Psychologist at the ucla school of management, where he studies cognitive bias and how people and mentioned their future selves. He also contributes opeds to the New York Times and wall street journal. A historian of american political rhetoric at texas a m university and a editor. She is also the author of the rhetoric of her rogue expectations, establishing the obama presidency. And currently at work on her next book titled, demagogue for president , the rhetorical genius of donald trump. [laughter] she will be talking about that later. Emerituss a professor of social psychology at uc santa tripand the coauthor of a propaganda can the everyday use and abuse of persuasion. , age of propaganda, the use and abuse of persuasion. [laughter] so, thank you for being here. , istheme of this panel is contemporary propaganda damaging our Attention Spans, relationships, our ability to ponder bigger questions . Four does it offer some benefits , like nudging us to eat healthier, save the earth, or even vote . Is it hold those things . Hal . Thank you for moderating. So much depends on how we define propaganda. Defined a certain way, we could save it is all bad. Defined another way that we could say there are uses where this could help people do the things they say they want to do. Where my research comes in is to say there is often this cap between how people want to live their life sports say they want to live their lives in the way they actually do. I want to wake up earlier and exercised, i dont. So how do we get people to do those things . I think we will touch on some of these topics, but there are messages that we can use and that marketers do use that do try to help people. And it is ok to believe that. The definition when i looked up really shadyunds and skanky. Especially of a biased or misleading nature used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. That sounds awful. But, is it always that awful . It is not. Anthony . I have a specific definition. First of all, it is defined in a lot of different ways. It could be just promoting aside , for a more nefarious definition. Plays on message that your emotions and prejudices. It is typically short, like a soundbite, photo, vivid image, and it is designed to speak to fear,ut, arousal, and he can also speak to your prejudices. It is against that kind of person that i dont like. If you think about it from a history standpoint, how do you do propaganda . There was a great interview by bill moyers that i person who was the propaganda minister for joseph goebbels, and he said his role was to simplify, make it agreeable and entertaining, then repeat, repeat, repeat, so that is the formula. The question is can it ever be done for good. Obviously it can. Fear about tooth decay raise fear about tooth to gate and that will get somebody to go to the dentist. And so it can be used in those kinds of ways, but the problem is when people feel like they have been manipulated, it can come back to bite them. Second of all, you are not getting a discussion of the issues. The democracy is founded on deliberate persuasion, discussion, negotiation, understanding the core issues the country faces, and if i am constantly appealing to your emotions one after the other, that debate is not happening. It also creates a situation where the next propagandist who can appeal to your emotions even again and mislead you undo everything the previous propagandist had done. You said that americas public fear is broken, because we communicate as propagandists, t know the rules of productive discussion and debate, so what are the rules . Thatrt of the problem is we spend so much time in our own media bubbles and private sphere that we fail to join organizations, and we have done this over generations, that used to teach Us Democratic skills, democratic decisionmaking. Those are skills we have to learn. I am in a communications department, and there are Communications Departments around the country that have labs for civil discourse, where students learn how to organize and process these four fair, delivered a discussion, so we can join organizations that teach this. The Kettering Foundation is a great one where they have a civil issues forum, and they teach the skills of how to design a process that is fair to all sides, that allows people to feel like and actually contribute to decisionmaking, that allows people a fair amount of time to talk and reach consensus and decide how we should value what objects come in how we should make decisions. Onecant say there is anyect way of organizing i conversation, but we know what works. So what has happened is weve failed to do what we know we should do, and that is because largely we are taught to communicate as propagandists. And there are the propagandists like you were talking about who are powerful and run nations or have the ear of the people that run nations, and then there are the rest of us. We are all talking to each other and at each other, and facebook, and we are using propaganda and we are terrible, i think i hear you saying, at knowing how to really talk to each other. Of it is that we are terrible at it, but it is in waste ways not our fault. The algorithms that control, maybe not her nextdoor app, but what you see on facebook or twitter, those algorithms are designed to promote the most emotive, most outrageous content, right . And the notifications that you areon your app, those designed to appeal to the dopamine receptors in your brain commit to get you addicted to having notifications. Sometimes you will go back over and over again, looking for more positive feedback, right, because you are addicted to it. So it trains you. It literally trains you to speak as set propagandist on social media, right . It will only show your content if you are outrageous. It will only show you that other people have enjoyed your content if you go back enough times and say enough outrageous things, right . They call it the outreach industry for a reason. It is designed not to facilitate democratic deliberation, but to keep you engaged. I guess in some ways my business, the media, is kind of place with this too. Evily asy not as you are talking about. When we put something online, and we get dingdong google if we say, woman caught without her turns outbar, and it to be a story about sanitation. We cant do that. But we do look for something provocative that relates to what , anding on in the story then we are rewarded on google. And sensationalism is nothing you haveedia, but when a finite number of producers of sensational content, that is one thing, but we have an infinite, right, and infinite number of sensational content producers today, right . Every single one of us produces sensationalist content. So i so i want to go back to the idea that sometimes propaganda like in marketing can be for good. Storyhinking about the out about how the 10,000 steps, we are all supposed to walk 10,000 steps a day for her health, it turns out that was never scientifically back. That was promoted by backed. That was promoted by a company that wanted you to use, to walk 10,000 steps. It turns out you only need to work 4400 steps. So maybe that was ok. They did that to make more money or to get you to think, oh my god, i have got to get this good,ter, but isnt that that the byproduct was that we all walked more steps . Things. Ghlights two we have to ask what is the thention behind disbursement of information, right . That there are millions of Plastic Straws thrown away every day. Where does this come from . Somebody figured out this was a fourth grade science project that originally put out the number four or five years ago, so there wasnt an intention to be nefarious. It just happened to be that information spread. I dont know where the 10,000 steps came from exactly. We have to ask if it was intentionally misleading or it would somehow miss read over time within sort of ask the well, if that is moving people in the right direction healthwise, is that a problem . You know, this becomes a real philosophical debate, because we can ask, well, what do people want to do . Is there some sort of agency taken away when messaging is put out like this and it is people somehow feel like they are doing something against their free will, or they dont even realize it, and that opens up a can of worms that is hard to grapple with. I think for the most part that a err onmessaging that may the side of getting people to do something good come when done right, allows people the power to do this sort of thing or not. It is just that it is not just them in the right direction, in the direction they say they want to go in. Can you think of an example of something where it is marketing, but also making us do the right thing . I think about a lot of the work in the behavioral economics or social psychology space in the retirement world. So some of this is messaging, and summit this structuring choices for people so that they end up doing something that can help them. You look at 401 k participation , if you default someone can to contribute into their account, they are much more likely to do so. They have to make a decision not to contribute rather than contribute. Or if you default them into automatically escalating their contributions year after year, that feature has been adding about 7 billion annually to American Retirement accounts. That is amazing. That worked on me, actually. That is actually a really gd example. Know, anthony,i you feel this is a messagedense environment, and im sure you all feel that way. We all feel that way. Thousands of commercials, things mail. Internet, junk how do we pick our way through that environment . Senders are the c propagandist. That is the rub. It is impossible to think about every one of them. That is the issue we face as citizens. One social psychologist tried to keep track of the number of persuasive messages he got in a day, and he gave up around 9 30 the topause he was over of his clicker. So how do you think about each one of those . Reasonsone of the key why propaganda can be effective. So then what you do, what we all do, we start to use heuristics, simple rules to decide whether that is a good thing or bad thing, true or false. It came from my Political Party committed must be good. It came from their Political Party, it must be bad. You start to use those simple heuristics. It agrees with me. It is something i want to be true, and that is the rub. The interesting side of it is that we also have at our fingertips all the information we need to be able to sort out these issues. The problem is we dont have the time, and we dont often times have the skills. On facebook, somebody will post something, and i will google it. There are things like fact check that will tell you, so there are tools, but not enough of them. Reasons whyof the propaganda is so effective. We get all this stuff, all this information. , has it made our Attention Span shorter, or are ageust, we are just in an where this is all we want to look at . It certainly has cut the amount of time given to a specific topic. So if you look back at the amount of time a president ial candidate would have had in 1968. On the evening news, they would get two to three minutes were all they did was talk. Are luckye 1990s you to get about seven or eight seconds of the candidate saying something. W we just get tweets soundbites. And that has no effect. Imagine if i was a political candidate and i wanted to convince you of any kind of issue. I only have seven seconds to do it. How do i do that . Leftlso half if you have i Say Somethingor sev seconds and half if you leave, and another half come in. It is impossible for me to outline the tradeoffs you would have on health care or any of these, why we should go to war or why we should go to war. So that is the obstacle we face. And yet it also feels to me has started town halls with president ial candidates come the democratic candidates, so i feel like i am seeing them constantly. In cnn, again, is covering all the rallies, the front runners, so i feel like i am seeing them a lot and hearing them a lot, although i am not sure this early on that really is making much of an impact on me, you know . Because even though it is longer, there is too much of it. It is always like it is not organized, it seems like, but let me ask you about your books. You wrote one book on obama, and now you artwork on your next book about trump. President s,k of two politics aside, who are different people. Obama, the ticketless the ,easured thinker meticulous measured thinker. Has dinner, then he goes to his office for five hours and works through briefing papers, whereas trump finishes dinner and retreats to his bedroom and watches fox news in each french fries. And yet, i think, both of these men are masterful politicians. They got people to elect him president. How would you compare them as propagandists or persuaders . It is an interesting question. I think obama and the seven almonds was a joke. It speaks to this essential thing about him, which is he is very measured and controlled, so of course he would have just lmonds, or whatever it was. So two very different speakers in terms of style. Obama always is focused on the facts, policy. He uses what we can think of as soaring, high style, transcendent rhetoric, what we all have in common, rather than what divides us, very optimistic and hopeful, yes we can, that kind of thing. , as all president s do, as the nations he wrote into 2000 ro has the nations he into 2008, and that he was the right hero for the moment. That is what i wrote about obama , and edited collection of people explaining why they thought that obama was going to be the right hero to save america during this national crisis. Trump also ran as a hero. You might not think that. My book is about trump running as a demagogue. If you look up the word demagogue in the oxford in this dictionary come the first definition says a political leader that defends the peoples interest against the other part of the state, a hero. The second definition says a political leader uses polarizing propaganda for their own gains against the other parts of the state, a villain, right . Figure, ran as a heroic just like obama did. Some people who followed him to his fans come to see him still that way. They see him defending their interests against the corrupt other part of the state. Other people dont see him that way, as a heroic figure. They see him as the billing figure. Either way, trump is this main character who has been occupying all this space in our heads since 2015. So now, with the next campaign, the next election coming up, how do we navigate our way through all of this . What advice would you give us to be smart, i dont know, consumers . Of propaganda or trumps rhetoric . What advice would you give us to be smart consumers of all the propaganda, all the democratic contenders, and about trump, and then how do we take that to a dinnertable conversation . [laughter] in order to convince people. It is hard because the propaganda is so good at this point, right . ,t is all designed to have us as you said, to not reflect critically upon the information we are sharing and amplifying. It is designed to push buttons, outrage, and then react. It is difficult to have the presence of the information you are being provided and the information you are sharing. I have to check myself and sometimes i delete tweets. I say i should not have said that. I am very careful about how i communicate. If a video makes me cry or makes me laugh, i will let them know. I was a watch it if you want to left. This is sad. Watch this if you need to cry. I know those videos go viral because of the way they feed off our emotions. Therefore, they persuade us in ways that we may not be cognizant of. My best advice is to be super vigilant. That is hard. The platform and the technology us fromgned to keep thinking critically. That youso wrote should be aware of anything that plays on your emotions or makes you feel guilty. Shouldnt those things be good . Like what you said about saving for retirement. When you are receiving messages, Pay Attention to your emotions and how your thinking. All of a sudden i was not thinking or feeling moral outrage three seconds ago. Sk yourself why if you go to a sales situation and someone says you will be able to buy that two days from now, you start a feel panicky. That could be a clue that somebody is trying to use propaganda against you. Same as when youre watching the news. Feel designed to make you anxious. It keeps you tuned into that news channel through the commercials to find out what happens next. Bono. Used to say cui it means to profit. If youre noticing that you are or manipulated, you probably are being. Think about who is manipulating you. One other thing. Maybe feeling guilty is the right emotion. Somebody might have been suffering that needs your help. Back andto take a step ask why you are feeling that. Is it a legitimate emotion or it . Body playing on i have to defend newspapers because much of the news may be we believeducing but it is what is really happening. About newsthinking channels where the music is intense and you feel anxious listening to the music and the chirons going. There is music that is designed to keep you there and have you kept there. I cant watch careful news. Heart race. That youreay i cant watch cable news. It makes my heart race. You say that we dont join clubs anymore but it is also this forum where people wish each other happy birthday and express sympathy when family members die and pets die and congratulate you when you graduate from something. Community . A good cant that be good propaganda . Maybe it was. The developing question is is it still. We know so little about the way the algorithms work in terms of what gets displayed and when. To run a Research Study on facebook where we displayed we thought we were running a wellcontrolled scientific experiment. It turns out that facebook took over and optimized the messages. It turns out our one message worked really well for middleage women and the midwest and we had no idea that would be the case. But is not what we wanted to be the case. Those are like ads. Yes but the same of rhythms are at work for the messages posts andost and jen anthony posts. Given the story that we are reposting that we had nothing to do with. Facebook and other social media platforms know what is going to get the clicks and the views and the outrage. Ishink part of this question not only how can we change the way that we react to these things . The people in this room, this is not enough to make an impact. We need social media platforms to figure out ways to change the algorithm so that people are more mindful consumers of messages. How do we do that . I dont have an answer. There is research right now that is by looking into how we can do this. M. I. T. Has done some fascinating we hat is it mean when work about this. Mean when we share things . We rationalize and say that it sounds really antitrump. It is not that we rationalize things, the people who tend to reshare, retweet and consume the news are the ones doing so in an impulsive and not deliberate manner. There is an easy way to measure if you are more impulsive or deliberative. It asks questions. Wasteing like running a and passing the person in second or third. The impulsive answer is now you are in first place. If you think about it, now you are in second place because you past the person in second place. People differ on this. These people are more likely to share fake news and believe it. Part of the solution is to get people to more accurately think about the messages they are receiving. Facebook needs to put up something that says when you read how accurate this article . S to theyre more likely critically consume the news or the stories that are being shared. This is something that can affect tens of millions of people. In a way that can actually change the discourse. That is fascinating. I am worried because everything gets consumed in a bitesize way. Themselves aget chance to try to look at things more accurately. Togive themselves a chance try to look at things were accurately. More accurately. I think you wrote that we should be skeptical of authority. That seems fine but at some point, it is one thing to be skeptical of politicians that want to convince you of something. What about the antibaxters who are skeptical of science and scientists . I did not mean it as skeptical bumper system Bumper Sticker system of authority. Instead of asking questions about the persons expertise, the example you gave about the 10,000 steps earlier, that was great to have people walking but it also polluted the communication environment. I dont note this is real science or not and that is what otherving the vectors and science denials. They got to a cluttered environment. How do i know this is really from a doctor. What is the authority here. Askingsuggest doing is sets of questions. You have to ask if this is really a legitimate authority. Second, do they have a basis for making the statement. I am an expert in certain areas but i could not say the president of front row needs his gallbladder out. That is an obvious answer. Oftentimes, when you look at places, and other theages please deal on College Issue . This is a proclaimed expert. What is the area of expertise . Why was she able to tell you how to raise your kid . These are the questions we need to ask to sort out what the basis is. It is difficult. One of the issues that happens in science is a lot of publicity science. A press release that gets out of there. I have atheist friends and relatives friends and religion shows that you are a better person, i get that from the religious. Being religious shows that you are a worse person. I get that from the atheist. Roth of those stories atheists. Both of those stories cant be right. I will echo hows suggestion. Asking questions. Fraudsome work on criminals and what is the best way to prevent fraud from happening. Hat we did was we had people fraud criminals with call them routinely. We would try to tell them something on how to deal with it. The number one thing we learned was getting them to ask questions. Goes to charity what is your investor id number just having those questions produced the fraud rate. Asking that kind of question and taking a step back is there a key. That is good advice about everything. They will try to sell you something. I wanted to ask you something about how we propagandize each other. An issue, i cant think of a more polarized issue date debate on abortion and abortion rights. Do you think there is propaganda on both sides . I do. Definitely. There is propaganda on all sides of all questions. It is propaganda all the way down. Just the level of prochoice versus prolife. Once you decide the label, who is against choice and who is against life . The questionack to of facebook and those community . Rganizations this is about how we have failed to join civic organizations that his democratic decisionmaking. Examples that you gave of people being Supportive Community members which is what you like about facebook, they go out how all those things are about emotions. I feel better today because it is my birthday today and people remembered. I could to help someone celebrate their marriage or university. Content isive rewarded by the algorithm because people respond to it. There will always be put high in your feed. The second point about that is the difference between that community that is important for you and all of us and what is actually productive for democracy. It is a very big difference. Putnam wrote about bridging social capital and bonding social capital. Bonding social capital is the relationships you have with your arely members, people who on your facebook. Bridging social capital would be people who you just randomly meet. Waiting in line or the book club. Dividehings that would and bridge racial divides. There is this bridging of social capital in what makes democracy work. With connections we make people who are not like us, not already in our phone. That is how you get a job. Someone whoyou find might give you a kidney for your transplant. It is that bridging of social solidifiest actually democracy. The trust. The trust and how we learn about each other. It makes the world less scary. We learn that the world is not as scary as it seems on cable news. We create these these the turbines throughout Community Within our already developed social network. That is the difference between these Community Organizations like the rotary club and the pta. We should have summer camp for adults. Other people in your lives that you have a hard time resisting their propaganda . Not married . Maybe you love the person so much that you believe their propaganda. I have a best friend and she did tell me anything and how it be like a half, a hot,. She could tell me anything and i would be like uhuh, uhuh, uhuh. I will often do the opposite. I will Say Something and then my thend will tell me opposite. Then he will come back later and say you are right. I can persuade him in a moment. He has to decide for himself. It took me a while to figure that out. Once we figured it out, it was great. It seems like a lot of our discourse, whether it is in known or among people we or online it is very highpitched. People dont exchange judicious comments. We are always pitching at each other. Is there any way to fix that . No. There is a twopronged. Pproach it is the new media. We need a discussion about what our norms are. What to expect from that media . Do we want to regulate certain aspects of it . Anthony this goes back to radio. Goebbels loved it. Lenny loved films. Eventually we learned how to handle it. The same as the old penny press that got us into wars. Those are tough questions. Do you want to censor speech and how much . Are questions we should have as a community on facebook, twitter and the rest. The second approach is a approach. Possible o philosophies about this. Both of these men came up with democratic virtue. That is the kinds of things we have to do as citizens of a democracy. Here is whatshe thinking about facebook. Humbly. D approach them not with arrogance. Before i post, i should think that throw through. We should create an environment of tolerance and respect for other people. For thesupport institutions of democracy. One of the most interesting was secretary Hillary Clinton asking people what would happen if the democratic president of 2020 said china if youre listening, go after donald trump. I used that same exact example. I dont know how she got my election result. It was in the email. [laughter] if you are a democrat, you should be asking if we can do that. If the democrats do that, if they are going to be hunkydory, will that be fine . If your answer is no. It should not be ok when donald trump did it. That is a key question each one of us should be asking right now. I think it would be wrong for to askocratic party china to interfere with our elections. Us haveone that each of to make. I like to see us make that decision. Maybe theine, democrats will have to do that next time. That is what it means by protecting the norms of our society. The norms of being in a democracy. The final thing is creating deliberate persuasion. Hadacebook i have not success at this. You should try it. When somebody posts something, this happened on tariffs. I just want to know the answer, why are the terrorists being put not on Raw Materials . I does one to know if you are supporting the terrorists, please tell me why. I dont want to hear people attack trump. I does want that answer. It is important answer. If you put it on Raw Materials that are needed for detroit, the industry, youre practically bombing yourself in an economic trade work. I think it was important to do. Those are the kinds of questions you have to make. Those are the discussions that are needed in a democracy. All a lote given us of homework to think about. Thank you so much. You have all been so interesting. Let me give a round of applause for all of them. Now it is the part of the evening where we get to take questions from the audience. Please send your first and last name. Also, part of the program will be recorded and posted online tomorrow morning. Finally, if we could have some f questions we had our first question on the left. Think for a very fun and informative conversation. Ancient greeks about teaching you to be a good citizen. Do you think education in high school could be part of the solution to some of these problems . We would all say yes. Between the differences one of the differences between ancient greece and the government today is a citizen is the offices was an officer of the government. We dont think of ourselves that way today. Than weore as partisan do as citizens today. We dont think of the common good. E think of good for the party that is a result of propaganda. That makes us communicate that way. I agree with that. It was taught in schools a long time ago. And institute for propaganda analysis in the 1930s. That is where you could have heard phrases like glittering generalities. It was taught. I would add one thing to that, we can all agree there is a need for more education and critical thinking. Dealing with propaganda in the modern world, that could be very helpful. It is important to teach people how to persuade. If you dont know how to persuade, how do you get anything done . With acome alienated sense of hopelessness. Learning how to persuade in a fair and honest manner is just toimportant as being able spot this. There are a whole bunch of people out there who use social seems veryway that malicious and mean. Their objective seems to be making people as angry as possible. This seems new to me. Can you talk about that . Some of those trolls were paid. Some come from overseas and russia. One of their objectives is to divide americans. How best to do that is the way that mike described it. I call it propaganda, conspiracy theories, there is a whole constellation of really bad communication practices that we have i merrily online. Hey have a long history an use of communication is interesting course. Rather than democratic persuasion, you are seeking compliance. The trolling behavior, any of these other behaviors are trying to get people to acquiesce. The next question on your left. I dont know how many of you have i dont know how many of you have seen the tv series whos america with Sacha Baron Cohen. One of his characters is an israeli x militant and uses this propaganda and in minutes, turns these people, big of adults doing these weird things. It is wantingg, to look at and say you like it or send it to others, retweet some bad stuff but how do you get people to do these ridiculous outrageous acts in a matter of minutes by using propaganda . Thats a very specific case. I would say Sacha Baron Cohen is a master of doing this kind of things and there are a lot of behind the scenes to get people to do these seeming ridiculous things. There is a lot of set up and that is more of the lesson. It is not just the people responding a quick ways but there is a build up over time and we respond to messages over time and eventually, there is a tipping point. That is more the lesson from sasha obama going. Cohen. Ion baron out there also point is the power of the situation and once you create a situation that defines reality, has social pressures, social consensus, to pressure, authority, you can get people to do crazy things. Just remember the old tv show candid camera. One of the clips i always enjoyed, this is way before 9 11, but they had a guy takeoff from phoenix and he was handed some oranges by miss sunshine, denver and he landed in but they made the Denver Airport look exactly like the Phoenix Airport and they had a twin give the guy oranges. He thought he was in phoenix. Because of the power of the situation. Gone to disneyland and get swept up in the pirates of the caribbean . That is the power of that situation. Think about it. You saw someone going down that boat and you didnt see any of the rides. That person is nats. Nuts. That can be the power of the situation. I dont know the particular case the next question is on your right. I wondered if propaganda could be associated with group thinking and how that would be not you how to know what im talking about. When i teach rhetorical forry, i have a map i use my undergraduate students that maps the field of rhetoric since ancient greece. The most simplistic view of rhetoric and the one i start my class with i labeled groupthink , and it has two authors in it. One is the founder of propaganda and public relations, and the other is about the power of rhetoric to make people do what you want. To answer your question in the affirmative, yes. A way ofolutely understanding it and definitely the goal, the instrumental goal. The dialectic of enlightenment talk about propaganda as using people as a lever, like a machine. Them,s people, abuses denies their free will to force them to think all the same so you can control them. That is certainly a problem. It in a similar vein. One of the most powerful is, if youactics know kirk vonnegut, it is a meaningless group that takes on theificant meaning and social psychology term is social identity. Once you get into a group of social identity, that is a powerful way of determining your thinking because i am an x and this is what x believes. I want to be a really good x so i want to do more of that. I dont want to be kicked out of the group so i comply even more. It becomes a powerful tool for knowing what to say and think and putting pressure on you to continue in that line. Next question on your left. Is, the problems in media, is it more of a symptom of postmodernist culture . Postmoderncting a onto the rest of us . Is thats a great question. Certainly if you are thinking of the society of the spectacle, any of those virgins of postmodernism as a theory, then yeah, postmodern critiques of thelar culture emerged with proliferation, saturation media but i think what we have today is different. It is what is after postmodernism in terms of the media and the way the spectacle works. When i used to teach the board to my students, i used to tell them their phone was there spectacular device. It connected them to the spectacle and they called it there spectacular device. It is that. Is that phoneow controls us. It is not that we are connecting to the spectacle through the phone but the phone is controlling us in a way that i dont think we thought about before now. I would add that it is impossible to disentangle these things. It is not that one causes the other but there is a cycle here. The media is responding to us and we are responding to the media and it continues on and on. Running out of time. I know there are a few more out there. Speakers will be outside the lobby to continue the conversation. I heard you guys touch on how to teach High Schoolers about propaganda. I was wondering, as a high school or myself, how would you defend children from being taken advantage of by propaganda . I feel like that is a really great question and a difficult one to answer but of course, one way we have to think about this is figuring out where the filters are, so how does information get the children to begin with . What, of course, can parents im thinking of who in childrens lives are the one who control that information . What can parents do to monitor it, figure out what children are and to essentially control it for lack of a better word. This, to me, is where we start making an impact. Controlt say how can i the information source because that ship has sailed. You can start to think about where the information comes from and what your behaviors as an adult do in front of kids. We putple thing as on npr in the morning and i stopped doing that. My daughter started asking questions surrounding the things she was hearing. At least it is mpr. Npr. Thats true. I would suggest watching the tv and media with your kids and helping them understand what happening. Best ways to prevent persuasion is to inoculate the person. Give them a small dose of the propaganda tactic and then the tools for refuting it. How would you do this with a kid . When my son was younger, we watched one of these commercials where the cars do all the cool spinning and stuff. He said wow, thats really cool. I said that is really cool. Lets go to the toy store right now and see if it does it. If it does it, i will buy it for you. [laughter] he didnt want the toy, lets put it that way. Hes got a healthy skepticism. That im proud of. [applause] before we go, i would like to thank our copresenter tonight for bringing us together and thank all of you for joining us. Stick around for drinks afterwards to continue the conversation. Thank you to cspan for recording tonights program and finally, a big round of a prods applause for our speakers tonight. [applause] ontomorrow morning washington journal, a conversation on the 50th anniversary of would start. We speak with david farber about the festival. He is the author of the book america in the 1960s. 9 00 onwatch live at cspan and on cspans American History tv. Here is more about woodstock. Originalganizers plan was to have it in woodstock, which is about 60 miles northwest of this. Woodstock, new york was a Bohemian Community and a lot of musicians lived there off and on, including