Engaging Life with Courage and Intelligence
Although we normally associate “Ruh Roh” with the cartoon series Scooby-Doo, the dog on The Jetsons was the first to utter this famous phrase of surprise. While many Democrats said or thought “ruh roh” when Biden initially announced he would run for a second term, many Trump soybean farmers in the Midwest are now quietly…
This short video introduces a series of videos about how Americans react to obvious, provable deception, lies, and gaslighting by politicians. The quotation attributed to the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan was “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” This belief might have been false in 1973, but…
This video discusses the downward spiral of people who suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. They tend to avoid researching and thinking about issues. Instead, they latch on to simplistic and often wrongheaded explanations and solutions. Moreover, they usually find others who have followed the same path and trust questionable authorities over mainstream authorities. In the…
The current administration preaches the gospel of isolationism and placing America’s self-serving short-term interests above all else. It is an inward-leaning nationalism that downplays alliances and global norms in favor of short-term U.S. advantage. It favors flashy short-term bilateral deals over stable, long-term multilateral commitments. This video challenges the myth that short-term, bilateral attacks on…
This video depicts a modern issue concerning smartphone addiction. It compares lab experiments with our primate cousins to human “experiments” with human children. Here is the direct address for this video: https://youtu.be/VO1uRMTZB_E
We have misinformation and disinformation; the difference is that the first is simply an innocent mistake, while the second is a deliberate act to deceive, manipulate, or harm. Although not widely used, we also have mismanagement and dismanagement. We’ve all worked in organizations mismanaged by unprepared or lazy managers—dismanagement parallels disinformation. Dismanagement is the deliberate…
Disinformation engineers and their wealthy overlords target “easy” voters in the arena we now call democracy. After democracy is supplanted by authoritarian control, their need to persuade and convince will be unnecessary. They will be like the throwaway politicians from Trump’s first term (e.g., Jeff Sessions and Michael Pence). How do these victims not see…
In the tradition of truth and history, this video examines the psychological connection between a boy with an out-of-control ego and his impact on the course of history. Abe Lincoln and Mark Twain introduce the video by asking why America suddenly wants to take over the peaceful and cooperative land of Greenland. Direct web address…
Ideologies and beliefs offer certainty. Reality offers consequences. In moments of stability, fixed belief systems can appear wise and efficient. But history shows a recurring pattern: when conditions change suddenly, ideology often fails — and reality takes over. In this Truth Matters episode, we examine three defining crises: 1) The Great Depression (1932), when economic…
Shakespeare’s Hamlet dramatizes the tragedy associated with madness, paranoia, and deception. Unfortunately, all Americans have become unwilling actors in a similar tragedy. As an aside and to quote Polonius, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.” From day to day, the current administration spews nonsense, and more dangerously, acts in bizarre and…