaps even by subliminal messages. There might be a lot of pressure on record labels from certain nefarious and hidden interests.

Now of course, the music industry has been forced to change, under the pressure of Internet piracy and the decay of copyright laws as any meaningful deterrent. But that is a story for another time… For now, let’s explore how the music industry screwed over many artists as we journey through another exciting episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Manual: How to Have a Number 1 the Easy Way
EM-ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN OCTOBER 2008-MAGAZINE
Beat It (Single Version)
In Utero
The Paradise Paradox – Episode 52 – The Panopticon & Your Privacy: Juan Galt
The Paradise Paradox – Episode 50 – Ethereum & The Future: Juan Galt
The music industry is a parasite and copyright is dead – Steve Albini
The problem with music has been solved by the Internet – Steve Albini
Courtney Love’s speech about piracy 2000
RT – Autotune and lip-syncing
Manipulating the charts – Neil Strauss
Unethical practices in the record industry
The Problem with Music – Steve Albini
The secret meeting that changed rap music

Episode 11 – The Fate of the Union

Politics schmolotics. A few days ago, some guy called Barack Hussein Obama gave an hour-long speech, and a lot of people listened. We used this as an opportunity to examine the ways in which political leaders use language to influence the way you see the world.

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Here are some related links:
Charlie Hebdo politicians solidarity photos
Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley
Historian Tom Woods on Lincoln and the Fugitive Slave law
CIA influences media – Operation Mockingbird on Wikipedia
Mark Dice presents Anderson Cooper CIA agent case
Son of a Bush “Catapult the propaganda”

Episode 7 – Opting Out

The saga continues. In this episode we talk about ways people can escape from the systems that surround them, by ex-patriation, moving to a very different area of the country, the political and media/propaganda situation in Australia, the “Sydney Siege”, contradictions in Australian culture, the welcoming and fighting spirits of Mexico, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Japanese-American concentration camp program.

I said the words “predatory pricing” but what I really meant was “price gouging” -Kurt.

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Episode 1 – Welcome to Paradise

In this episode we introduce the podcast and talk about a range of topics such as ancient Egypt, channeling aliens from Andromeda, the US people’s perceptions of Mexico, the world economy, and propaganda.

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