Rebecca Lemov is a historian of science at Harvard University and has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute. Her research explores data, technology, and the history of human and behavioral sciences. Her new book, "The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control and Hyper-Persuasion," is available now.https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324075264 Get anything delivered on Uber Eats. www.ubereats.com Go to ExpressVPN.com/ROGAN to get 4 months free! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Rebecca Lemov and what is her research focus?
All right. Hello, Rebecca. Very nice to meet you.
Hi, Joe. Very nice to meet you, too.
So, first of all, what got you interested in mind control?
Chapter 2: What drew Rebecca Lemov to study mind control and brainwashing?
Well, so this is a question I've been asking myself just because I find myself after two and a half decades of having this topic. That initially seemed pretty niche and unusual, and not many people were interested or many people were skeptical about it, but... I thought it seemed like it embodied some of the more extreme.
If you could look at the way people are shaped by their environments and by what parts of your life are determined by you and what parts are determined by outside forces, that mind control would be a perfect area to investigate that because it's so extreme, especially if you looked at
particular cases so I because I'd done my dissertation at UC Berkeley on the history of behavioral engineering and how you know these kind of models for creating a society of control and encouragement in various ways like a behaviorist kind of dream and it seemed like the next step was to to look at something like brainwashing or mind control.
When you first started studying it, was it a less public sort of curiosity? Because now a lot of people are very much interested. I blame the Internet, mostly. I probably had a lot to do with it, too.
You and the Internet.
A lot of people on the internet are – because over time, people have gotten to know about MKUltra and a bunch of different programs that our own United States government was involved in where they were working on mind control. But what – like initially, what drew you to it?
Well, I guess I always have been drawn to topics that seemed unusual maybe for a professor to be looking into. I mean, at the time, if you look at a Google engram for the word mind control or brainwashing, they were very low around the turn of the century or the 1990s. after there was a peak of interest in the 70s, and it just really fallen off.
But I guess I was interested because it just seems so unusual. And maybe there was something there that people hadn't really thought about. And at the time, these documents weren't readily available. And like you say, people weren't really looking into it. So I just thought it seemed like a rich area for research and research.
I'm also interested in connecting my personal, I've always been interested in connecting my personal, I guess, my goals for life with what I research. So I thought it's almost like a philosophical and existential question of how much we're controlled or how much we might be controlled. And it seemed important to look at some of the more extreme cases if you could.
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Chapter 3: How does meditation relate to mind control and personal autonomy?
How did it flatter you?
I mean, it just told me that I had really good taste in music. What do you like? It was Santa Fe by Bob Dylan, which is... It's a great song. It's a great song. And it doesn't really... So then it quoted back to me. She said the same thing. She said, great song. You have great taste, Becca. Something like... Then she quoted the song to me and completely wrong lyrics.
And I was like, no, that's not correct. And she said... Oh, that's OK. You know, just blithely not correcting, but sort of then spinning back to me some other missing, you know, just just wrong thing.
Right.
But still in such a charming way that you can really see. And this was just a few interactions. You can see why people describe these intents. And there are three lawsuits, at least three, but about children having children. you know, very either deadly or extremely damaging interactions with these bots.
Really?
One is a case in Florida of a nine-year-old girl who was, whose bot, because they tend towards sexualized or intimate relationships, they're programmed that way often.
Do they know your age?
Well, you can – there's some controls have been subsequently maybe put on, but you can – they're actually directed at children sometimes. I mean, there's supposed to be an age limit, but I guess a 9-year-old had an account. They're now – the parents are now suing. But anyway, hypersexualized content addressed to this small child and –
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