WBD420 Audio Transcription

Censorship & Cancel Culture with Katherine Brodsky

Interview date: Saturday 6th November

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Katherine Brodsky. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I talk to freelance writer Katherine Brodsky. We discuss free speech and censorship, the politicisation of news and the problems with banning misinformation.

“What I think you’re seeing is a really rather small group of people but a very dominant and loud group of people dominating the narratives and shutting everyone else down because people are kind of scared.”

— Katherine Brodsky

Interview Transcription

Katherine Brodsky: Well, the question was, "If you want to figure out how somebody thinks, you ask somebody, 'Why do you think people voted for Trump?'", because you're going to get very specific answers from different kinds of people about it.

Peter McCormack: So, if you were asking me, would you be asking me why I voted for Trump, or asking me why I think --

Katherine Brodsky: No, why do you think other people voted for Trump?

Peter McCormack: Well, I think there's a range of reasons.  The easy one is, there are people who voted for Trump because he's Republican and they will only ever vote Republican.  The Dark Lord could get the nomination for the Republican party --

Katherine Brodsky: And they'll still vote, yeah.

Peter McCormack: They'll still vote, so there's those, let's forget those.  Let's talk about the swing voters, or people who might have always been Democrat voters and I think again, there's a range.  I think some people voted for Trump because they found him refreshing and interesting; I think some people voted for Trump as a backlash to how extreme left parts of the Democrat Party have become; I think some people voted for him because they thought he was funny and interesting.  So, I think there's a range.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, the way that you've already approached the question says a lot about your way of thinking, right, because you are thinking about the different ways that people think.  Whereas, you're not putting everyone in this one category.  Some people are probably going to answer the question and say, "Because they're dumb [or] they're racist", and that says a lot about how they think, and it's a lot harder to have a great conversation with them, or change their mind, or have that open-mindedness if they're pegging such a huge group of people as one.

So, I think it just gives you a sense of how somebody might think.  That's why I thought, "That might be a good question to ask people", to get a sense of how they approach things in the first place.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a really good question.  But then, I guess in doing this job, if you're a person who interviews people, you're either somebody who is within a niche camp and therefore you interview everyone within that niche camp, so I'm arguable in a Bitcoin niche camp and historically, only interview Bitcoin people, but I'm trying to get out of that.  I find that keeps me in this restricted box.

But on the political spectrum, you could have somebody like a Tucker Carlson, or a Don Lemon, who very much only want to speak to people who repeat the things within their echo chamber.  But then, you'll get somebody like Rogan, who I've talked about a lot, I'm a big fan of; I don't just watch him, I study him and learn from him.  I always think, if you're doing a job and you want to get better at it, you find the best and you try and understand what they're good at.  I think what's great about him is he says what he thinks; he's just him, and I think that's one of the best things you can do in this job, is just try and be you.

Me, I'm kind of dumb and I'm curious.  I'm not particularly -- I get to interview really smart people, people like yourself, people like Nic Carter, Gladstein, all these amazing people, and they're so intelligent, and I get to sit and ask them questions.  And all I'm trying to do is -- my only goal is for me to learn from them.

Katherine Brodsky: But that's genuinely the best approach, and I think that's why somebody like Rogan has been so successful.  I don't think of Rogan as being, and I'm sure he doesn't think of himself as necessarily being the most intellectual person on earth.  He's curious, so he must read a lot and he maybe knows a little bit about a lot of things.  And then thing that draws somebody like me towards him is because he's able to have these conversations, long-form conversations, with such a huge variety of people in all spectrums in different fields, and he's genuinely curious.

Yes, he's very much himself, so maybe sometimes the questions that he asks maybe aren't always the most brilliant questions, but a lot of times, people want to know things, answers to questions that are not always the most brilliant things.  What he's thinking is probably something that a lot of people are thinking, so they're curious.  And just the interactions, they just feel very free. 

I wish we had a lot more curiosity in the world, versus there's just this tendency to want to defend your side and put your point of view forward.  But curiosity, by its nature, means that you're open to any point of view, any idea.  It doesn't mean that you have to take it on; it doesn't have to mean that you agree with it; but it means that there's a certain open-mindedness, and that's something that's very much missing.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's why he kicked CNN's arse this week.

Katherine Brodsky: Yes, he did!

Peter McCormack: Because, I think there is a growing recognition of the damage that some of these media organisations are doing to social cohesion, and especially here in the US.  I think it's useful to travel and see the world and the US is a unique place; I love it.  There's no country I've travelled to more.  I've been here 70 times, I love it, I love the people, I love red states, blue states, I love travelling around, I love talking to people here.

The media side is detached from the rest of my experience in America.  It doesn't matter what city, state I'm in, I have such a great time, meet great people and have all these different conversations, but there's this media layer, which we're going to talk about, which is a really unfair reflection on the US.  And I think there's this growing recognition of the damage it's doing.  What happened this week is Rogan called them out for lying and they reacted and went on the attack and I don't think people are buying it anymore.

Katherine Brodsky: Oh, I didn't see the reaction.  What was the reaction?

Peter McCormack: So, Dr Sanjay Gupta, they got him back on and they challenged him, and I imagine he was under a little bit of pressure as well.

Katherine Brodsky: A lot.  I almost felt bad for him in a way, because he's not calling the shots at CNN.  So, when Rogan went after him and really went after him, "How could you work for an organisation like this?" which that's a challenging position to be in and at least he's going on Rogan, and I know he benefits from that as well; but at least he's willing to have that conversation.  But he was definitely squealing under the pressure.

I mean, the only thing that can save someone in a way is honesty, and I understand his position, but it probably would have been better to just be very honest about it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I appreciate what you're saying about the squirming, because I think he was probably in that moment trying to be political.

Katherine Brodsky: He was.

Peter McCormack: He was trying to give a political answer to what Rogan rightly called CNN out on.  And what would have been really interesting is if he had actually, like you said, just been completely authentic, and it would have been super interesting if he'd just quit CNN.  I think, as a career move, that could have been a very good career move for him, because it would have been somebody just standing up and going, "Do you know what, you're right.  Fuck them!"

Katherine Brodsky: He does not strike me as that kind of person.  I don't know him very well, but just looking at the way he behaves, he's somebody that wants to fit in, he wants to be part of the in group.  A lot of these things, these problems, I think, are created because of that.  In terms of journalism, obviously I've had a lot of conversations lately.  I don't think I've met a single person who thinks that journalism, or the media, is doing a great job right now, and there are so many reasons for that.  I haven't given up on journalism myself.

Peter McCormack: You're a fantastic journalist yourself; this is why we're here, because I read one of your articles, I reached out to you and I said, "I want to do this", and I said I want to do it in person with you, because I think you have a really interesting perspective on the current media landscape.  Sorry to interrupt you!

Katherine Brodsky: No, I really appreciate that.  I think there are some journalists who are doing a good job.  I think, within their niches, I think it's very difficult to tell certain kinds of stories.  You definitely get rejected and you're never told why the story's really rejected.  You might get a different kind of excuse, but you sort of know that there are certain things that are off limits.  And, if you want to stay in the industry, you feel like you have to comply.  I've been pretty upfront and honest about what I think of the media landscape, and the reason being is not because I hate journalism or journalists; quite the contrary.

Peter McCormack: You love it.

Katherine Brodsky: I love it and I want to see it improve, and that's the thing.  Even in politics, a lot of people, say, on the left, they are unhappy with what's happening within their political system, but sometimes that pushes them further to the right; although, the right has become closer to the centre as of recently, for the most part.  But they do get pushed to these extremes versus I think it's more important to have that responsibility to try to fix what's in your house basically.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think good, honest journalism is one of the most important jobs in the world.

Katherine Brodsky: Well then, that should be the goal, right?  Journalism should be (a) about curiosity, and (b) should be about getting as close to the truth as possible.  And how do you get as close to the truth as possible?  You have to look at things and dig at things from different points of view, you have to gather as much data as possible, you have to ask the right questions, and if you don't do that, you fail. 

Often, journalism has become something where you're supporting your own point of view, which is fine, but it's called "an opinion piece", and that has a place, I think it has value.  But often, I'm reading something in the news section, and it's clearly an opinion piece; it even has the voice of the author.  And a lot of journalists openly say, they basically call themselves activists.  It's not a hidden thing; they're very upfront about it, they're very proud of that.  And that, to me, goes so far away from what journalism should be.

Just because you're looking at different points of view and you're challenging yourself with different questions, it doesn't mean you then take on just any point of view, you try to find the strongest ones.  That's something that always bothers me on talk shows, if you go on, say, a Fox show or a CNN show, they all do the same thing.  So, they'll have a token person that they'll bring on that will represent a different point of view.  So, CNN is going to have somebody who's conservative and Fox is going to have somebody who's on the left, and usually they'll pick somebody who's maybe not even the strongest person; they'll pick somebody weak, so that they can win their argument. 

That has zero value, because in order to have a strong perspective on something, things have to be challenged, they have to do battle with each other; something I'm a big fan of.  Ideas always have to do battle with each other.  That's why, in any conversation that I have, if I have a particular opinion on something, and I certainly do have some opinions --

Peter McCormack: You've got a few!

Katherine Brodsky: I've got a few, guilty!  And, what happens is that I want people to challenge my point of view, I want really smart people to do it, I want them to do it in respectful ways; I've learned the difference.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so not on Twitter!

Katherine Brodsky: Yes!  And I think it's important how that comes at you.  The discourse does have to have some level of mutual respect, but go ahead and challenge me 100%.  And why?  It's actually a gift to me, it's a value to me, because if you challenge me and either, if I win that challenge, it reinforces my point of view; I have a stronger belief in it, I have stronger ways of backing it up.  Or, maybe I'm going to shift a little, because my point of view isn't supported as well as I thought, and the fact that I'm now closer to the truth, that's a gift.

So, I love that and I love that about Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost.  He was a devout Catholic, and yet he was talking about the Devil and he really encouraged challenging the Catholic religion for the very same reason, and at that time I'm sure it was not very popular, but I'm sure he had some good will on his side.

Peter McCormack: I've not read Paradise Lost, but I was into an old heavy metal band called Paradise Lost!

Katherine Brodsky: Well, they were clearly inspired by the book!  But it's the Devil, right, and the idea of the Devil, it's already the challenger.  Some religions do see the Devil as evil and all that kind of stuff, but really I prefer to take a look at the Devil in the sense of the challenger, and the challenge is so necessary.  You have to have that in order for things to grow and get better.  If you never have any challenge, how are things changing.

Peter McCormack: So, where do you think the breakdown has happened with regard to media and journalism, because there are a couple of clear things that have changed in society?  We've had the growth of the internet, which means before, we used to go and buy a newspaper, or you'd watch the news, and that would be it.  Maybe you'd discuss it with a friend.  But anything that exists or happens within the news is now discussed and debated on social media, and that comes along with all manner of bots and biases and propaganda that argues against the points, and it's very hard to try and get to the truth.

I think COVID is a great example of this.  It's so hard to get to the truth with COVID.  It's a very complicated subject with multiple strands.  Where do you think the breakdown has been?  After your answer, I'm going to talk to you about a video I watched, which did talk about this.

Katherine Brodsky: Okay, yeah, I've obviously thought about this a lot.  I think there's a lot of factors, but also to hit the key ones and some maybe I don't even know.  But one, I think the internet has definitely been a massive reason for this; the financial aspect plays a big role.  So, in general, when back in the day you would pick up a magazine or a newspaper, and everyone read the same things to an extent, but also they would read it cover to cover.  So, for that magazine or newspaper to have subscribers, it had to ensure certain quality.

When the internet came along, everything became about clicks.  And then, the economy, they were always struggling, but the economy bit is this: if you want a really good article to be produced, you have to pay a writer a pretty decent amount of money, because you want to get a good writer, and also it's going to be a certain length, it's going to take a certain amount of research, so that costs more money.

Now, the other article that you can produce is one that maybe has a clickbait headline, copies another news source, is very shallow, doesn't take any time to produce, is going to cost a lot less money, but it's actually going to get more clicks, so it's going to make more money.

Peter McCormack: BuzzFeed.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, exactly, so all those click, but they've all moved, to some extent, to that model.  So, some magazines or publications that still care about their overall image, they might produce better content, so something like The New Yorker, or The Atlantic, or something like that.

Peter McCormack: But…

Katherine Brodsky: But yeah, most of them know, and then a lot of people don't even read the full story.  For a little while, I taught a high school class, of all things; I taught media literacy.  And I asked the students where they get their news sources from.  In reality, right now, they're pretty much reading headlines and little bits and maybe things on social media, and then hearing things from their friends or family.  So, they're not even reading the stories.  So, that has a huge impact.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the incentives have changed.  So, there's a really great video by Andreas Antonopoulos; I'm going to put it in this show's show notes, I'm going to send it to you.  But he talked about how the news is now broken, because the economics has changed.  These big newspapers and magazines used to have massive city office blocks full of journalists working hard at producing their content, and yes, it still then might have been not as accurate as it should have been.  But at the time, people could really spend the time doing proper journalism, proper work.

But with the advent of the internet, there's so many more competing sources for eyeballs that the money being able to fund journalism has essentially dropped.  It's been a real struggle for these companies to monetise themselves.  So, he talks about that, the incentives have been broken.

I also think there's another thing.  I think Roger Ailes has a lot of fault to be put at his door, when he launched Fox News for Murdoch.  You know, the whole story is, "All we need to do is win the Republicans.  If we win the Republicans, we have half the audience.  We can let all the other news stations fight over this", and that stopped there being centre-based news reporting and balanced news reporting.

So, what you have out here is not something we have in the UK as much; we don't have left and right TV, it just doesn't exist.  But out here, and the US leads the news in some ways, you have this division now that's created and it's all based on advertising.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, it's infotainment.

Peter McCormack: It's infotainment; it's bullshit.

Katherine Brodsky: So, when you're talking about broadcast news on the TV, yeah, that's a kind of different beast I think, in some ways.  In the past, it definitely at least attempted to be a service, a public service.  And then, yes, it became a money-making machine, it's all infotainment.  You can even measure, this is something I learned back in university, but I thought that was an interesting exercise.

So, if you take a certain news broadcast and you count how many stories they have in the span of, say, ten minutes, and you compare it network by network, it's interesting.  Like, for example, Fox would have had a lot.  So, what does that mean?  That means they're giving you very, very short bits of news, which means that it loses all nuance and depth.  So, you can take that metric and look at different news broadcasts and see how they do with that.  And you'll probably find that the quality of the ones that do fewer stories is actually much higher.

I've been thinking about it a lot.  I also like to look at things from a solution-based perspective, and I was thinking a lot about, who still does journalism that actually brings value to people?

Peter McCormack: I've got an interesting perspective on this as well!

Katherine Brodsky: Oh, I'm curious to hear it, okay!

Peter McCormack: So, you go first!

Katherine Brodsky: Well, my thing right now is community journalism, still very small local papers.  I mean, those journalists get paid rubbish.  I mean, most journalists don't get paid that much, but very low amounts of money, which is a problem.  But the kinds of stories that they'll do are things that are in direct service to the communities that they have these magazines in, or newspapers in, and they'll go in and sit on the trials and everything.  It's more honest, and I think you'll find a lot less spin in community papers.  Now, I'm curious about yours.

Peter McCormack: Well, if we take this all down to the money and the incentives, the problem that we have now is that news is a business, like you say, it's infotainment and these companies have targets.  And I can't remember what the numbers were specifically for CNN, but since Trump lost the election, CNN's numbers are massively down.  But they're in the business of eyeballs, clickbait or eyebait, whatever, and therefore it's not real news and journalism.  But they're in that battle, because they've got to sell advertising.

What we've seen recently is the rise of the independent journalist, who can earn considerable amounts of money by using the same technology.  So, the technology which has destroyed the traditional newspapers is the same technology that can enable you, I, a Rogan, a Greenwald, a Taibbi, to go out and earn considerable amounts of money.  I mean, I don't know what a journalist earns.  I'll pick a number out of the air.

Katherine Brodsky: Less than most podcasters for sure!

Peter McCormack: Okay, well pick a number out of the air though.

Katherine Brodsky: It could be anything from like $35,000 in the community to $100,000 if you're really at the top, maybe you can do $120,000.  If you're a celebrity, you'll make more, but really most journalists are paid between the lowest $35,000 to $80,000 is considered pretty good.

Peter McCormack: Well, let's set the target of $100,000.  We set the target for $100,000 to outperform that.  You can go and set up a Substack and your audience is the entire planet.  Anyone who speaks your language, if you speak English -- I don't know what the English-speaking population of the world is, but we're talking billions of people who have access to the internet on their phones, their computers, can be your audience.  You have to find 1,000 people who are willing to give you $100 a year to hit that; 1,000 people on the entire internet.

You can get onto Twitter and you can discuss your ideas.  You can go onto podcasts and you can set up a Medium post, or even a podcast, but you only have to find 1,000 people willing to give you $100 a year to do that.  But the incentives go even higher, because if you're really good, you find 10,000, you're going to earn $1 million a year.

Katherine Brodsky: Sure.  I'm going to push back a little bit here.

Peter McCormack: Can I just finish my point?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: The point being is that there is an incentive in that to be somebody people trust.  Nobody fucking trusts CNN and Fox News, there's a lot of distrust in the media.  People trust Glenn Greenwald, people trust Matthew Taibbi, people trust Rogan.  I said the other day, "Rogan's a journalist", and I'll come back to that if you want to explore that, and I'll explain why I think he is, but people trust these people, because they know they're going to be honest.  They're not going to pick a side, they're just going to give you their honest opinion.  If you can create trust and you're a good journalist, you can be a source of truth.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, I mean I certainly agree about the trust.  I do love that there are these opportunities.  In terms of the financial aspect of it, so whilst some people have been incredibly successful with it, it's really difficult to build a following from scratch.  So, a lot of people that you named, they're people who already had a little bit of prominence.  And for someone like that to go and create, like Glenn Greenwald, that's very different.  They can become completely independent in that way and they're going to have that financial support, and maybe they'll even make more money than they would in a traditional media outlet, so that works great.

I've definitely seen some people who do amazing work who do podcasts, or there's a YouTuber I love who goes to different towns and just talks to people, and it's amazing.  But for example, if you were trying to create a feature story and you don't have a following, that means you have to put in a pretty severe time investment, and hence I would call it a financial investment, to do that story.  Also, it would be hard to get access, say, if you wanted to do interviews for the story.  A lot of the content that I've done is interview-based.  And the only way I can get those interviews is because I have a big publication attached to it.

That makes a big difference.  You don't have those opportunities until you've really built up your following to a large number.  So, there are certain kinds of stories that it would struggle being able to produce versus it can be a fantastic platform for others.  I'm not dismissing it, I think it's great, I've joined Substack, but I don't think it's quite as easy as people sometimes think it is.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay.  I think the opportunity's there.  Yes, perhaps not easy, but maybe it requires a hustle, and I'll give you an example.

Katherine Brodsky: It requires being a businessperson in a way.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, a little bit, but also just the hustle and hard work.  It's very hard to achieve anything without hustle and hard work.  So, when I was 15, this career essentially started when I was 15, because I was really into heavy metal as a kid, and when I was 15, I turned round to one of my friends and said, "I think we should start a fanzine", remember the old fanzines?

Katherine Brodsky: Yes.

Peter McCormack: And he was like, "Yeah, that's cool, how are we going to do it?" and then he lost interest.  I said, "I'm going to do it".  And I was like, "What do I need?  I need my first issue, so what have I got to do?  I've got to have interviews and reviews, I've got to get it typed up and printed".  Bear in mind, I'm 15 years old and I've got nothing.  So, all I did is I got myself a Dictaphone and I went along to a concert and I waited outside for the band to turn up.  There's a band called Skunk Anansie, and I went up to the singer and I said, "I want to launch a fanzine, can I interview you?" and she said yes.

After the show, we went backstage, we did a 40-minute interview.  Off the back of that, I approached another band and said, "I've interviewed Skunk Anansie, I'm launching a magazine, can I have an interview?" and I got my first four interviews.  Look, this first issue was crap, but I went home, translated it, also wrote some reviews of some CDs, got it printed, then went to all the record companies and sent them out saying, "I want to interview so-and-so bands".

So, as a 15-year-old, I did four issues, I interviewed Korn, do you know Korn?

Katherine Brodsky: I know of them, yes.

Peter McCormack: Pantera, Slayer, Fire Hazard.  I got all these big interviews, and I did it just by hustling.  I think if anyone at the moment wants to become a journalist, they can hustle.  And, look, it might take years, I'm not saying it's overnight success.  This $100,000, it might take you five years to do it.  But once you've got there, as long as you maintain it, you are financially secure.

Katherine Brodsky: It's a different type of skillset in a way, and maybe that's okay.  I mean, like you, I actually did, when I was 13 or something, I put together my own little paper, and I would just stuff it in people's mailboxes against their will.

Peter McCormack: So, you hustled.

Katherine Brodsky: I hustled.  But I was very entrepreneurial.  Maybe I shouldn't admit it, but I had not a fake agency, but I had an agency that had a fake name, because I was like 15 or 14 and I didn't want people to know I was a 15-year-old running a talent agency.  So, I booked people work and I had a mailbox, I started these different businesses; I was always entrepreneurial. 

But that's not the case necessarily with all the journalists, and some journalists might be great writers and socially awkward and don't have that hustle in them at all, so how do we hear their voices as well?  But at the same time, having certain abilities does benefit some people, and not having them sometimes disadvantages some, and that is life.

Peter McCormack: So, how do we elevate these people?  Are we accepting traditional big, large publications and news sources; or, are we done with those; are we in a place where it's like, that is broken beyond repair?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, yeah, I guess I'm still an optimist to some extent where I'm like, maybe they can fix themselves a bit, but they have to be willing to want to fix themselves.  I've talked to a lot of journalists who definitely are seeing what I'm seeing absolutely, and want to be part of the solution, and I've thought of some solutions.  But I realise that I'm trying to singlehandedly fix everything in the world, and I probably can't do that.  But I might try.

But I think maybe I was looking at something like a certification process, voluntary, where people can decide, like journalists and publications can decide that they want to abide by certain tenets of journalism.

Peter McCormack: But that already kind of exists.  There are already standards.

Katherine Brodsky: But they will get a certification from this other non-profit organisation.  Maybe it's a pipedream, but that was my best stab at this, like okay, if a publication really wants to serve the public and be seen that way and change their reputation, and if they say, "Okay, this is what we abide by", and they can lose that, so they're being tracked; it's voluntary, but they can lose the certification if they don't abide by these tenets, maybe there's something to that.  Maybe not, but it's maybe an idea worth exploring.

Peter McCormack: Have you had articles or pieces you've worked on that you're particularly proud of that have been rejected?

Katherine Brodsky: Yes, I have.

Peter McCormack: Can you talk about them?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, I'm trying to think about it!

Peter McCormack: How do I explain it without throwing somebody under the bus?!  Fuck them, this is your Dr Gupta moment!

Katherine Brodsky: No, I mean I had a piece killed by The New York Times that I don't think was killed for reasons that were content based, as in quality of content.

Peter McCormack: What was the article?

Katherine Brodsky: It wasn't even something super controversial, because it was a while ago, and they used to have a column which looked at the social media accounts of different people who are prominent and really related the social media account to larger issues in society.  So, my particular story was about, I looked at Ricky Gervais's account, which I mean I like him.

Peter McCormack: I love Ricky.

Katherine Brodsky: But I did not like the way that he attacked religious groups all the time.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I'm not aware of this.  The only stuff I've regularly seen is him attacking hunters and people for animal cruelty.

Katherine Brodsky: I mean, he attacks everyone, that's his shtick.

Peter McCormack: But are his attacks satire?

Katherine Brodsky: So, I didn't feel they were.  I'm okay with ridicule a lot.  I felt that he was intolerant towards people who saw the world differently.  I'm not a religious person at all, but I saw that as an example of intolerance, which is what he was attacking religious people for being.  So, there's ways to do that.  I watched Book of Mormon, I don't know if you saw that?

Peter McCormack: I've seen it twice!  I went with my dad, oh my God, amazing!

Katherine Brodsky: Brilliant, wow!  And they attacked a lot of stuff, but they didn't attack the people in the way that I thought it was actually remarkably tolerant at the same time, even though my jaw dropped so many times.  So, I didn't love that about him and I tweeted something, and I think I accused him of going on a crusade against religious people!

Peter McCormack: A crusade against religious people; the irony!

Katherine Brodsky: And he responded and retweeted, so then I got attacked by all his followers, which was funny.

Peter McCormack: It's a tactic, by the way.  When people attack me, I retweet them and let my people pile in!

Katherine Brodsky: I don't think he even wanted them to pile in, because he ended up deleting the tweet later.

Peter McCormack: I've also done that!

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, so I think he saw what was happening and was, "Maybe that wasn't the nicest thing to do".  Anyway, I didn't mind it, it was quite fun for me to engage with him, I didn't take it personally.  However, I thought that was maybe the kind of genesis of that pitch.  So, when I pitched it, the editor seemed to really like that.

Peter McCormack: What was the pitch?

Katherine Brodsky: So, it was about the sort of hypocrisy of the intolerance.

Peter McCormack: Okay, great, interesting. 

Katherine Brodsky: So, I wrote the piece.  At first, I didn't mention the whole interaction that I had.  Ultimately, the piece ended up getting killed, but that reason I was given, even though they asked me to write in the whole interaction; the reason I was given is because I had a personal relationship with Ricky Gervais.

Peter McCormack: But you don't have a personal relationship with him?

Katherine Brodsky: No, I have no personal relationship.

Peter McCormack: In secret, you're dating!

Katherine Brodsky: He has no idea who I am, and I don't even have a negative outlook towards him, I actually quite like him and I love his comedy.  So, just because I had this one axe to grind!  But it felt political in a way, it felt like it didn't fit a particular narrative for them.

Peter McCormack: Do you feel like once the piece would be published, Ricky Gervais would see this, perhaps he would criticise it, and then he could turn people against The New York Times; do you think it was that?

Katherine Brodsky: I don't think it was that.

Peter McCormack: What do you think it was; what do you think the politics of it was then?

Katherine Brodsky: I think because I was defending religious people in a way, and I think that was not something that they liked.  I think it was really about that.

Peter McCormack: Did you self-publish the article anyway, or are you not allowed to at that point?

Katherine Brodsky: No, and I got a kill fee for it, which is tiny.

Peter McCormack: You got a kill fee?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, which is tiny.

Peter McCormack: Hold on, so you don't get paid the original fee?  When they kill a story, they give you a kill fee?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, so a lot of these papers have a kill fee.

Peter McCormack: Hold on, is that on top of the fee for writing it?

Katherine Brodsky: No.  So, The New York Times has an insanely low one for that kind of paper.  It's 25%.  So, you do all the work.

Peter McCormack: Oh, fuck them! 

Katherine Brodsky: Pretty awful, yeah.

Peter McCormack: This is why you need to go out independently, I will be your first subscriber if you haven't got any yet, and I would say, "Go out and do your honest work".

Katherine Brodsky: I did start a Substack actually.

Peter McCormack: Have you got any subscribers?

Katherine Brodsky: I have some subscribers.  I kind of dissuaded them from paying in the beginning.  I was like, "Are you sure you want to pay for this?  I'm not giving you any extra content".

Peter McCormack: Dude, come on.  Listen, let people pay you for your work.

Katherine Brodsky: I'm terrible at stuff like that, I feel so uncomfortable with it.  I'm learning.

Peter McCormack: Don't be.  Just take the fucking money and do the job.  You're a fantastic writer, I told you that.  My show's a Bitcoin show, we might not even discuss Bitcoin today, and I don't care because I want to talk to you, I think you're an interesting person and I think you are a fantastic writer and people should read that.  So, take the money.  People listening are going to say that.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, and I guess right now, I feel like the people who have been supporting me are really supporting me; they're not doing it necessarily to get this extra content, because it's available for everyone.

Peter McCormack: That's what everyone does.  Sam Harris, I subscribe to his podcast.  I'm pretty sure when I went to pay for it, it said, "You don't have to pay if you don't want to".  It's an option to pay for it, but I pay for it because I want to support his work.  And I know he's not short of money, Sam Harris is fine, but I will pay for it, because I want to listen to his podcast.  I don't even agree with everything he says, I think he gets a lot of things wrong, but I think it's worth paying for.

Take the money.  Whether it's to support you or to get the content, it doesn't really matter.  If someone wants to give you money, they're enabling you to go out there and be an honest writer.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, and that's the thing, to be fully independent.  I mean, that was the pipedream, because I've always wanted, for a long time now, to be able to say what I want to say and not feel the financial consequences of it.  And, I kept thinking, "What kind of side business can I start?  Maybe a coffee shop.  If I get cancelled, maybe I'll start a coffee shop or something so I can generate income, and then I can do what I want".  So, I always had these little dreams and ideas, because I wanted independence.

So, yeah, these platforms are great for if somebody does find that they have a little bit of an audience that they can be supported financially.  That makes a huge difference, for sure.

Peter McCormack: It's almost like a decentralised news media in some ways, in that we have this growing number of independent podcasters and journalists, which I think are competing now with the networks and I think they're winning.  Going back to the point of Rogan, the reason I said I think he's a journalist is that funny area between entertainer, interviewer and journalist, and that I think he does the job of a journalist sometimes, the way he works a subject.

Again, I don't agree with him on everything.  I fundamentally disagree on some things and fundamentally agree, but what I do know is that when he sits there and interviews someone, he's going to ask honest questions, because he doesn't give a fuck.  You can't cancel him.  It doesn't matter what people try and do, you can't cancel him, and people who have a protected shield around them that they can't be cancelled, the more people we have like that, the better, because they're going to ask the big, honest questions.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, and the less they care, the less anyone's even going to try and cancel them.

Peter McCormack: Exactly.

Katherine Brodsky: I mean, the worst consequences is if you apologise, or you're just very, "Oh, I'm so sorry I used this word".

Peter McCormack: Sorry China!

Katherine Brodsky: I'll go on the record on this word, it's a hill I'm willing to die on.  There's a word that drives me crazy, is the word.  Basically, if you say the word "crazy", it's like you're an ableist.  I'm not calling anybody crazy.  Crazy is a very expressive word, "I had a crazy day, I feel a little crazy today".  But these words are --

Peter McCormack: "My kids are driving me crazy".

Katherine Brodsky: "My kids are driving me crazy".

Peter McCormack: "My ex is fucking crazy".

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, it's a great word!  I'm not retiring this word because some people think it's ableist.  I have the utmost respect for people who are struggling with mental health, it has nothing to do with them.  It's this constant thing, like you can't use certain words; so, crazy being one of those words, and I've seen it so many times.

Peter McCormack: You can't use it?

Katherine Brodsky: You can't use it.

Peter McCormack: I fucking use it!

Katherine Brodsky: Well good, so am I!  But I've seen it so many times where somebody will use that word, the mob will come after them and say, usually politely, they'll say, "This word is actually ableist; you might want to use other language", and then the original person who used the word says, "Oh, I'm sorry, I will do my best, I'll do better", and that's…

Peter McCormack: I mean, look, there are times to apologise.

Katherine Brodsky: There are, absolutely.

Peter McCormack: And there's times to admit you're wrong.  I know that.  I've had to apologise for many things and had to admit I'm wrong many times, but that's fine.  I always think it's a quality.  Somebody said to me, "A man who can't change his mind can't change anything", and it's a bit cringe, but it always stuck with me, because if you're wrong, okay, admit you're wrong, but don't apologise for the wrong reason.  Apologise because you've self-reflected and said, "Yeah, I was a dick, I was wrong".

The perfect example is, who was it?  Was it John Cena who was criticised in China, then went back and apologised; clearly had his arm turned, or everything that happened with the NBA in China, it's fucking bullshit.

Katherine Brodsky: They have to consider, why is someone apologising?

Peter McCormack: Back to the money.

Katherine Brodsky: It's money, it's social standing, wanting to be good, wanting to be seen as good is actually the bigger thing.  A lot of people want to be seen as good, and I clearly agree if you've messed up in a real way, yeah, you reflect, you apologise.  But if you haven't, then never apologise.

Peter McCormack: Well, what's more important; to be good or to be honest?

Katherine Brodsky: Great question.  I wonder actually.  I mean, I haven't been asked this question.

Peter McCormack: Okay, well, what do you think?  You can think about it.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I'm leaning towards being honest, but there's still a part of me that wants to be good.  So, it would be dishonest of me to say!

Peter McCormack: Well, sometimes you being dishonest is the good thing.  Parenting is one example.  Sometimes you have to be dishonest with your children to be good towards them and shield them from certain things.  But generally speaking, I think it's really important to be honest and completely honest.

It's one of the problems, I think, in our political system, is that we expect to have these infallible characters, and then when we find a flaw in one, people just want to attack them and break them down and ruin them and destroy them.  I'd much rather have some flawed, ex-drug addict who's got his shit together, as a political leader, than some fake, completely clean, honest character, which we know they're not.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I now have had the occasional attacks and such, and part of that came from taking stances that maybe are less popular amongst my tribe, but that caused me to arrive at much more honesty in how I express myself.  And actually, it's kind of a gift in a way in that now that I am a lot more free with my voice, I've had better relationships with other people.  It allowed other people to then reach out to me and tell me the truth of what they think and people, and it's been surprising, because I felt so alone for a long time, like really alone, depressed about it.

Peter McCormack: Talk about that; what do you mean, because I can empathise?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I was seeing a lot of the issues, the dishonesty, the way things were being talked about or not talked about, people just getting behind causes and not really thinking things through, and equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity, those kinds of things too.

Peter McCormack: Are we talking about BLM here?

Katherine Brodsky: I was thinking more about, where I live, there was a quota thing, where there was 50% funding for men and women, for example, for film.  And I knew that the level of applications was 80% men, 20% women.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so it just doesn't work; it's virtue signalling?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, it means that certain people are going to get funding who shouldn't.  If you wanted to improve things, then you focus on the submission statistic.  But when I started talking about these things more honestly in person with people, I thought I was going to get crucified at the time, but actually people had more honest conversations with me, and actually I found out that a lot of people were seeing these issues; they were just so afraid to talk about it, this crippling fear that a lot of us feel. 

I mean, I felt it, I still feel it, very much I feel it.  I don't feel I can say just anything, I'm not in that position yet, but I try to speak as much as I can as honestly as I can, and that took a lot to arrive even there.  But it's been so rewarding, because now I know where other people stand.  I've had some amazing conversations with people, and they're all over in their feelings and thoughts about things, but by having these open conversations, I was able to learn from them, but also connect with them in a genuine way, so we're not all like, "What can I say?"

But if you're thinking, "Can I say this, can I say that?" you're not having a genuine, real relationship with another person, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a really good point.  I mean, I fully empathise with that point.  There are things I've wanted to talk about in the past that I have been worried about.  I mean, there's one at the moment I was even talking about the other night with somebody.  Again, it's a Bitcoin podcast, but I do touch asymmetric topics.  I talk about governance, I talk about the drugs war, I talk about general economic situations, human rights.  When I say I talk about it, I talk to smart people about it, I ask them the questions.

But recently, I've had probably 20 emails in the last two months, specifically from women, almost very identical saying, "You talk about Texas a lot, you talk about how great Texas is, you talk about wanting to live in Texas, are you going to deal, or can you discuss abortion?"  I was like, "Oh, okay, right".  I mean, if somebody was listening to this going, "You shouldn’t talk about that, Pete, because this is a Bitcoin show", I've already made the point I want to talk about other subjects.  I mean, we're not talking about Bitcoin today and I'm enjoying it, I don't care.

Do I want to talk about this subject?  I was like, "Shit, I don't know how to deal with this", because it's another very complicated problem with very two clear sides arguing for/against, and then I think a valid group in the middle who are like, "This is really tricky, because I don't know".  I'm seeing both sides and I've really struggled with that as a topic, and I've steered clear for now.  I would like to touch it though.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, and there is something about that, because of the self-censorship thing that's going on with a lot of people, and I've been talking to a lot of creative people, specifically writers, and some of them quite prolific.  They've said that there are certain works of theirs they probably wouldn't make today, because they would think, "The market wouldn't go for it because of the situation [or] I'll get cancelled", or have this negative thing.  And right now, they're really self-censoring themselves.

So, think about how much of a robbery it is in a way, how we rob society of these great, potentially life-changing works, because everyone has had this film or book or something that has maybe changed the course of their lives.  And if you have to be jumping from one foot to the next and not able to be honest and try things, and sometimes fail at things, failure's so important, then we're not creating good content, we're not creating art that's honest, that's exploring things.  Even the David Chappelle thing.  I mean, that's -- I know.  And I haven't watched it.

Peter McCormack: Oh, I've watched it.

Katherine Brodsky: You've watched it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Katherine Brodsky: So, I've talked to other people who've watched it, and they're all really decent human beings.  Most of them say -- well, all of the people in my life, my real life, they've all watched it and they've loved it and they don't feel like it's --

Peter McCormack: It's tricky, it's really tricky.

Katherine Brodsky: It's tricky, and some people do, and I can understand that as well.  But the issue there is, who gets to call the shots?

Peter McCormack: For me, stand-up comedy is the final frontier of free speech.  Comedians should be the people who are using satire to challenge some of the biggest, most complex problems there are.  I mean, I mentioned to you abortion a moment ago; Louis CK in one of his specials challenged abortion and identified the issues using satire, and he really crystalised the problem in a way that I thought was quite brilliant, as a comedian, and also sounded hugely insensitive at the same time. 

I think that's what's happened with Chappelle's latest special; he's dealing with a problem, which is the acceptance and treatment of transgender people in society, which is again a hugely complex problem.  He's tried to solve it with satire.  I didn't actually think that was the most controversial moment in the show.

Katherine Brodsky: There are other things that nobody talked about.

Peter McCormack: Well, I mean he made a Jewish joke, right.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, and people are not really talking about that one.

Peter McCormack: Shouldn't he be able to make that joke?  I mean, is anything out of bounds for comedians?  I mean, we talk about free speech and wanting free speech, but then there are certain things that you just will not say in society.

Katherine Brodsky: But do you not think there is a value to somebody actually saying something that's maybe offensive or wrong, because even if they're wrong, we have this idea that everything we say has to be great and nice and kind.  But when somebody says something that's not those things, while we get to engage with that, probably a lot of people are thinking those things too.  So, if we engage with that in an open way, we can maybe challenge that.  But if we never hear it in an open way, then we can never engage with it, we can never challenge it, we can never change anybody's mind.

I had my mind changed about certain things where, you know, take somebody who's a KKK member; pretty despicable, I think we can agree on that.  And yet --

Peter McCormack: But still, I would really want to interview someone from them.

Katherine Brodsky: Would you?  Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Sorry to interrupt.  Sometimes people say, "Why are you giving this person a platform?" and it's like, you never give someone a platform, you're having an interview.  I always want to speak to the people I understand the least, because why the fuck are you in the KKK?  I want to understand that.

Katherine Brodsky: That's an important thing to understand, because that could change the course of that, and that's exactly right.  So, I watched an interview with a former KKK member, who now gets people out.  There's a guy I really admire, Daryl Davis.

Peter McCormack: Amazing, yeah.

Katherine Brodsky: He collects these hoods from Klan members.  So, if you can take somebody like that, who's in that mindset; I will say it's a very bad mindset, it's a negative one, it is kind of a hateful one.  And yet, even that kind of person can change.  I always say, no one has a responsibility to engage with someone like that, they don't have to do it; but if they can, the outcome may be incredible.  And it kind of shows you that even if you think that person is beyond reach, maybe they're not.  Some people are, but maybe they're not.

Peter McCormack: I'll tell you something interesting that came out of the Chappelle thing for me.  I don't have a good enough understanding of the challenges or the life experiences of a trans person, I don't.  And I've listened to the debates with regard to trans kids and some of the complexities around hormone blockers and what ages that's relevant.  I think it's again a hugely complex issue I'm not going to touch today, but it's just not an issue I've spent much time on.

I watched the Chappelle show, and he talks about this girl, Daphne, and the story sounded too perfect for it to have been authentic and for him to tell, because it was just perfect for him to tell the story.  So afterwards, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to do some research".  I don't know if you know the story and I'm going to plot-spoil here, but I'm not going to plot-spoil, because anyone who hasn't seen this should go and see it.

But anyway, what I did is I went and researched her and looked her up.  Every single part of the story he told was exactly true as he told it.  So, I ended up reading her story, reading everything she went through, and some of the struggles and difficulties she had.  So, I ended up coming out of the Chappelle show becoming more compassionate to the issues of trans people.

Katherine Brodsky: I've had that a lot actually.

Peter McCormack: And, I wasn't raging, I didn't have some -- because, when I was in Vegas, I was chatting to some people about it.  There were two people with diametrically opposed views on it.  One said it was brilliant, one said it was awful and it was encouraging violence upon trans people.  Again, I don't know if it does.  I think actually, it depends on who's listening.  I think if somebody's predisposed to be that kind of person, they might be.

Katherine Brodsky: I think that's the same thing as violence in movies, and apparently statistically they looked at it and said that actually, for example, we have more violence in movies and games and things than ever before, but actually statistically the crime rate for violent crime has gone down, so it's interesting.

Peter McCormack: So, yeah, I've come out certainly more compassionate to the issues of trans people and wanting to understand it more, and probably at some point interviewing somebody so I can better understand it.  So, I actually thought it was brilliant what he did, but it's tricky, because I can see how trans people didn't peel back the layers of the satire and just felt attacked.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah.  This is one of those hot potato topics that is very difficult to talk about and I have, to some extent, stayed away.  I have a lot of empathy and also, when it comes to, you know, I do see some of the attacks where people will purposely misgender, purposely, in a mean way, right, not accidentally.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, being a dick.

Katherine Brodsky: Being a dick, exactly.  That serves no good purpose, it is hurtful.  I do think that it's not a great thing that we can't talk about these things, the other issues around not, in a more open way, without somebody automatically going, "Well, you're a transphobe", because maybe I'm wrong on a particular stance.  That's possible, absolutely.  Show me how.  But then they'll say, "You should be doing the work"!  Emotional labour; that's another word that I absolutely --

Peter McCormack: Emotional labour?

Katherine Brodsky: Emotional labour; have you heard this one?

Peter McCormack: No, tell me.

Katherine Brodsky: Oh, this comes up a lot.  So, emotional labour is saying you don't understand something about a minority group.  So, you can't ask the question or expect them to respond, or if they do, they're doing emotional labour.

Peter McCormack: This makes sense.  So, I've recently become addicted to Libs of Tik Tok on Twitter, and I've seen some of the two-camera rants by liberal people with regard to specific issues.  It's honestly got to the point where sometimes, I don't actually understand what the fuck they're talking about.  But I've seen one specifically the other day with a girl saying, "I shouldn't have to explain myself for you to understand what my issues are, what I'm going through", and I'm like, "But I don't understand.  I just don't understand".

Katherine Brodsky: I have a particular background.  If somebody is curious to know and understand, I don't consider it emotional labour; I'm like, "Great, I'm glad you're curious".  The idea that it's emotional labour to explain something to someone where they might not understand it; yeah, it's great if they can do some extra research on their own, but…

Peter McCormack: But these are complicated subjects, they're hard to understand.  We don't walk in the same shoes.

Katherine Brodsky: No, we don't, and people will often label everyone by these categories, whereas based on these really silly things, like the colour of somebody's skin, shouldn't we be looking at people as individuals?  And, in terms of the colour of somebody's skin, well you might share that colour and have completely different lives and different experiences.  I mean, I think it's racism really and it's weirdly wrapped in this anti-racist rhetoric, which is not at all true.

Peter McCormack: Shall we talk about cancel culture?

Katherine Brodsky: Sure.

Peter McCormack: By the way, I've got you a present.  This is from Mark Cuban.

Katherine Brodsky: Really?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've got you a present from Mark Cuban.

Katherine Brodsky: What is it.  Is it a cookie?

Peter McCormack: It's a brownie.

Katherine Brodsky: A chocolate brownie.  Is it special or anything?

Peter McCormack: It doesn't matter.  All brownies are the same!

Katherine Brodsky: How is this a Mark Cuban present; you need to explain this better?

Peter McCormack: Because, all brownies are equal, you don't care about the recipe.  Just, as long as there's a brownie, it doesn't matter.

Katherine Brodsky: Okay!

Peter McCormack: We had a debate with him online; I triggered him last night.

Katherine Brodsky: Oh, that's fun.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I was a bit rude to him.  I accused him of being rich and out of touch.

Katherine Brodsky: Oh, no.  I heard a tiny bit about Dogecoin.  I'm trying to understand these things.

Peter McCormack: Well, you came to our party the other night.  I threw you in there, and I was two hours late!

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, exactly!  I have to say, and I'm not just saying it because of your podcast, but the people in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency community in general --

Peter McCormack: They are two communities, completely separate.

Katherine Brodsky: I know, I know.

Peter McCormack: They're not really, I'm just joking.

Katherine Brodsky: I'm separating them.  But they are very welcoming, very open-minded.  So, they have some philosophy in common, which does make them a bit of a community, but I've also called them a cult and they've embraced it; they say, "We absolutely are".

Peter McCormack: And you're in the cult now.

Katherine Brodsky: I'm in the cult now.

Peter McCormack: You've got some Bitcoin.

Katherine Brodsky: I admit, I got some Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: It went up this week.  Have you made money?

Katherine Brodsky: I probably made a tiny bit, because my bank -- not my bank, I think it's actually the company through which I bought it --

Peter McCormack: You can say the name.  I'm not going to -- Coinbase?

Katherine Brodsky: Coinbase, yeah.  They basically restrict how much I can buy with a new account.

Peter McCormack: Because you're probably new, yeah.  It's a new account.

Katherine Brodsky: I didn't know that.  But when I tried to buy cryptocurrency before, a few years ago, and my bank blocked it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that happens as well, and you have to think why.

Katherine Brodsky: I do think why.  They make it seem like they're protecting you from scams, but it's my money and why can't I buy stock market things, which are just as volatile.

Peter McCormack: How about a waiver?  If you choose to buy this Bitcoin and you lose money, this is your problem, you sign this waiver.  I'll sign the fucking waiver.  They don't want it, because Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are a threat to both high street retail banks and central banks.

Katherine Brodsky: And also governments, I imagine, don't want cash.  I've been thinking about that one for a while, because I understand some of the positive reasons for why they don't want cash around, but also right now, most purchases that I make are on my credit card.  The amount of detail that that gives whoever gets that data is massive, and the only way for me to live is now using these tools.  A lot of places, especially since the pandemic, they don't even accept cash anymore.  So, it feels like it kind of accelerated that move from cash.

Peter McCormack: To a surveillance state.

Katherine Brodsky: To surveillance, yeah, which is something -- people always said, "Why are you concerned; you're not going to commit any crimes?"  Well, at the time, I was into bank heists and such!  But for me, it was always the principle of it.  But also, what does the government consider a crime?  And so, we're seeing so much more.  We're getting to this point where the government may actually consider something completely sensible a crime. 

We're seeing it today back to censorship, or cancel culture, I guess we were going to go there, but also I'm seeing it a lot in terms of censorship, especially in terms of talking about the pandemic, which is insane.  I'm using the word "insane", I'm being ableist.

Peter McCormack: You're allowed to talk about certain areas of the pandemic; there's other things you can't talk about.

Katherine Brodsky: Correct, and why?  And the people on YouTube, like Bret Weinstein, somebody who is an evolutionary biologist, and then has people on his podcast who also have scientific backgrounds.  And these aren't people who are just random nonsense.  They may be wrong, very much, that's very possible; but to not give them the opportunity to speak; to demonetise, to censor.  Well, now they don't just demonetise, they might even take the video down.  And, if you have any mention of it, that doesn't go with the narrative, well that's censorship, full-on censorship.  And, yes, the social media companies were doing it. 

But then, when the White House came out and said this whole misinformation, disinformation, two very different things, right.  Disinformation is, if you were specifically trying to spread lies and maybe using bot farms or something like that, to me, yeah, you should go after that, that's a really different thing.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, propaganda.

Katherine Brodsky: It's propaganda, go for it.  But misinformation is merely somebody having a viewpoint that's different to the mainstream narrative, but they believe it.  And that changes, because their information's constantly shifting.

Peter McCormack: But you've got to ask why they're censoring it, and I don't know why they are.

Katherine Brodsky: I don't know, I can't say with any kind of specificity.  I think there's a lot that's not revealed to us.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and look, I like Bret, I've interviewed him a couple of times.  And again, another person I don't agree with everything on, but I want to hear the debate and I want to hear the discussion.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, he should be able, or anybody else, they should be able to present their thought, their evidence; and if somebody thinks it's bullshit, then they present counterevidence and see where the dust settles, right?

Peter McCormack: Well, what's her name, Claire from Quillette, she was debating ferociously with Bret on Twitter and I found it interesting, two sides of this discussion.  So, yeah, I don't understand the censorship.  But that's why I bring it back to the Bitcoin.  That allows us to at least give ourselves one separation from the government, one thing they don't control; because when you talk about censorship, what if all our records are digital, what if all our payments are digital, what if there are flags in there that identify our political persuasion, and then we get targeted based on that?  What does that do to democracy, and a lot of bitcoiners don't believe in democracy anyway?

Katherine Brodsky: What do they believe in?

Peter McCormack: It depends, there's a range.  Again, you've got some who do.  I do.  I'm a reluctant statist who believes that democracy's the best we have right now.

Katherine Brodsky: And no deal is perfect.

Peter McCormack: Some are libertarian, some are full anarcho-capitalist and I think they have brilliant ideas and I love talking to these people.  But if the government has access to all our purchases and they can identify our political persuasion, what can they do to us with that?  We know in certain countries, they'll fucking persecute you for it, they'll arrest you, imprison you.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I think we have the sense that we live in a country that's really free and this kind of stuff can't happen.  And honestly, a few years back, I probably would have said that.  My family's from the Soviet Union, I was born there, so I grew up with them talking about this stuff all the time, and now I'm starting to see the warning signs.  And I think I was a little bit dismissive in the beginning.

Peter McCormack: So, your parents now are seeing the warning signs?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, they're seeing now the warning signs.  I mean, if you look through history, countries that seem perfect, like Germany, perfectly democratic country were the bastion of freedom at one point, went Nazi.  Throughout history, these things happen, and it's hard to know, are you overreacting?  Is this actually happening; are your freedoms being taken away, or is it just a few things that are being taken away, or are we actually heading towards something that's more dangerous, more authoritarian?

Peter McCormack: Australian.  And, do you know what's really interesting about Australia; that's come up as a subject that's been discussed on my show a few times, and I don't know if it's because of my cohort on Twitter, I'm seeing just one side of this debate.  So, what I would do is I would go and see some of the announcements from the political leaders that sound insane, and then I would read the comments.  And there are people fully supportive of some of these ideas.

So, I think you are right.  We have issues in the UK, there are certainly issues in Australia, there are certainly issues in France, Italy, we're seeing protests everywhere, here in the US.  So, if your parents, who lived, and you growing up -- I'm assuming you were quite young when you left the USSR?

Katherine Brodsky: I was young, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Did you leave before the fall?

Katherine Brodsky: Yes.

Peter McCormack: Oh, yeah, you told me they essentially escaped, didn't they?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, absolutely.

Peter McCormack: Can we talk about that; I'm not sure?  So, what are they saying, what are your parents saying?  Because, in some ways, your parents would be the people I would trust more than almost anyone, as somebody who's lived under this.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, if you listen to a lot of people who are immigrants, who come from these types of regimes in the past, they're seeing the alarm bells go off.  So, media would be a really big part of it, the fact that the media has a narrative is something that, you really want the media to be all over the place, right, in terms of thoughts and opinions.  When it's not, when it's in this weird agreement, something is a little bit off.  You're seeing what the government is telling you versus what's true, and we know that there have been blatant lies; it's a fact, I can show it to you.  So, there's definitely a lot of propaganda going on.  Division is another huge thing.

Peter McCormack: Do you think this censorship across social media therefore is this recognition that is probably, in some ways, the most important media to control and the hardest one to control, in that you're trying to control the opinions of lots of individuals, as opposed to large media organisations?  Is your assumption there's some connection between government and these large social media organisations?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, we know there is, if they're sending lists of who to consider as a misinformation spreader, and they're saying, "This is what the facts are, this is what you should be doing".  Of course, they're already interfering in that process, which is really alarming.  Also, I would say there's a level of self-censorship that's going on that's just equally as dangerous, and you're seeing that.  And this one does tie to cancel culture, because I think what you're seeing is a really small group of people, but a really dominant and loud group of people kind of dominating the narratives and shutting everyone else down.  These people are kind of scared, and that's something from what I understand you are seeing with the Chinese cultural revolution.

Peter McCormack: Hey, listen, I interviewed two people in China in the last year.  I used to have this other podcast, called Defiance, where I do non-Bitcoin subjects, and twice I interviewed people who are in China.  One was an American, one was a British person, and I asked tough questions.  And both people, after the interview, wrote to me and said, can I pull the interview?  They don't want it live.

One of them was really angry at me, saying it put them in a really difficult position, and my question back to them is a bit like the question back to Sanjay Gupta as, "What the fuck are you doing then?  Why are you living there?"  And I know why; they've got business there, it comes back to the money, the incentives.  They're making good money in China, therefore I feel like they're almost complicit in accepting something they disagree with, which is sad.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, people do that a lot.  And if they do it long enough, it's -- and it's kind of the same thing with journalism, it's the same thing in politics.  If you start out in politics, I had a very short stint, but if you start out in politics, you realise on a small level -- so, you have a lot of people who are interested parties that get involved, and they're interested parties because maybe they have small businesses who will now benefit from the contracts you're going to get. 

Then, if you're somebody who comes in and you're somebody who wants to do good, you have good intentions, you want to serve, which I think should be the intention if you go into politics; well, to get promoted within that system, the only way to do that is to basically agree with everything.  Once you've agreed with everything, by the time you get to any real position where you have power or say, you're somebody who has now compromised so much, that's changed you, and you're a different person now.  And I think that's a really large reason as to why we see generally, politicians aren't the best people. 

In media, there's a lot of that too, because I'll say I've definitely compromised as well, to some extent.  So, you know there's maybe certain things you can't say, or words you need to use to fit it.  So, over time, you do compromise a lot, because that's the only way to go through the ranks.  And at a certain point, you've compromised, and now you've got something to lose. 

I guess for me, there's a bit of a turning point where I've decided there is a level of sacrifice that I'm willing to make to be more honest, and that's something that took a lot to arrive at, a lot of emotions, a lot of worries.  I can't say that 100% I'll just say anything; I still have a level of self-censorship.

Peter McCormack: Well, there's certain things you don't need to say!

Katherine Brodsky: There's certain things I don't need to say.  There's certain things I'm like, those are not topics that I spent a lot of time thinking about or learning about, or have much care about.  So, I'm happy not to talk about it, not to get myself into hot water unnecessarily.  But certain things I think are really important and I spend a lot of time thinking about it and talking about it, and those are the things that I want to be able to speak more honestly about.  And I think I try to do it in a way that's very common sense.

I think the best way to do it -- I'm surprised I didn't get into trouble with some of the stuff I posted on my Substack, and I've been thinking about why that is.  Either people who don't like that kind of stuff just don't read it; that's probably the case.

Peter McCormack: I think the people going to Substack are after a certain honest kind of journalism.

Katherine Brodsky: Sure.  But the people who follow me on Twitter, I mean they're really all over the place.  I mean some of them, certainly a lot of them, have pronouns in their bios, that kind of stuff!  So, you would think some of them might not like what I have to say.  But I think the reason I haven't gotten attacked is I try to walk people through it, like how did I arrive at that thought?  What are the questions that I continuously ask myself?  And I think maybe that walks people to where I'm going with it, rather than being very dramatic about it, and antagonistic, which I see a lot of people have become as a reaction to what's happening.

Peter McCormack: Well, antagonism can be rewarding.

Katherine Brodsky: It's very rewarding, yeah, a lot more clicks.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've done it myself.  I did it this morning.  I was trying to antagonise Mark Cuban.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I'm probably never going to be massively popular, because I don't do that.

Peter McCormack: Well, when you meme, you're antagonising, but sometimes that's important.

Katherine Brodsky: I can see it in some context.  I've thought about it.  I'm not sure that I'm right on this particular topic or not, just what I've decided for myself.  I can see the point of view of people who do think you have to go more aggressively strong.  That display of power has a place, and then I've been thinking what's the most effective way to also dismantle something, but also somewhat kind.  Like, how can you make it into so much of a joke that you can show the person such nonsense that they can laugh at it? 

That will take incredible skill and talent to do that, but that's the most powerful thing.  How can you show that person that they're being ridiculous, without causing them to lose face and allowing them to laugh at it themselves?

Peter McCormack: Well, as someone who's on the receiving end for a lot of this, and has got a lot in the last 24 hours, what I would say, what has worked for me -- what doesn't work is personal insults just do not work.

Katherine Brodsky: No, well what happens if you mock?  You know, with the vaccine, a lot of people are going after anti-vaxxers.  Some of them genuinely even believe that by mocking them, they'll get vaccinated.  No, all you're doing is you're pushing them further away.  And when you push someone, when you mock them, when you belittle them, go aggressively against them, they just get stronger in their own position.

Peter McCormack: Well also, just personal insults, it's not nice to hear.

Katherine Brodsky: No, it's not nice to hear and it's not a nice thing to do.

Peter McCormack: No.  I generally, if it's just a personal insult, I tend to block or mute, I just don't care, so that doesn't work.  Aggression invalidates a criticism, I think, sometimes.  But what does work, two things work: memes work, because people find it funny and if you can laugh at yourself and if you can be self-critical, you can actually say, "Okay, have they got a point here?  Am I being a dick?  Okay, yeah, maybe you're right"; and also, constructive criticism.  I really like constructive criticism.  When somebody's like, "Do you know what, Pete, I love your show, but I think you got this wrong here", it makes me think, "Okay, yeah, maybe you've got a point".

Katherine Brodsky: I used to believe in full-on freedom of speech, you can say anything to me.  I've changed my mind.  I mean, I do believe in freedom of speech, but in terms of my own --

Peter McCormack: But you have the freedom to ignore them.

Katherine Brodsky: I have the freedom to ignore them, exactly.  So, where I've changed is this.  Before I would be tempted to engage with anybody, even if they went after me in a very hostile, rude way.  Now, I've actually shifted my point of view in this.  I will engage with anybody who challenges my view, but they have to do it in a respectful way.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's fair.

Katherine Brodsky: Otherwise, the block button, which I've never used in the past, I have had some practice at it.

Peter McCormack: Oh, no, I block fuckers all the time.  I blocked ten people last night!  Some people will say, "Just mute them, then they're shouting into the ether".  I'm like, "No, fuck them, block them, let them know".

Katherine Brodsky: Let them know.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Somebody just comes at me, "You're a fucking idiot", it's like, blocked, bye, done, see you.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, in my case, I was being heavily harassed and I wasn't sure, because my point of view in the past was you just let people do what they want to do.  But definitely, I've had some good advice on that.

Peter McCormack: Another trick I've found is to lean into things.  If there are criticisms of you that become regular, I tend to lean into it, or make a joke of it.  So, if someone's like, "You're a moron", I'm like, "Yeah, I know, and I've monetised it!"

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I was being called a white supremacist, which is ridiculous.

Peter McCormack: It's hard to lean into that.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, no, I sometimes meet somebody and say, "You should know that I'm a white supremacist".  I have this writing group I'm part of and one day I told them, "I should tell you, apparently I'm a white supremacist".  The reaction was over-the-top laughter.  That's the right reaction.

Peter McCormack: But it's good.  And sometimes I agree with people.  It's really good to agree with someone who's critical of you.  But if someone will come in and go, "You're a moron, you don't understand this", I'll just reply, "Facts!"

Katherine Brodsky: I love that actually, because what are they going to say to that?!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and also you can just take it to heart sometimes, but at least if you do it like that, you can laugh about it yourself.  But look, it's a minefield, and sometimes I've spent hours arguing with someone with like 12 followers whose avatar is a blue banana or something.  I'm like, "Why the fuck am I arguing?  This could be someone who's mentally ill and angry with the world".  So, sometimes you can waste your time a bit.

The filters on Twitter are so great.  If you take the filters down to get rid of people with no profile, people who've just joined, people you don't follow; get rid of all that and keep your day free.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, I've actually been surprised, there have been a couple of instances where it's started in a bit of a hostile way, and the person will actually apologise to me by the end of it.

Peter McCormack: Were you rational with them?

Katherine Brodsky: Very rational.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, being rational's a good thing.

Katherine Brodsky: I think a good tactic is really overexplaining everything to someone, walking them step by step.  That can actually be extremely effective, if you have the patience.

Peter McCormack: Well, like I say, laugh at yourself, agreeing with them, rationally talking through it.  What doesn't work: arguing back; I've done that!

Katherine Brodsky: Offensiveness, apologising, backing away, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Offensiveness, apologising, being a bit arrogant, which I don't imagine you would do, but I would do.  But those things just don't work.

Katherine Brodsky: In the inside of my head, lots of arrogance, as people very close to me get!

Peter McCormack: We haven't got to cancelling.

Katherine Brodsky: No.

Peter McCormack: I want to talk about cancel culture with you.

Katherine Brodsky: Okay, let's talk about cancel culture, let's do it.

Peter McCormack: How do we get rid of it, how do we create an un-cancel culture?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, my view is, and maybe I'm wrong, but cancel culture has really been allowed to happen because people have been so silent.  So, I think we need to really empower people, like if we can give them a community.  I think a lot of people who have been cancelled have found each other and are now a community together.  But when I was going through my own little cancel experience, what I found is a lot of people would write me these emails saying, "I've seen what's happening and it's wrong, but I feel so ashamed because I'm too scared to publicly defend you".

Peter McCormack: I know a lot about this.  Can you talk about what happened, your own cancel experience?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, that's fine.  I mean, I did write about it!  So, I ran a group for women writers, women in gender not conforming writers.  It was an offshoot of the bigger group, and I had about 30,000 members, it was on Facebook, and it was a private group at this point.  They've added themselves, so…

Peter McCormack: Okay, what was the goal of the group?

Katherine Brodsky: It was called the Binders Group.  So, part of it was because there were binders full of women.  They thought it had to do with, what's his name, the guy who was running for office?  He had binders full of women.  Republican.

Peter McCormack: Yes, I know who you mean.

Katherine Brodsky: But anyway, it was a helpful group; there were many offshoots.  My particular group that I launched was just jobs.  I only allowed job posting, that's all it was.

Peter McCormack: Sounds highly controversial!

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, super controversial!  And it was about for four or five years.  I even had a write-up in The New York Times about this mentorship programme that I ran for the group.  So, one day, somebody posts a job opening at Fox News, and that person just got this massive pile-on, and she's even very apologetic about how she posted.  She's like, "We're trying to change things, bring more diversity".  She had just personal attacks.

So, I posted a message saying, "Hey, guys, let's not have personal attacks and let's keep politics out of this group.  We've had a lot of coming apart; let's come together", what I thought was a pretty Kumbaya post, if anything.  Just from that post alone, that's where the white supremacist came, I got called ableist because I liked somebody's comment who said, "These women are crazy for piling on at me".  It was very raw at the time; now, it feels so silly and distant.

Peter McCormack: But when you're in the fire and something I sometimes say to people who maybe don't have a following is, when you're attacking someone and joining the mob, the one thing you don't understand is what it's like when the internet comes after you.  And, even though it's not the real world and you shouldn't give a fuck, and I give less of a fuck over time, when it first happens, it's rough.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, it was, it was really rough, and there's a lot of things that happened with it that I never even really talked about, because I was kind of mindful I didn't want to turn it into a victim narrative.  But people started harassing me, were trying to find my editor so they could cancel me from being able to be employed and saying, "We have long memories".  They would send me pictures of mobs with Tiki torches, downvoted all the content that I had online, commented on my Twitter.  Everything they could do, they tried to figure out how to hurt me and tried do articles.

They didn't name me in the ones that came out, which was interesting.  I think they were a little bit afraid of libel lawsuits, perhaps.  But yeah, it just exploded.  It was made worse by another thing, which was that I said I would open -- because they said that for me not to have politics is an act of violence and you can't have not politics in a group that's for women; that's inherently a political thing.  So I said, and this one I knew I would get a little bit of shit for it --

Peter McCormack: What did you do?

Katherine Brodsky: I didn't think I'd get that much, but I decided to open up the group.  So I said, "Well, if you believe that I can't have a group like this be non-political and I want it to be non-political, and by the virtue that it's just women, I'm going to open it up to everyone".  That's really where it exploded.

Peter McCormack: You kind of -- were you trying to make a point?

Katherine Brodsky: That was a part of it, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Which is fair, I think it's fair.

Katherine Brodsky: There was definitely a view.  I did think I was being fair, because I said, "I'll give you a month if you want to leave, or if you want to stay.  Also, if somebody wants to create another group that's just for women, feel free and I'll amplify it, and you can even have the name; we'll change the name of this one", so I thought I was being fair.

Peter McCormack: It's a bit like what Brian Armstrong's done with Coinbase.  He decided to remove the politics from his company and say, "We're a mission driven business", and this, by the way, is somebody who's taken a lot of criticism in the Bitcoin world; a lot of bitcoiners do not like Brian Armstrong for some of the things he's done, but park that to one side.  He said, "We're not going to be a political business.  We are a mission driven business, this is what our mission is.  Politics will not form part of what we do, it's not going to influence it internally".

Katherine Brodsky: Companies should not be political.

Peter McCormack: But they are.  And he offered a very generous severance package for anyone who said, "I don't want to work for this company".  I can't remember what it was, I should research it.  But he offered a very generous severance package for anyone who didn't agree, and let them leave.  He said, "We're a mission focused business", and I thought it was fucking brilliant what he did, and it sounds similar to what you've done there.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I really did think it was fair, because I was trying genuinely to be fair.  So, yes, I was sending a message to an extent.  I also feel, at this point, there's actually way more women in journalism than there is men.  So I felt, in some ways, I am contributing to a certain inequality that's being formed.  But I did it, because I wanted to open it up.  I didn't want it to have the political, and if that's what they believed, that's what they believed, and they had the right to have their own groups.

They created a counter-group that was called The Anti-Racist Group; they took the name 2.0, and then it's the anti-racist version!  And, if you read the rules for joining, they're quite interesting, and they actually ended up kicking out the person who created that group.

Peter McCormack: Oh, man.

Katherine Brodsky: So, there's so much there that was also about power and how other people came after me, who clearly were trying to manipulate me and lying.  I just never thought that people would think that way, so I didn't see it right away.  But then I was warned.

Peter McCormack: It's all about control.

Katherine Brodsky: It's control, and for me, this group, honestly it was community service.  I have zero benefits from running a group like this, it only sucks my time.  Certainly, there was nothing for me that was about power, but those people who were going after me, they really saw me as this villain, because they saw it in terms of power.  That's how they view the world.  And it was really very aggressive.  Then, I decided to write a Newsweek piece about it.  It was called, The Rise of the Righteous Online Bullies.

Peter McCormack: I mean, you only have to look into history to understand the implications of cancel culture.

Katherine Brodsky: Sure.  Well also, even that piece, I was scared to death to write it.  By making this even more public, I thought it was going to destroy my life, career, and my parents were trying to talk me out of it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean there's certain things you don't go to parents for advice for.  Somehow, one of those is modern life.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, and other people were like, "This is great".  Anyway, I did publish it, I did expect fully to be cancelled and all that kind of stuff.  Actually, that didn't happen at all, and I think most people who had common sense understood where I stood with it, even if it wasn't about Fox at all; it was about human decency.  And it was about, I don't have to like Fox; I don't.  I don't like CNN either.  I think they all do terrible work sometimes.  I've actually written for CNN!

Peter McCormack: Well, the thing is for me, I don't see much of a difference between CNN and Fox, I don't.

Katherine Brodsky: Fair enough.  I look at it more from the point of view of how well they do their job.  But also, it's not for me to say this or that, like why am I deciding?  Let people decide for themselves.  Nobody goes after LinkedIn; I'm sure LinkedIn posts lots of jobs about Fox News.

Peter McCormack: But the thing is is that, Fox News' conservatism is seen as something which is open, open to be cancelled.  Any kind of person --

Katherine Brodsky: Fox is killing people!

Peter McCormack: But CNN is the acceptable face of the other side of the mirror, and it's weird for me.  I can see the problems of both, doing the same job.  But it feels like the liberal groups have decided that they can cancel people.  That's it.  If we have these views we don't like, if there's words being used we don't like, if there's certain opinions we don't like, there's certain ways of operating your business we don't like, we're going to cancel you.  But it's one of the most destructive things we have in society right now, because we need free speech, we need people to be able to express themselves.

Katherine Brodsky: And again, we need ideas to be able to do battle with each other so that they can arrive at a better place.  And, yeah, I mean I've tried to understand the points of views of people that feel like Fox is responsible for killing people.  It's a little bit difficult.  I understand they can be causing harm in the sense that they're spreading false information and such.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but those people, do we need to talk about, I think it's The New York Times reporting for the Iraq War?  I mean, let's have the uncomfortable conversations.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, yeah, you're right, it's very one-sided.  I think somebody tried to call me out on a public forum, and it took me a little while to realise that that's what was happening, so I started answering her question not realising that's what was happening.  But the way I was going to answer her question, because yeah, she thought that Fox was doing these terrible things, and, "Okay, cool, what are these things and let's address those things?  Are they printing false facts?  What about other publications?"

Peter McCormack: Stop trying to be rational.

Katherine Brodsky: I know.  I think that's the problem with the world in a way.  The irrationality of --

Peter McCormack: It's the screaming mob.

Katherine Brodsky: It's the screaming mob, which has been amplified.  I don't think I recognised how much damage social media has done, and I saw the positivity of it too, like it instils you, but it also has created this mob.  I'd love to talk to a psychologist about this, because mob psychology's really fascinating, but usually we think about mobs out in the street.  People behave very irrationally, very differently, than they would if they weren't part of this mob in the streets.  You look at sports riots and things like that.

But now you're in this online digital age, perhaps there is something similar to that psychology.  Perhaps something does happen that causes people to lose that rationality, to join these forces and find this weird desire to have this consensus.  Things are complicated.  There isn't just one answer for a lot of things.  There are a lot of things I'm completely undecided on. 

Like, we were talking about abortion earlier on.  I used to only hear the religious argument, but then I've heard some other arguments that are not based in religion at all, and actually they're fairly rational.  And ultimately, where you sit on that side of the debate is going to be, to some extent, just emotional to your core value way of feeling.

Peter McCormack: Well, I always think the debate is not a debate, it's not a pro-life, pro-choice debate; I think it's a time debate.  That's what I think it is.

Katherine Brodsky: A lot of people do actually.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because if you speak to most people and they say, "I'm pro-choice", and you say, "Okay, so what do you think about somebody who is nine months pregnant and they're due to have a caesarean tomorrow and they have an abortion today?"  They're like, "Well, no, they shouldn't be doing that; that's terrible".

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, I don't know a single person who is pro-life who thinks -- well, there are some exceptions.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there are some who think full-term abortions.  Separate medical and certain situations you get there, there's generally speaking a convenience abortion.

Katherine Brodsky: I mean, I definitely understand people who think you should have it at any time, but that's a small -- and this is kind of the problem we're facing.  We have these very small groups of very extreme points of views on either side, but those people represent such a tiny number.  But because their voices have become so loud, they kind of run the conversation.

Peter McCormack: Have you heard that term, "The 80% exhausted"?

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: There's an article, I'll try and dig it out.  It was like, 10% are extreme left, 10% are extreme right, and everyone else is the 80% exhausted, and it's these two who are fighting and arguing and deciding everything that we're all having to put up with, and that's probably where the cancel people are.

Katherine Brodsky: Absolutely, and this is what I've come to believe.  Because at first, it feels like everyone is against you, because there's so many people, but I counted how many people left my group, because my group is still going.  Actually, it is still for women, because I've decided that it is how I created it originally and I did try to be fair in that way.  I tried to not let the other people, the loud voices, dictate, but the sensible people I did listen to.

But with that one, so I had about 30,000 members.  When I counted how many people left, it was 1%.  It's tiny.  It's the loud, aggressive.  But that 1% is so powerful, because even though they really should hold no power, it makes people think that they're (a) the majority, (b) they silence everyone else.  Everyone else is completely terrified. 

Peter McCormack: Bullies.

Katherine Brodsky: But when you see it happen to you, you can say anything that's slightly wrong and "Bam!"

Peter McCormack: They're scared of the bully, but these generally are, I think, quite stupid people, because they don't understand the historical context of their behaviour of cancelling.  You only have to read a few history books to understand the historical context of cancelling and what it actually means for society.  I want to know how we -- look, I think there's certain things that you can be cancelled for and perhaps are okay, certain laws being broken, or certain abuse.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, laws, or there are people who -- this always gets conflated, right.  They call it "accountability culture"; it's not the same thing.  If somebody literally does something horrible, like truly abhorrent, yes, there are consequences.  That's not usually what we're talking about.  One thing is we have the same punishment for everyone regardless of what their crime is, and also there are a lot of people being punished who really haven't done anything wrong.

Peter McCormack: We're talking about opinion-based cancelling; that's what we're talking about.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: But that's the thing I want to know how we remove that, how do we stop the cancelling?  Even somebody who, people have tried to cancel me, I know that everyone I speak to, they think it's bullshit, they think this is bullshit.  How do we end this culture?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I think there's only a few things that I can think of right now.  So one is, yes, people have to not be afraid to stand up to the bullies.  That's the only way to end the bully, right.

Peter McCormack: It takes us back to Rogan, right, and people who are willing to lead from the front.

Katherine Brodsky: Correct, exactly.  And also, there are people who are maybe in positions, you hear all the time, like academic positions, for example, where the students can rally for their professors, but also sometimes there are lawsuits that go on.  There's been some people who maybe have been harassed, their professors have been hearing about where they've been harassed.

Peter McCormack: Well, this is what happened to Bret Weinstein.  Evergreen College, he was harassed by a woke mob.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, but his students supported him, and that's kind of interesting, but the institution did not.

Peter McCormack: No.

Katherine Brodsky: This is the difference.  I've talked to a lot of people who've faced these things lately, and some of them have had vastly different experiences.  So, one person I talked to, basically his institution absolutely supported him, wrote a letter, almost F you, to the mob.  Others took part in the harassment.

So, l was just reading today about this woman at a university where she's suing them for the harassment.  And so, that's another place where people can support somebody like that, where they can financially support the lawsuits, for example.  I had a situation, for example, where somebody was literally slandering, making things up about me, hurting my reputation, slandering me, blatant, not a misinterpretation, making it up.  I did consider suing the person.  I don't want to go through a lawsuit, it wasn't an emotional thing, I don't care about her.  However, there has to be a consequence for making something up; that was my feeling.

Peter McCormack: But then you get into the difficult area of free speech.  Is it made up?  I mean, I'm involved in a lawsuit myself at the moment, because I said some words about somebody which I think were fair and accurate.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, that's different, you're saying an opinion.  She could say her opinion.  She could say, "I think Katherine is a horrible person"; that's okay.

Peter McCormack: No, mine are accusations of -- I can't talk about it. 

Katherine Brodsky: But are they true?

Peter McCormack: I mean, I think yes, they are true.  I can't talk about it, but yeah.

Katherine Brodsky: Fair enough, but in my situation, it was provably false.  It wasn't -- you could look at the report.  There was never anything said.  It was impossible for it to be real or true, completely impossible.  So, that was made up.

Peter McCormack: But this is why you need your own cohort who support you.  Do you know what I think is the issue with these people?  I think they're the weakest people in society.  I think people who go out and join a mob -- I think if somebody is a strong character, they --

Katherine Brodsky: Well, they're seeking power, of course.

Peter McCormack: But people of strong character want to sit down, debate, discuss, work through with these people.  The people who join a mob, they're of weak character, they're insecure, they seek power and I think they're the weakest people in society.  But, how the fuck do we change this culture to say, "I don't want any more of this.  Fuck this shit"?

Katherine Brodsky: But I personally have come to the conclusion that it is the complicity, it is the fear, and I get it.  I don't judge people for it.  When I had people writing to me saying how ashamed they were, I'd write them back and I'd say, "It means a lot to me, I really appreciate it", and I really meant it.  After further reflection though, I thought about it, and that is how we got here.  So, if we want to change it, it does take a certain courage.

Courage is an interesting word.  I thought I would see these people stand up to things and I thought, "Man, they have so much courage", and I would try to ask them, "How did you find this courage?" and I don't think it's courage.

Peter McCormack: Oh, it's a lack of courage.

Katherine Brodsky: Well, I've come to the conclusion that those people who do stand up to things, it's because they have the sense of moral obligation of right or wrong, and that should be what's dictating.  So, I do understand somebody in a position, especially if they have a family and a job.  I do get it.

Peter McCormack: Hey, listen, there was video footage based in Victoria, Australia, where a guy was saying to the policeman, "What are you doing?  Why are you part of this?"  He was like, "Because I've got kids and I've got family and I've got to make sure I can feed them", which is a broken system again.

Katherine Brodsky: It is a broken system.  So, maybe I don't have beyond that individual responsibility answer, and maybe supporting people, if they do lawsuits, where the institutions are working aggressively against them and stifling their speech or cancelling them, I don't know if I have a better solution than that or suggestion than that.  Do you?

Peter McCormack: Well, no I don't.  I think it needs more people to stand up and be honest, and I think we are seeing that change in media at the moment, where the individual, as a media, has taken on the institution of media.  Rogan versus CNN I think is a great example.  I think they've done things to try and cancel him, I think it's soft cancelling, they're trying to do, and they're losing that battle.  I think the more wins we get for the individuals against these fuckers, the better it is.  I think the more we talk about it, the better.

But I also think parts of society have to play out and crash and burn, so people realise this was not what we were meant to do.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, I mean that might be the case.  I would like it not to be, but it might have to be the case.  For me, I was also told, in terms of my own personal risk with that, you're just a person, you're not going to change anything, and you're just going to sacrifice your own livelihood and career for nothing.  I guess my answer to that was, "So, yeah, I'm not a hugely famous person or anything like that", but when I speak more honestly and when I take a certain position, it does, in the little group that I influence, it does change things.

I had people reach out to me who (a) wouldn't feel as alone, (b) there's people who've reached out to me and said, "I saw this happen and I stood up for this person".  I think even though we're just one individual, we encounter a lot of people in our lives, and if those people spread it to other people, hopefully it spreads.  And I know it's like a super Pollyanna view in some ways, but --

Peter McCormack: No, think of it like a band, like music.  When somebody picks up a guitar and they meet with their friends, they form a band and they turn round to their parents and say, "Look, I'm going to be in a band".  The parents are like, "Why are you going to do that?  You're not going to make it.  Go and get a fucking proper job", but they do and they write some songs and they can play a local venue and two people turn up.

I interviewed this band, The Ghost Inside.  They used to tell me, they used to go to a show, 15 people would be there and they knew they had to sell three shirts so they could afford the gas to get to the next one.  But they said, they would tell a few more people and they would tell a few more people, and then eventually they'd get 100 people to show, and 1,000 to show. 

If you stick to your guns and you're authentic, you might start with an audience of one, and that becomes 5, 50, 100, and then you have your 1,000 subscribers and you're earning $100,000 a year.

Katherine Brodsky: That's right.  And I have found the other thing with it, even though my Twitter following is not nearly as impressive as yours, but I do have certain people who follow me who have huge Twitter followings, and they often will amplify certain messages.  So, this is why I've been valuing Twitter more lately, is because I actually have the opportunity to reach more people.  And the reason those people do it, I think, is because they want to support somebody when they are speaking out for something.  So, I think that's an important thing too.

Peter McCormack: So, let me ask you a question, final question?

Katherine Brodsky: Please.

Peter McCormack: Why did people vote for Trump?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, there's many reasons!

Peter McCormack: You don't have to answer it.

Katherine Brodsky: I can, but there's many reasons.  I think that's the biggest thing, it's like it somebody going to go into a whole list of reasons, or are they going to see that whole group of people as just this one thing?

Peter McCormack: Well, I trust people who look for nuance and I always try and do it myself, and I fail repeatedly.  Even this morning, I was a bit of a shit to Mark Cuban, tweeting about him.  I built a strawman.

Katherine Brodsky: You want a steelman, a silkman, there's another term.

Peter McCormack: I've never heard of a silkman.

Katherine Brodsky: It's this guy, I wish I remembered his name right now.  Angel is his first name, but he's created this thing called The Silkman Argument.  I really like how he approaches things.

Peter McCormack: I'm going to have to read that.  Look, it's great to get to know you, it's great to meet you.  Thanks for coming and hanging out with the bitcoiners.  I think you'll find a captive audience in there for some of your work.  I do love your writing.  Please tell people where they can find you?

Katherine Brodsky: Well, thank you first of all very much, and now that I'm part of the cult, I'm in.  And, in terms of where people can find me, so I'm @mysteriouskat on Twitter.  I also still never go by the name, Kat, just FYI, because I'm a dog person!  And also, you can find my link to my Substack on my Twitter, but it's either katherinebrodsky.substack.com or randomminds.substack.com.

Peter McCormack: And Brodsky's B-R-O-D-S-K-Y.

Katherine Brodsky: You're good!

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, I mean pretty fucking good!

Katherine Brodsky: You know what, people butcher it.

Peter McCormack: You know what it was?  I looked it up.  You know when you were coming to meet us, I looked it up and I was thinking to myself, "How do you pronounce it?"

Katherine Brodsky: You know, if you mispronounced it, I could have said it's a microaggression!

Peter McCormack: Fuck that stuff!  So, once you said it then, I was like, "I've just remembered the spelling". 

Katherine Brodsky: You actually pronounced it perfectly.

Peter McCormack: Is it like it should be really Russian?  I can't do the Russian accent.

Katherine Brodsky: Yeah, it's funny, I won't say my real name on here, but I have a legal name that's a little bit different.

Peter McCormack: A bit more Russian.

Katherine Brodsky: A bit more Russian, and people always butcher it.  And, I should start accusing them of microaggressions, but really I'm half unsure how to pronounce it myself, because I say it so rarely!

Peter McCormack: Well, listen, thank you for coming on, this was awesome.  I wish you the best.  Stay in touch, I'm sure we're going to hang out again and speak again in the future, but keep doing what you're doing and I look forward to the things you write in the future.

Katherine Brodsky: Thank you so much.  It's fun and I'm enjoying your show, I've been watching!

Peter McCormack: Thank you.