Engaging Life with Courage and Intelligence
Welcome to Veritonia — a totally fictional modern nation where truth is flexible, confidence beats correctness, and memes count as peer-reviewed research. This short cinematic satire explores how facts get “professionally improved,” arguments replace thinking, and news guarantees certainty — not accuracy. But some people still dare to ask the most dangerous question: “Is this…
How do smart people fall for confidence tricks like grandparent, lottery, and romance scams? How do smart people buy into Ponzi schemes and crypto-ATM cons? How do smart people believe totally unfounded theories about vaccinations, ethnic conspiracies, the Denver Airport is the Illuminati’s headquarters, a pizza shop in Washington, DC, is the center of a…
The central premise of this website is based on the belief that political, economic, and religious extremism forces those on the boundaries of reality to circle their wagons, irrationally defend their extremism, and create painful mental states for themselves. Many of these folks are “tag-along” extremists. While “true” extremists proudly display their extreme beliefs, “tag-alongs”…
In any relationship, whether between two or 300,000,000 people, if there is no shared understanding of truth…then the relationship has a problem. If a husband believes that all his children should be kept in cages between the ages of three and six, and the wife fervently disagrees, then the couple will have a significant problem….
White Christians who resist social evolution typically focus on the Old Testament to define how societies should be organized. Historically, they used the Old Testament to defend slavery, capital punishment (an eye for an eye), male dominance, and other religious ideas recorded as long as 12,000 years ago. Despite eons of discrimination, most women followed…
In this short cinematic story, a young American couple shares how emotionally charged online content slowly shaped their fears, beliefs, and worldview—without them even realizing it. Through their experience, the video explores how disinformation uses identity, nostalgia, and emotional triggers to manipulate audiences. Not just politically—emotionally. This isn’t about blaming or shaming.It’s about awareness. This…
Lucky for American revolutionaries in 1776, the English king had a persistent and recurring mental problem. King George III was not an absolute monarch like King Henry VIII, but he still had considerable power and influence over English affairs. The following is a video about King George III and his personal challenges. As Mark Twain…
Extremism often arises when people or groups believe that the existing social or political order is deeply unjust and that only radical change—sometimes by force—can fix it. It typically grows out of a mix of historical grievances, economic inequality, cultural tensions, fear of losing identity or power, and the appeal of simple answers to complex…
I have been puzzled by the popularity of political leaders who openly violate American laws and customs. In the past, such behavior would have been an automatic disqualifier. It is similar to the popularity of the outlaws in past eras. Outlaws, such as Jesse James, were celebrated by many, despite their apparent transgressions. It would…
Did you ever participate in a white elephant exchange at Christmas? Do you know someone who bought a piece of property that became a white elephant? Psychologists even use the term to mean “any truth, emotion, or experience that feels too threatening for the relationship to last.” It has evolved into a catchall term for…