Sott Radio Network

Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss Lee Daniel Kravetz's latest book Strange Contagion: Inside the Surprising Science of Infectious Behaviors and Viral Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves. When Lee and his wife moved to Palo Alto, California in 2009 they hoped for a bright future for their baby boy. Unbeknownst to them a tragic string of suicides was threatening to rock the entire county. What began with one tragic event in 2008 morphed into entire suicide clusters that...

Approximately 10% of Americans claim to be regular runners. Almost 60 million Americans belong to a gym and about $19 billion dollars a year are spent on gym membership fees. The plethora of fitness centers along with their yoga, aerobics, spinning and CrossFit classes, hiking clubs and sports leagues would suggest that in this country, at least, we're quite fit. Wrong. As a nation, we're fatter and sicker than ever. Why? What happened to all the bikini bods, six pack abs and boundless...

Israel has finally been called to the carpet by Russia over its deceitful actions last week that led to the accidental downing of a Russian IL-20 reconnaissance plane off the coast of Latakia in western Syria that killed 14 of its servicemen. This week on NewsReal with Joe & Niall, they discuss the incident in the context of last week's surprise announcement of a Turkish-Russian plan to deal with 'the Idlib cauldron' jointly. Also, a bloody terror attack in Ahvaz, southwestern Iran on...

Today on the Truth Perspective we tackle the Gordian Knot that is Postmodernism. From degrading art to bizarre philosophy, Postmodernism has relied primarily on confusion and a mask of 'mystique' to secure its rise to prominence. Today we dispel much of that confusion by discussing it historically and philosophically while putting it back into the context of that thing called "reality" which its adherents have so vehemently denied. Charting its course from the Enlightenment through the...

Awareness is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. More broadly, it is the state of being conscious of something. It's ephemeral, however; something that we seem to take for granted. Only rarely are we actually aware of our awareness. Awareness seems to be a spectrum, rather than an on-off switch. Situational awareness is important for knowing what's going on in your immediate environment, where lapses in awareness can be extremely dangerous in...

Two Russian 'GRU' agents have been exposed as the perpetrators in the attempted murder-by-chemical-weapon of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Their own story doesn't add up, but their movements are also inconsistent with the claims against them, and they appeared on TV (like no real active intelligence agent ever does). Missing, as always, from the mainstream narrative of the 'Skripal Saga' is all-important context: Why Russia, why chemical weapons, why now, and why, in a world of 'full-spectrum'...

History is filled with moral doctrines; doctrines that tell us where we are, what to do, and the kind of future we're striving for. These moral systems differ significantly around the world, and oftentimes in spectacular ways. In the 20th century many Western intellectuals took these differences as proof that morality was always a social construct used to maintain power and authority by an oppressive elite. After all, if what is considered 'moral' in one culture is absolutely 'immoral' in...

On this episode of The Health and Wellness Show we touch on some of the latest news in the health-o-sphere. Despite the ongoing hate campaign against low carb diets there are quiet whispers that red meat, fat and cheese aren't the devils they're made out to be. Can we finally cut gluten some slack and turn our attention to that spawn of Mon-Satan, glyphosate, and it's more vicious little brother, Dicamba, as a major cause of our bodily woes? Are magic mushrooms more than just for trippin'?...

It's time to shut down the Internet. It's been fun, at times, but the technological behemoth it gave rise to is killing us. Sometimes literally, but for the most part culturally. As an experiment in social networking that would 'progress humanity', the core belief that fueled its most ardent proponents and techie innovators, it has failed. In aggregate, its net result has been the generation of a new set of oligarchs and a general population that is increasingly bombarded with lies and...

Narcissism. Machiavellianism. Psychopathy. The so-called 'dark triad' of evil personality traits. We have all encountered evil people in our lives, but what does that really mean? Today on the Truth Perspective we look at the psychology of evil, the relation of various measures of such personalities with the Big 5 personality traits, and the correlations with violent, criminal behavior. Is evil just an unfortunate collection of interacting genes? An unfortunate collection of traits on the...

Economists say obesity and its consequences cost our society $190 billion annually in health care and lost productivity. So our government overlords and health officials want to find effective strategies to discourage people from over-consuming sugary drinks and junk foods. They hope to accomplish this gargantuan feat through taxation that generates billions of dollars in revenue that will allegedly go toward schemes that will lay the framework for a healthy utopia where everyone is,...

The shocking assassination Friday of Aleksandr Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, may end the Minsk Agreements and reignite the Donbass insurgency against Kiev rule. The elimination of a high-profile Russian ally in Ukraine was almost certainly done with one eye on the developing 'mother-of-all-stand-offs' between Russian-Syrian forces and terrorist-F.UK.US forces in and around Syria. With the Russian government alerting the world to another imminent...

Are criminals born or made? Do they choose to act in antisocial ways, or do they lack free will? How does crime relate to personality? Is there a criminal personality? And can they change? On today's Truth Perspective we share our thoughts on Stanton Samenow's book Inside the Criminal Mind, the science of personality disorders, violence, how thoughts determine behavior, and how it all relates to the Big 5 personality traits. Running Time: 01:06:00 Download: MP3

Cookies, candy bars, pizza, chips, ice cream, french fries -- what do they all have in common? Incredibly blissful combinations of sugar, salt and fat not found in nature. This is no accident. Big Food Processors, like drug dealers, make a conscious effort to hook consumers and keep them coming back for more of the good stuff. Junk foods activate the same pleasure centers in the brain as opiate drugs. So is it any wonder that food cravings, binges and addictions are so tough to beat or that...

Senator John 'The Maverick' McCain III is dead. This week on NewsReal, Joe and Niall look back on the illustrious career of an American hero and titan of US politics, whose indelible contributions to the War Party over four decades have earned him a place in the pantheon of Exceptionalistan. Also this week: 'revelations' in two court cases stemming from the Mueller investigation produced a terrible week for President Trump, spurring the media to again go all out with calls for his...

Renowned neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's newest book, The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures, makes some revolutionary claims. All organisms with nervous systems have consciousness. Feeling-based images are at the root all human experience. Consciousness would be impossible without feelings, which provide the subjective experience of homeostasis - a biological state of order that aims toward the future. Culture is rooted in feeling and is the complex means by...

Post-9/11, the 'Global War on Terror' and the US-led wars in the Middle East produced foreseeable consequences, chief among which was the displacement of millions of people, many of whom relocated as far away as western Europe and north America. While this was going on, political movements sprang up in reaction to the terrorism and the mass immigration, with the target of that reaction being Islam and Muslims. The result, in just a short period of time, has been a 'perfect storm' of social...

Random mutations. Natural selection. Time. According to the neo-Darwinian conception of evolution, this is all it takes. But there's a problem. In fact, there are several. No one has been able to demonstrate this model in the lab. Random mutations are either neutral or fatal to the organisms in which they occur. But natural selection only works on traits that are already there. So how to the new traits get there? How does genetic mutation actually occur? As shown in lab experiments, it is...

There's the old adage that money does not buy everything. But looking at the state of the world today, it seems the adage hasn't been taken to heart by the majority on our planet. The corruption of science, our food and agriculture systems, the medical establishment, industry - virtually everywhere you look, the worship of the almighty dollar takes precedence over the worthy goal of bettering human and planetary life. But for some, money does not buy a clear conscience. There are many...

Are you 'woke'? Besides it being grammatically-incorrect, what does this term mean to you? We have to ask because in these times of raging polemic about social justice, identity politics, and cultural values, it's become apparent that what it is to be 'woke' means different things to different people... This week on NewsReal, Joe & Niall discuss being 'awake and aware' in a world riven by ardent commitment to ideology, and consider where it'll likely all lead to. Running Time: 01:04:11...

Traditionally a male institution, the last decades have seen the rise of policies that push for equal inclusion of women in all areas of military service. But they're not working, for some strange reason. Men still dominate militaries all over the world, including in western democracies. This has led to charges of systemic discrimination, misogyny and toxic masculinity. But no worry, the gender activists have the solution: affirmative action, including special woman-only incentives to...

Shortly after being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a series of talks in the U.S. and UK. Those talks, including his Harvard Address of 1978, caused many in the West to turn against him. Once the hero of the anti-Communist movement in the West, his criticisms of Western culture, including its materialism, legalism, shallowness and cowardice, cut a little too close to the bone. His warning to the West - that we are in a weak enough state to...

Race is a hotbed topic that many people continue to tiptoe around (mainly out of fear of being labeled a racist or an Uncle Tom). White privilege, police shootings, the Black Lives Matter movement, strident calls for 'diversity' and 'inclusion', race-baiting, seeing racism everywhere, affirmative action, racial sensitivity training, racial equity policies -- in today's political and social environment issues surrounding race have become more polarizing than ever. We're not living in a...

The election last week of Imran Khan as Pakistan's new prime minister is the latest political upset to rock 'the establishment' across many countries in recent years. Derided as a 'populist', Khan leads a new movement that is socially conservative, economically 'leftist', and ultimately nationalist. From Mexico's AMLO to Malaysia's Mahathir, 'Trumps' are coming to power all over the world. Whatever their political background, the one thing they have in common is an essential patriotism that...

Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris meet to debate what it would take to create universal morality. Brett Weinstein joins as moderator, putting the entire discussion into context. That context? That society's 'sense-making mechanisms' are breaking down. The worldview offered by the news media, universities, churches, and government has proven to be a house of cards that cannot stand scrutiny. Inquiring minds find only more and greater confusion. Moral chaos has ensued. How can we find our way...

Dystopia or Utopia? We suppose it depends on your point of view. There are some tech giants and tech lovers who see a whole new world of possibilities at their fingertips. There are people who'd like nothing more than to merge with technology and enhance their subpar human abilities whilst living in a segregated smart city. If you're an average Joe who values his privacy and doesn't want to be spied on by his refrigerator or have to engage in biometric screening just to go to work, a fresh...

We knew it was going to provoke those vested in isolating Russia and keeping the US president on a leash, but we didn't know it would set off such a firestorm. Trump's brief meeting with Putin last Monday should really just be a footnote to the fact that trade, security, and diplomatic relations between the two countries are at an all-time low. Instead, the 'Washington Consensus' reacted as if the whole world had been turned upside-down! This week on NewsReal with Joe and Niall, we're...

In 1999, Jordan Peterson published his first book, Maps of Meaning. The central question he set out to answer was this: "how did evil - particularly group-fostered evil - come to play its role in the world?" Now, nearly twenty years later and given Peterson's newfound popularity, the book has started selling again, especially given that he just released an audiobook version. Today on the Truth Perspective, we will take a look at the basic ideas Peterson introduces and their connections with...

WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, 4G and soon 5G - we are living in a time of complete saturation of wireless signals. We're literally bathed in these frequencies 24 hours a day, from cradle to grave. But is this exposure safe? Official government bodies say yes, it's perfectly safe, and they back these assurances with seemingly solid scientific studies. This perspective is widely propagated and anyone raising concerns about wireless exposures is usually dismissed as a nutcase. But what if the very...

A calamitous week for the UK government began with ministers resigning over Brexit negotiations and ended with protests against Trump's first state visit. Just as he had done at the NATO Summit in Brussels prior to his arrival in the UK, Trump loudly repeated his stance on everything from Brexit to mass immigration to trade to Russia, pounding every sore spot in the ever-weaker Western Alliance. Meanwhile, Russiagate hearings back home erupted in fireworks, with proceedings becoming so...

Most Americans probably know Jared Kushner as Ivanka Trump's husband, and President Trump's right-hand man working on the Trump administration's Israel-Palestine 'deal of the century'. But how many remember his father, Charles? The elder Kushner is a real-estate developer, like Trump. But he's also a convicted felon who has done jail time for his corrupt 'business' practices, various financial crimes and mafia-like antics. He's also close friends with Benjamin Netanyahu, who once slept in...

Lately, there has been lots of talk about the gender gap. For most people the gender gap refers to disparities in treatment between men and women with the focus solely being on female inequality. The truth is that male inequality has been thoroughly ignored and boys and men are losing out. Males are falling behind in various aspects of society including education, employment and health. They make up the majority of suicides, high school dropouts, the homeless and workplace fatalities all the...

Bored stupid by having to smile for millions of foreigners enjoying the 2018 Football World Cup, the Russians last week schemed to - once again - lash out at poor old England by poisoning two more people with their dastardly 'Novichok' nerve agent. The incident came just before the OPCW released an interim report on the alleged chemical attack on Douma earlier this year (that the West used to justify firing cruise missiles at targets near Damascus and Aleppo). The report stated that no...

As Jordan Peterson often says, biologists will be the next group targeted by the radical Left. But psychologists are in even more danger. In today's episode of the Truth Perspective we discuss a chapter in Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski's book Political Ponerology on the state of psychiatry and psychology under totalitarian regimes and what it means for us in the West. Marx thought that human nature didn't exist and that 'consciousness' was solely determined by social forces. The postmodern left...

A little Gaming never really hurt anyone Right? Gaming is no different from other forms of mental escape, no harm in spending down time disassociating with your favorite game of choice. According to the Entertainment Software Association the US video games industry made $36 billion in 2017. More than 2.6 billion people play video games around the world. Recently, The World Health Organization added "Gaming Disorder" to its manual of disease classifications. Comparing compulsively playing...

Democrat politicians calling for their enraged supporters to assault anyone suspected of supporting 'Team Trump', media personalities calling for the president's assassination, mutilated dead animals being left on government employees' doorsteps... is the US on the brink of civil war? We may not be there yet, but 2018 is playing out as the year 'the left' (in the US anyway) became completely unhinged. Join Joe and Niall tomorrow Sunday 1st July for a run-down of This Week in Crazy... Show...

The latest scandal to hit the Trump White House is the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border, a practice with an unfortunately long history. But the Trump Derangement Syndrome has latched onto the practice as the final proof that Trump is Hitler. But why is it, exactly, that Trump's critics are taking this as proof that Trump is the most evil person on the planet? Today on the Truth Perspective, we take a look at the motivations behind the tendency to see the...

Something is off about the health of the people on this planet. Domesticated humans suffer from a wide array of illnesses not seen elsewhere in the wild animal kingdom. Autism, diabetes, seizure disorders, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, obesity -- the list goes on and on and the only hope the medical industry offers is a shortened lifespan full of wallet-gouging, pill-popping and suffering. What if there was another way of living? What if, as Hippocrates said, we let food be our...

Mass immigration has lately commanded media attention in both North America and Europe. The issue of separating children from parents in groups of immigrants attempting to illegally enter the US has liberal elites and extreme leftists howling at the sky again, and openly threatening violence on Trump 'and anyone who votes for him'. Across the Atlantic, Italy's new 'populist' government has begun preventing migrant ships from docking at their ports, provoking an almighty row between...

Jung thought humanity shared a collective unconscious which provided the forms of myths, dreams, and fantasies. Most modern scientists reject the idea completely. But maybe they're both wrong. Jung may have gotten most of the details wrong, but there may be a kernel of truth in the idea, and while modern critics are correct to point out the holes in Jung's theory, they also throw the baby out with the bathwater in their rejection of a shared unconscious. In addition to taking a closer look...

Ever heard of neurofeedback, non-linear dynamics or a "bottom-up" approach towards better health? Have you ever heard of a tool that can help with optimization of the brain's automatic or unconscious behaviour? Join us on this episode of the Health and Wellness Show as we interview Dr. Valdeane W. Brown, co-creator of NeurOptimal, and learn about our favorite brain-training tool at SOTT.net. Dr. Valdeane W. Brown is an internationally recognized "trainer of neurofeedback trainers", who has...

Carl Jung is a giant of 20th century history and thought, widely regarded as a pioneer of the psychology of the unconscious. His defection from Freud and his ideas like the archetypes of the unconscious are widely known, even if many have not read his works. But there is a hidden side to the man that few are aware of. From visions of the gods to an acceptance of polygamy and a plan to revitalize civilization by returning to the paganism of the past, Jung privately held some ideas that don't...

Big things are happening in the arena of global power politics. The USA under Trump fears that it will be unseated as global hegemon by the looming threat of Eurasian integration. To forestall such an unpleasant situation, Trump and Co. have decided to 'reset the clock' on the way the US does business in the world and how it runs its empire. The first order of business is kicking Europe and any other 'lackeys' to the kerb, cutting them off from the 'favorable' trade deals they have enjoyed...

In Part 2 of our discussion on religion, God and atheism, we dive deeper in why belief in God might be rational - contrary to what atheists believe. But there are many conceptions of God, some more rational than others. Traditional monotheism - taken literally - can't withstand the assault of its critics. The atheists have that going for them. But a naturalistic theism arguably can. And the atheists don't have anything to say about that. In fact, there are some things that probably cannot be...

It's said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. And truly, the eyes can communicate a great deal - emotional state, intention, health, attention - we can tell a lot about a person by looking them in the eye. But unless something has gone wrong, we don't tend to think much about our eyes. What should we be doing to maintain the health of our eyes? Are the supplements said to be good for the eyes actually any good? Are glasses good for the eyes? What about contact lenses? Is it possible...

The EU's 'democratic deficit' between its institutions and the half a billion people it claims to represent has long been noted, but it was again brought into sharp focus recently by the EU's pseudo-covert rejection of Italy's proposed new coalition government. As political crises at member-state level pile further internal pressure on the EU, can this project survive the rise of 'populist' national leaders AND successfully navigate a break-up with the US? Also discussed on this show:...

Why are humans religious? Is God just a metaphor? Why have we believed in gods? Are we just irrational? Or is there something else going on? In this first part of a two-part discussion, we take a look at the rise in atheism - even so-called Christian atheism - and whether their claims are worth taking seriously. The celebrity atheists argue that belief in God is not only wrong, it's irrational. But most of their targets are low-hanging fruit. As philosopher R. G. Collingwood argued, atheist...

Alzheimer's Dementia is an organic brain dysfunction characterized by memory impairment, declining comprehension, behavioral and mood disturbances, changes in personality, disorientation and confusion leading to a complete inability to care for the self. There are over 47.5 million people worldwide with dementia and approximately 6 million Americans have Alzheimer's or mild cognitive impairment. Researchers estimate that the rate of dementia will double by the year 2060. It is truly an...

The great free will debate has raged for generations. But now we live in a world where the establishment intellectuals either deny freedom's existence completely, or tacitly accept it but can't adequately explain it. One poll showed that more than 40% of Americans didn't believe in free will. Given how fundamental free will is to everything about our lives - from our interactions with loved ones to our intellectual and career activities, and our legal systems - this is a scary thought....

What makes people think that they are better-than-average? Why do some people have an unwavering tendency to overinflate their skills? Having a realistic view of the world and oneself is considered to be the foundation of good psychological health. However, many of us tend to move through life with a sense of unconditional, positive self-regard -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- and downplay or ignore our faults to the detriment of ourselves, our families and society at large....