Joe Rogan Experience #1500 - Barbara Freese

Joe Rogan 0:01 And we're rolling. How are you, Barbara? (clapperboard snaps) What's happening?

Barbara Freese 0:03 I'm good, Joe. How are you?

Joe Rogan 0:04 Pleasure to meet you.

Barbara Freese 0:05 Pleasure to meet you.

Joe Rogan 0:06 How did you get started on this, and how did, how did you get interested in the subject?

Barbara Freese 0:12 I got interested in this subject through climate change, uh, climate denial specifically. I'm an environmental attorney, and back in the 1990s I worked for the State of Minnesota. And we found ourselves very briefly sort of on the front lines of the scientific debate over climate change. And the way that happened was the, the state had passed a law saying that utilities regulators should try to estimate the cost to the environment of generating electricity. We get most of our power from coal, or we did then. Um, and so we looked at coal emissions. We looked at the traditional pollutants that we had regulated for a long time. And, and my client was the Pollution Control Agency, so I was familiar with those. What we also looked at, though, and, and I wasn't familiar with, was CO2 and its effect on climate change, because, uh, while that was a big issue globally, there was already a, a global treaty signed, um, to fight climate

Barbara Freese 1:12 change. States had not taken a look at that. And what happened was we, uh, struck a nerve with the coal industry, and they sent to Minnesota a, a bunch of witnesses, a bunch of scientists, uh, to testify that we did not have to worry about climate change, and it wasn't going to happen. Uh, or if it did, it would be just, just a little, and we'd like it. And that all of those scientists, the, the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, uh, those scientists, uh, that the rest of the world, including the US government in the treaty signed by George H.W. Bush, uh, the ones that they were relying on, those scientists were basically biased. They were biased because t- they, they were in it for the money somehow. They wanted research grants or they had some political agenda. It was kind of vague. Um, but, but it was clear they did not want us worrying about this issue at all.

Joe Rogan 2:09 They, they told you that it would be just a little and that you would like it? What did, what did they-

Barbara Freese 2:13 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:13 ... mean by that?

Barbara Freese 2:14 Well, uh, a couple of things. One of the arguments, and you will still hear this sometimes, is that CO2 is a plant fertilizer, which is true. Um, and therefore more CO2 makes the world a, a happier place for plants and, and therefore better for everybody else. And to the, to the point where one of the coal interests who were i- in that, uh, who were parties had put out a video saying that the earth was deficient in CO2, and by digging up the coal and burning it, we were, we were correcting that.

Joe Rogan 2:46 (laughs)

Barbara Freese 2:46 Um, yeah. Uh, so that was-

Joe Rogan 2:48 Wow.

Barbara Freese 2:48 ... one of the arguments. The other was, "You know, it'll be mild. It'll be warm. The winters won't be as cold. And, and hey, this is Minnesota, so, you know, you guys are gonna appreciate those warmer winters." Um, so yeah. There was a lot of crazy stuff that, that hasn't gone away. In fact, many, in many ways it's gotten a lot worse. But there was certainly enough to leave me shocked, and-

Joe Rogan 3:10 Was that the first time you were ever aware that corporations do send in people to try to diffuse arguments or could pollute the waters?

Barbara Freese 3:19 I, I don't think I was quite that naive, but I'd certainly never seen anything like this. I mean, these were people under oath, you know?

Joe Rogan 3:26 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 3:26 And, and they were saying things that were pretty extreme, uh, and, and many of which would just get a lot more extreme.

Joe Rogan 3:34 And they were scientists.

Barbara Freese 3:35 The many... Yes, th- the ones I cross-examined were mainly the scientists. They s- also sent in some other witnesses as well. So they didn't, they didn't actually work, you know, in a coal company.

Joe Rogan 3:44 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 3:44 They were hired by the coal industry to come in and testify.

Joe Rogan 3:47 And these scientists, th- presumably they were paid to do this.

Barbara Freese 3:52 Yes.

Joe Rogan 3:52 So is that... I mean, how do you track that? Like if you-

Barbara Freese 3:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:56 ... if you have scientists and they come in and they say things that you know are not accurate or deceptive, how do you find out what their motivation is? Uh, did you, did you ask them if they'd been paid? And-

Barbara Freese 4:08 We were able to put some things in the record re- regarding how much money they had gotten from different fossil fuel interests over the years. So we definitely did, uh, point to that, argue about that. W- we didn't realize some of the witnesses had a, a much deeper history than we understood in science denial. One of the witnesses was a, a, a pretty prominent scientist, uh, named Frederick Seitz, who has since died. But, um, what we didn't know, uh, what I didn't know when I cross-examined him, I mean, this was a, a shoestring operation, was that he had spent a lot of time actually consulting for the tobacco industry.

Joe Rogan 4:44 Mm.

Barbara Freese 4:44 Um, so that would have been nice to, to bring up, but no.

Joe Rogan 4:47 We had talked about, just before the podcast, the film Merchants of Doubt, and that's how I kind of got into your work.

Barbara Freese 4:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:53 That that film touches on that, how people who worked for the tobacco industry eventually went to work to deny the manmade climate change.

Barbara Freese 5:02 Right. Well, in his case, he had actually been a physicist who was, uh, very involved in the Cold War weapons program, so he kind of came at it from that direction. And it wasn't until really he had retired from his, his sort of main scientific and academic work that he was brought in to work for the, the tobacco industry. But what happened was this handful of scientists, um, profiled in that movie and, and in the book by the same name, um, they would also then work with these nonprofit groups, these free market groups that were strongly opposed to regulation of industries. And so, and those same groups then would address lots of different issues, from tobacco to ozone and, and now to climate change, and, and really a lot of other, uh, scientific issues as well for industries facing regulation.

Joe Rogan 5:50 God, someone should do a psychological profile of those people, particularly the tobacco people-

Barbara Freese 5:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:55 ... because there's, like, such a direct correlation between tobacco and cancer. Like, it's... The climate change thing, it's almost like, boy, it's so hard to track because it's so far in advance, and if you say that climate change isn't real, what deaths are caused? Is it directly attributable to that? Like, how do you-You know what I'm saying? But, like, cancer and cigarettes, it's like here's a person, they smoke cigarettes, they have cancer.

Barbara Freese 6:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:17 You said it didn't come from cigarettes. What does that feel like to you-

Barbara Freese 6:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:20 ... to, to be that person that actively tries to... Well, they're essentially lying. They're lying for money.

Barbara Freese 6:28 They're lying. Let, let me just back up one second-

Joe Rogan 6:30 Okay.

Barbara Freese 6:31 ... and, and then talk about that, just because, uh, I, I wanna make it clear that while the, the link between c- smoking and cancer may seem entirely obvious, there's enough of a delay that opens up-

Joe Rogan 6:42 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 6:42 ... the opportunity for denial. The link between putting greenhouse gases in the air and, and dramatic climate change, that's actually as establi- well-established as the links between smoking and cancer. It's just that there... it is a more complicated process-

Joe Rogan 6:56 Yes.

Barbara Freese 6:56 ... and, and there's potentially more of a delay, and it depends in large part on what humans do along the way. So, so it does, it does get kind of complicated. As far as, uh, psychologically profiling the, the tobacco companies, I mean, or the tobacco executives, I won't presume to suggest this book does that, but, but I do write a lot about what the, these folks were saying, not just to the public, but to, you know, internally. We've got some internal documents and, and certain things that may have been public utterances, but were clearly just sort of part of their internal rationalization.

Joe Rogan 7:28 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 7:29 And for example, I start the book with a quote from the head of Philip Morris, who says, "Who knows what you would do if you didn't smoke? Maybe you'd beat your wife. Maybe you'd-"

Joe Rogan 7:38 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 7:38 "... drive cars fast." And, you know, that, that's part of how I think the tobacco industry approached this. They would, they would imagine this sort of counterfactual, uh, where, you know, a world without tobacco, without cigarettes, and then they would imagine what that would be like. And, of course, they'd always imagine it was much, much, much worse than-

Joe Rogan 7:57 Much, much worse. Yeah.

Barbara Freese 7:58 ... smoking, right?

Joe Rogan 7:58 Yeah. I read that part. And also, the, the man in question wound up quitting cigarettes, so...

Barbara Freese 8:04 Right. Yeah. He, he had to-

Joe Rogan 8:05 He started-

Barbara Freese 8:06 ... quit fairly quickly.

Joe Rogan 8:06 ... wife-beating and speeding and (laughs) what, what does he do?

Barbara Freese 8:09 Right. Exactly, yeah. That was the question. And, and we never really did find that out.

Joe Rogan 8:13 It's such a strange way to live your life, to, to, to be deceptive in a way that you know is gonna... I mean, the, there's... I don't know how many people have gotten cancer from cigarettes, but it's probably millions.

Barbara Freese 8:26 Well, and it isn't just cancer, it's heart-

Joe Rogan 8:28 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 8:28 ... disease, etc., so-

Joe Rogan 8:29 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 8:29 ... millions... I mean, uh, I've seen an estimate that in the 20th century, smoking killed... I wanna make sure I get this right. I think it was 100 million people.

Joe Rogan 8:39 Oh, wow.

Barbara Freese 8:39 More than, more than maybe both wars, world wars put together. Uh, uh, it's 7 million a year, I think, is the, is the global death toll. In the US, it's, uh-

Joe Rogan 8:51 Half a million?

Barbara Freese 8:51 ... 480,000 a year. Yeah, mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:54 Directly attributable.

Barbara Freese 8:55 Right. They trace-

Joe Rogan 8:56 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 8:56 ... they trace it to, to, uh, directly attributable. Now, you know, it, it... these are extreme examples. Tobacco is the most famous and extreme example. And I talk about a lot of other examples, but I think it's actually, uh, you know, a fairly common thing for people to go pretty far down the road of denial when they are working in an industry. And, and this is sort of the process I try to explore a little bit in the book. They're working in an industry, they're confronted with some accusation that they have caused harm. They check their gut, and their gut says, "No, we didn't intend to cause harm. We don't feel guilty."

Joe Rogan 9:31 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 9:31 And so their mind starts to come up with reasons why it must be wrong, and their tribal instincts, which are never more than just a millimeter below the surface for pretty much any of us, but, but certainly in this case, get triggered. So, uh, they immediately think, "Well, these people accusing me must have an ulterior motive. They must be... they want money, they want power, they want attention. They've got some sinister political objective." Uh, and then the, the other part of that tribal

Barbara Freese 10:01 dynamic is they start thinking about themselves, uh, and, and their truly lofty mission, which isn't just to sell a product, but something else. It's to protect freedom, or if you're a slave trader, it's to rescue the Africans from terrible lives in Africa and bring them to the comfortable plantations. Um...

Joe Rogan 10:19 That was actually an argument?

Barbara Freese 10:21 Oh, yeah. The, the slave trade had a complete rescue narrative. I'm talking about the British slave trade here, because that was, that was the first really intense campaign of industrial denial I could find. The Brit- uh, the British dominated the slave trade in the 1700s, and the (laughs) ... uh, they faced a very powerful abolition movement at the end of that century, which was really going to the public and saying, "Look at how brutal this is." They had witnesses. They had the torture devices. They had all kinds of evidence. Um, and the British were really responding, because they... even though they dominated the slave trade, you know, they, they had this notion of themselves as civilized and, and promoting freedom and being very humane. So this was starting to really affect the industry. So the traders and the planters got together. They formed a slave lobby. They had a very organized campaign in response, and-

Joe Rogan 11:16 There was a slave lobby?

Barbara Freese 11:18 There was a very powerful slave lobby. I mean, the, the thing about the slave trade was you had people invested in it, from the royal family down to the, the local bakers, uh, to many members of Parliament. I mean, it was a widely accepted, fully legitimate industry. So the, the abolitionists really had their work cut out from- for them. And they had all this evidence. The industry comes back and they, they knew they couldn't just say, "Oh, it's not so brutal." They actually came back with this complete counternarrative, which was, "We are rescuing these people," that, that they're... the Africans are eager to be purchased. They actually try to market themselves as how fit they are for, for work. They enjoy that crossing across the Atlantic. There is singing, dancing, games of chance. Um...And when they get to the plantations, it is incredibly comfortable. They get comfy little houses. It's like a cradle-to-grave welfare state. They don't have to worry if they get sick, we take care of them, we feed them. Um, and they're doing way better than those poor peasants back there in Britain, or those poor miners, or those people working in, in the new factories. So, uh, that was, that was part of it. And, and the next part of it was that they, they said that if they had left them in Africa, if you didn't continue this trade, all of these prisoners of war would be massacred, or they would be eaten by cannibals-

Joe Rogan 12:44 (laughs)

Barbara Freese 12:45 ... or they would die of famine. So, they were... This was a rescue narrative. And here's the really clever part of this, because if you believe that you are rescuing (laughs) them or/and if you persuade other people... I'm not suggesting the industry believed this, but if you can persuade people that you are rescuing them, the flip side of it is, that abolition would doom them. You would be shutting the gates of mercy on mankind. Uh, because a- as one, one trader put it, the house of bondage is really the, the house of freedom to them. I may have mis-spoken that a little bit, but it was a truly Orwellian quote. And-

Joe Rogan 13:22 Wow.

Barbara Freese 13:22 ... and, and so that way, you, you translate abolition into inhumanity, into brutality. And, and you portray the continued slave trade as a way to, to save these people. Oh, one, one quote was great, that if you were to free these slaves... And, and by the way, at this point, they weren't actually talking about freeing the existing slaves, just stopping the flow of new slaves. But one of the quotes was that, "Freeing the slaves would be cramming liberty down the throats of people incapable of digesting it."

Joe Rogan 13:54 Wow.

Barbara Freese 13:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:55 So this was the first example that you found of industry-

Barbara Freese 13:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:59 ... that was working to try to distort the perceptions of reality, so that they can continue what they're doing.

Barbara Freese 14:06 Right. And, uh, you know, they did a lot of other things that we've seen modern industries doing. They, they fr- you know, I mentioned the reference to the poor peasants, and, and they also talked about, you know, "How would you like it, Britain, if, if people came in and started telling the peasants and the soldiers and the sailors that they had rights?" Uh, you know, so basically this kind of, you know, "Help us or you are next."

Joe Rogan 14:31 Oh, wow.

Barbara Freese 14:31 "Your whole class structure is going to collapse." That kind of an argument. Um, and then they had an argument about basically f- failing to make a distinction between their industry and their interests and the whole country, or rather, you know, kind of an early version of what's good for the country is good for GM and vice versa.

Joe Rogan 14:49 Mm.

Barbara Freese 14:49 They said, "If you abolish this trade, it means universal bankruptcy for the kingdom. It means Britain is not powerful anymore. It means Britain becomes a province of France. Uh, it means, in the sugar islands, that the slaves will massacre the, the whites, exterminate the whites, and, and... or maybe make the whites slaves." Um, so they basically, you know, just created this incredible slippery slope that every, that any kind of reform or certainly abolition of this industry would, would be disastrous for the entire kingdom.

Joe Rogan 15:19 So, uh, how well documented is this in terms of like the influencers, like who, who started this? Like how... And did... Is it... Was there, there, like open discussions about how to spin this in a way that it's going to get people to think that slavery is a good thing?

Barbara Freese 15:33 Well, I don't know about internal discussions within the industry. What we do have are, uh, lots and lots of books and pamphlets, because this was all done in writing.

Joe Rogan 15:42 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 15:43 We also have some hearings, and we have, uh, parliamentary debates. They were recorded, not, you know, verbatim, but people tried to write (laughs) them down. And so we have some version of what was actually said in these debates and the various hearings. There were parliamentary hearings. So there's actually quite a lot of evidence of the arguments being made in their own words.

Joe Rogan 16:03 So, and then this was primarily in Britain, right?

Barbara Freese 16:07 Right. This is... Well, that's what I'm talking about here. Obviously, there was the... We had our own abolition movement here-

Joe Rogan 16:12 Right.

Barbara Freese 16:12 ... and our own debate.

Joe Rogan 16:13 That's what I was gonna ask you. Did those same arguments, um, did they actually get presented in the United States?

Barbara Freese 16:18 Some of them did. Uh, in the United States, it was different, because, of course, you had an entire society, uh, built around slavery. And it... I read one, one reference, one historian saying that about half of the defenses of slavery came from the clergy. It wasn't quite the same sort of clearly, "Here's an industry and, and here's an audience that they're talking to." Um, so that's one of the reasons I didn't focus quite, uh, at all really on the, on the American debate.

Joe Rogan 16:47 Half of it was from clergy?

Barbara Freese 16:48 That's what this, this, uh, historian said. I, I didn't dig into those. I did, by the way, though, find one, uh, source. And now I don't remember if, if he was a plantation owner or something else who described, um, the... They called slavery, you know, basically a way to make people as happy as can be, and, and called it the ideal of communism, which was funny, because you don't even think of communism, uh, of that debate as existing. This was... would have been in the 1800s now. Um, but he, he was saying that, "The North is exploiting these workers, not taking care of them. But in the South, we, we take care of them, we make them happy as slaves."

Joe Rogan 17:26 Jesus.

Barbara Freese 17:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:29 Whew. So, th- is this a pattern that existed before that? Like, is this... is there... I mean, is there any-

Barbara Freese 17:36 Well-

Joe Rogan 17:36 ... evidence that there was something... I mean, it seems like whenever people start to make money doing something, whenever a corporation, particularly a corporation, right? Because there's this diffusion of responsibility in a large group of folks, and they have this, you know, this obligation to earn money for all the people that are involved in the corporation. So they start rationalizing their decisions and then twisting things around. But is this, uh, is this something that can be traced back before then? Is this a, a natural human trait, this kind of deception?

Barbara Freese 18:06 Well, I can't specifically answer whether it can be traced before then b- because I didn't try to trace it. And, um-

Joe Rogan 18:11 Right.

Barbara Freese 18:12 But I would not be at all surprised, uh, because I do think it's a natural human trait. Um-I mean, I, uh, one of the issues that I, I started to struggle with on this book was deciding to what extent are people lying and when are they actually deceiving themselves?

Joe Rogan 18:27 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 18:27 And I realized early on, there was just no way to write this book if I was gonna try to parse that out, and I also decided it doesn't matter that much, because I think these are really m- very much intertwined, um, and, uh, they're both equally destructive and they're both, I think, equally responsive to these kind of external circumstances that we create in corporations when we form corporations and we put them into a, into a marketplace. So, I, I do think it's part of human nature. Um, I do think we've created this system that brings this out in people, and really encourages it in, in so many ways. I mean, you mentioned the diffusion of responsibility, and that is huge, because we do know, and, and I dip into the social psychology in here, not a ton of it, because that science is still relatively new and, and kind of, you know, a little bit thin-

Joe Rogan 19:17 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 19:17 ... compared to the environmental science that I, that I talk about, which is very, very deep. But, um, we do know that when you, when you diffuse responsibility, it makes it very easy for people not to feel responsible for the harm that's done. So, if you've got a corporation, of course you have division of labor. You also have division of management from ownership, so if you're a lower worker and you're told to lie about something or cause some harm, well, you're minding your own business, and you bl- and, and you let the, your boss take responsibility. If you're the boss, uh, you're focused maybe on y- y- your employees and, and certainly on your shareholders, so if you're lying about something or causing harm, it doesn't necessarily feel like a personal, selfish act of deception. It probably feels like an act of loyalty and responsibility-

Joe Rogan 20:05 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 20:05 ... to your sharehol- shareholders. Your shareholders aren't going to care or know, because first of all, they're far away usually. Uh, they, they don't really know what's going on. They have maybe just a temporary transactional interest in what's going on. They just bought the stock. They want to sell it quickly and make some money, so, so you don't really have anybody there who feels really responsible for this. Th- there was a definition of a, of the corporation from the early 20th century in something called The Cynic's Dictionary as, "An ingenious device for obtaining personal profit without personal responsibility."

Joe Rogan 20:41 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 20:41 And, and of course, that is exactly what we intend from corporations, because they are, we, we grant limited liability to the shareholders.

Joe Rogan 20:50 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 20:50 And, and that's why, it's that, it's that protection from risk that people are willing to pool their capital, and, and that's sort of very key to, to the very idea of a, of a corporation. And then, of course, the, uh, the focus on profits means that you're constantly focused on, uh, on money and, you know, it, every, in, in the most short-term way, not even long-term profits, which would be a narrow enough focus, um, but then there's a lot of other things to add to it. Uh, you, you've got competition, um, by definition, uh, certainly if you're in a competitive markets, we want there to be competition, and so that means you are already in a, a kind of tribal mindset. Uh, and you've got the ideology of the marketplace, which, you know, we can go back to Adam Smith, the invisible hand and, and basically the notion that if you, you can pursue your own self-interest and the marketplace will automatically convert that to public good. And that does work in a lot of cases, and probably worked a lot better in the 1700s, but when you've got these enormous organizations that have incredible market power and these very new risky technologies often, uh, it, it is much harder to, to be confident that that's going to work. And then i- more recently, we've seen that, that idea that you don't have to worry about the social consequences of your commercial action, uh, just get intensified. We, we had, you know, Milton Friedman in 1970 writing this very persuasive article saying that the only real objective, the only legitimate objective of a corporation is to maximize shareholder profit, and if they're talking about protecting the environment or doing any of these other things, that's socialism, and, and that's illegitimate. And th- and that really did, uh, sway a lot of people. That movement really moved forward and then it got more extreme in the '90s and, and in the 21st century where you've got this, this strain of, of, you know, intense faith in market forces that was manifested by Alan Greenspan, uh, at the Fed, by the Koch brothers, uh, David Koch has passed away, so, so now Charles Koch, and the network of influence groups that he created, the, the think tanks, the free market groups, these different academic groups. So, you know, one, one of the things that I, I try to trace a little bit in the book is talking about the rise of the consumer movement and the environmental movement in the '60s and '70s and people saying, "Wait a minute. We need corporations to, to be aware of these problems, and we need government to regulate corporations to make sure that our cars are safe and our ozone layer is not destroyed." Uh, but then starting in 1980 when Reagan is elected, you suddenly see those, those concerns replaced with a concern over regulation and, and really a backlash that, that, you know, has, has come and gone, but basically intensified over the years. And, and now of course we have a situation where, you know, not only do we have a government unwilling to regulate, but we have one that is rolling back critical regulations that were put in place by previous administrations.

Joe Rogan 24:01 And of course influenced by these very corporations to do that.

Barbara Freese 24:05 Absolutely. And I mean, it gets, it gets kind of complicated here, because if you think, for example, about Charles Koch and Koch Industries, it's based in oil refining, so that is very much based in the fossil fuel industry.But, but, uh, the Koch network is very ideological, passionately ideological. Um, and they just happen to coincide with, with being in the- in the fossil fuel industry. But you have a lot of other groups that have received money from oil companies, from the coal industry, so it gets kind of integrated. Um, I do try to not treat them all the same in the book. I try to kind of differentiate and- and you really do have a difference between the- the kind of Koch perspective, the coal industry perspective, the oil industry perspective, and then all of these little free market groups, actually they fit more around the Koch side.

Joe Rogan 24:54 But they all seem to have one thing in common, that they're rationalizing and justifying their actions because they wanna continue to make profits regardless of the impact on the environment or the people.

Barbara Freese 25:04 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 25:05 And this, that's a weird thing about just the idea of a corporation itself, it's almost like a diabolical vehicle for- for allowing people to do things.

Barbara Freese 25:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:15 You know? To- to- to be able to do something and say, "Hey, we're gonna do this as a collective and therefore no- no individuals are responsible for the results of the collective." Particularly if you're not the one who gets to decide what gets done, you're just taking orders and you're just doing your job, and your job is segmented, and it's all compartmentalized so you're not- you're not dumping anything in the river bottom.

Barbara Freese 25:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:37 You don't have to worry about that.

Barbara Freese 25:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:38 But, uh, I like your new car and that's a beautiful house that you got- you bought with the profits of poisoning lakes.

Barbara Freese 25:43 (laughs) Well...

Joe Rogan 25:44 It's weird.

Barbara Freese 25:44 That's- that's exactly it. In fact I- I suggest in the book that if you were a super villain and you wanted to create a society that would ultimately destroy itself by imposing huge risks on each other and on the planet-

Joe Rogan 25:58 Mm.

Barbara Freese 25:59 ... you would probably create something that looks a lot like our current corporate-dominated global economy, in the sense of these organizations that amplify your self-interest, that diminish your sense of responsibility, that amplify all of your biases. You'd have a justifying ideology to make it all seem fine, you would have the- the responsibility so diffuse that nobody would really feel too badly about it, uh, and you would give these folks incredible political power, including constitutional rights, so that they could dominate your democracy, so that they could, uh, y- basically corporations can do whatever is legal, used to not be that way. They could do whatever they were authorized to do by their charter and then they'd have to stop. So they'd get a- the permission to build a canal and then they'd- and then they'd be done and go away. Eventually we made them immortal in that they could do whatever they wanted, uh, as long as it's legal, and then we gave them huge amount of power to determine what actually is legal by influencing our democracy.

Joe Rogan 27:02 I was gonna ask you about that. Like, what is the birth of the limited liability corporation? Like when- when did all that occur?

Barbara Freese 27:08 Well, they go way back. I mean, during the slave trade they were- they didn't necessarily call them that, but they were essentially owned by shareholders, and so they would, you know, pool their capital, so it's very similar. We've had corp- I mean, actually corporations are centuries old if you go back to, I think, some early universities and things.

Joe Rogan 27:26 Mm.

Barbara Freese 27:27 But we- w- we didn't have kind of general purpose corporate laws in this country I think until mostly in the 1800s, so when we first formed this country, um, you would have to go to the legislature. There were only a couple of- of significant corporations around, even at the time of the founders, and so that's why you really don't see corporations in the Constitution. No, they're not mentioned because they weren't very powerful. When they did get more powerful, you know, you have some quotes from some of the founders saying, "Ooh, this is- this is a little scary." Uh, and then of course they became very powerful in- in the 1800s, you end up with the Gilded Age and- and so then you have folks like Teddy Roosevelt who are saying, "Wait a minute, the, you know, this is a creation of law and so we get to determine how much power it has." And he responded with the- the kind of trust-busting movements breaking down some of the really big, old trusts. Um, and- and that was, you know, probably the first big pushback where- where the- the government said, "Wait a minute, you corporations are too powerful. We're going to try to reduce that power." Um, and then I think the next big phase of that would have been in the Depression where you have the- the new deal coming in and saying, "Okay, banks, you just wrecked the economy. We're gonna regulate you, we're going to give workers more rights, we're gonna create social security, we're gonna do all kinds of things that- that diminish corporate power over the democracy." And then it happened again in the '60s and '70s, and what I think is a- is that it might be about to happen again given that there is now so much concern about corporate power, uh, you know, Citizens United, influence over our democracy, um, people worried about concentration of wealth at the very, very tippy-top, and, uh, obviously people worried that we are unable to deal with climate change.

Joe Rogan 29:19 And, uh, another factor would be the power of social media corporations to influence elections, to influence public discourse. Um, they seem to have kind of snuck in in a way that was really unexpected and people didn't see it coming.

Barbara Freese 29:34 Right. Well, I mean, that's actually the pattern.

Joe Rogan 29:36 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 29:36 People never see it coming.

Joe Rogan 29:38 Right.

Barbara Freese 29:38 I mean, what- what all of these chapters pretty much begin with some kind of a discovery and some industry races in there and takes advantage of it. I mean, even slavery, the discovery would have been new world and this enormous commercial opportunity if you can just get the workers in there to- to grow the tobacco and the cotton and the sugar. Um, but- but so you would have the discovery, you have an industry springing up to take advantage of it, and- and making a lot of money and- and changing social norms along the way, then problems are emerging, uh, obviously with slavery they were inherent, but problems will emerge. Other people outside the industry discover those problems and pay attention to them, draw attention, and then eventually you get to a law. Now, that's kind of an artificial ending because you have to make sure that law gets enforced, but- but in almost all of these chapters you get to some sort- form of government action where they say, "No, you can't do that anymore. We- we stop this industry, we ban this product or at least we're gonna try to-"... tweak your behavior. Um, but that process, first of all, it takes a long, long time and enormous damage can be done in the meantime.

Joe Rogan 30:45 Mm.

Barbara Freese 30:45 Um, but that process doesn't work. You don't even get your, your somewhat happy ending if the industry has become so powerful that, that it determines whether it gets regulated or not, and it blocks those regulations.

Joe Rogan 31:00 Well, that's what I was getting to is 'cause that kinda seems where we're at now with corporations like Facebook. Like, they have an insane amount of power and that power is actually being used to dictate who becomes president.

Barbara Freese 31:15 Mm.

Joe Rogan 31:15 And that's what's really strange. Like, there's never been a corporation that... I mean, other corporations did their best to influence the market and influence regulations in a way that they can continue to profit, but this is a different thing, where they're literally influence- in- influencing directly who becomes the person who runs the country-

Barbara Freese 31:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:37 ... which is a new thing.

Barbara Freese 31:38 Well, it, it's a new thing when they do it through information.

Joe Rogan 31:42 Yes.

Barbara Freese 31:43 Um, it's not a new thing when they do it through money.

Joe Rogan 31:45 Right, of course.

Barbara Freese 31:45 Um, that's, that's pretty well established, but, but yeah. I mean, you know, uh, somebody, probably not me because I don't know this, this industry well enough, but, but the pattern is so clear that, that it's clear where we're, where we're heading, right?

Joe Rogan 32:02 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 32:02 I mean, the problems will get worse and worse. Other people will talk about them. The problems are very new, I think, because we are talking about problems related to information and, and that, you know, and social media, how does social media affect social animals? I mean, this gets-

Joe Rogan 32:17 Hm.

Barbara Freese 32:17 ... really complicated. It's gonna be hard to figure this out. Um, but in addition to ha- having their own denial about what harms they inadvertently unleash, uh, they are vectors for the denial of other industries, right?

Joe Rogan 32:33 Mm.

Barbara Freese 32:33 And so that's one of the reasons climate denial, for example, is still going to be out there and deeply rooted for a long time even though the oil industry, which played a huge role in, in building it up, has basically said, "Uh, we, we accept the climate science. We know this is happening." In fact, the, you know, Exxon Mobil even says it, it accepts the Paris Agreement, which says that we have to limit warming to well below two degrees, um, centigrade. And th- and that sounds small. That's actually a, a, a pretty dangerous amount of warming, but th- that's the target of this Paris Agreement, although it also says we're gonna try to limit it to 1.5 degrees. Now, what that means is dramatically reducing our emissions s- first over the next 10 years. I mean, if you want to limit to 1.5 degrees, we're talking about cutting our emissions by 50%. That means pretty much in- cutting s- f- 50% of our, of our fossil fuel use.

Joe Rogan 33:29 Mm.

Barbara Freese 33:29 Um, that, that's a simplification, but then you have to go for that more aggressive target to zero, net zero emissions by 2050. So, we're talking essentially about this huge industry having to either completely transform itself or go away within 30 years, and then, by the way, after that, you have to go into negative emissions, which means building a new industry that sucks carbon out of the air and buries it. We haven't even really begun to talk about that, but, but that's assumed what we're gonna have to do because we have now delayed for 30 years thanks in large part to fossil fuel denial. So, so you got Exxon saying, "Yeah, yeah, we, we understand Paris and all that," but if you, if you look at their own projections about what they think is gonna happen, they put out these formal projections of how much oil will be consumed in the whole world and what our emissions are going to be. They still project emissions going up and then sort of leveling off until, like, 2040 by which time, in fact (laughs) , they need to be very, very low. So, it's kind of like the tobacco companies. The big tobacco companies are no longer denying the basic facts. They admit this product is addictive, and I've got a quote in the book from one executive saying, "Yeah, kills about half of our, uh, of our lifetime smoking customers, our most loyal customers."

Joe Rogan 34:49 Oof.

Barbara Freese 34:49 So... but, uh, you know, and, but despite having for decades said, "If we really believed this was harmful, we wouldn't sell it," um, they're obviously continuing to sell it quite enthusiastically, and that's kind of where we are, I think, with the major oil companies. Coal is still in denial. Oth- others are still denying it, but, but the major oil companies are saying, "Yep, yep, that's a problem," um, but they are still planning on selling more and more of their product, and, and so that is sort of the kernel of denial that that industry has yet to grapple with.

Joe Rogan 35:22 But isn't it right now, at least temporarily inseparable in terms of, of our ability to move around, tr- distribute goods? We kinda have to have oil. We have to have gasoline-

Barbara Freese 35:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:34 ... and petroleum products.

Barbara Freese 35:36 You, you do-

Joe Rogan 35:37 Right now.

Barbara Freese 35:37 ... at the moment. Right.

Joe Rogan 35:38 At the moment, yeah.

Barbara Freese 35:38 Um, but, you know, fortunately, we really do have the technologies to, to, in fact, slash our emissions.

Joe Rogan 35:46 Yes.

Barbara Freese 35:46 What we don't have is the political will, but you could. I mean, I, it is not impossible to say in 10 years we are going to have closed s- uh, certainly all of our gas plants, and our natural gas plants will either have carbon capture or they will be closed. It's not impossible to say all of our cars, certainly all of our new cars, are going to be electric and we're gonna, we can build an infrastructure. That can be done. It is a massive undertaking. It is... I mean, when people talk about the Green New Deal, uh, sometimes that rhetoric includes World War II and I think that's actually appropriate because we are talking about a, a massive change, uh, that is going to transform our, uh, economy, and at the same time, hopefully, address some of the inequalities that we already have in place. I mean, that, that's gonna make it trickier, but most of the deals-... are, for example, very aware that we're gonna be hurting coal miners, we're gonna be hurting oil rig workers and, and trying to put in place some ways that, that we can keep them from suffering, kee- f- help them find other jobs, help their communities diversify and, and whatnot. So y- you know, if, if we are going to avoid what will be a multi-century catastrophe, in terms of climate change, this is what we have to do. And I, and I ... it's hard for me to even say the word catastrophe, because I know how people hear that. I know it sounds like a crazy exaggeration.

Joe Rogan 37:08 Do you really think it does at this point?

Barbara Freese 37:10 Well, I think it does to enough people that it, it does.

Joe Rogan 37:14 But why?

Barbara Freese 37:14 Well-

Joe Rogan 37:14 Is it because of propaganda?

Barbara Freese 37:17 Uh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:17 'Cause it seems like if you ... Yeah, right?

Barbara Freese 37:19 Yeah. I mean, there's been so much pushback.

Joe Rogan 37:19 'Cause if you pay attention to the people that ... when they give you the worst projections, the, the things that we should avoid ... I mean, when I w- what I was getting at when I was talking about these oil executives still selling oil is that, right now, they have to. I mean, this is, I, I understand that there, there needs to be a shift and I'm absolutely in fa- in favor of that. But if, if there was no oil right now, if they just-

Barbara Freese 37:41 Right. That would be-

Joe Rogan 37:41 ... cut it all off-

Barbara Freese 37:42 That would be a crisis.

Joe Rogan 37:42 ... we- yeah. We have a real issue right there.

Barbara Freese 37:44 Right. We have a real issue. I mean, humanity has an issue.

Joe Rogan 37:47 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 37:47 And, and we shouldn't be thinking of it as the oil companies' issue or, or the climate issue.

Joe Rogan 37:50 Oh, yeah.

Barbara Freese 37:51 It's, you know, it's a humanity issue. How are we going to deal with this? And unfortunately, you know, this isn't something capitalism is set up to deal with.

Joe Rogan 37:59 Right.

Barbara Freese 37:59 You know, that's about growth. It isn't about, how do we take this massive industrial enterprise, wind it down, and replace this technology with something else?

Joe Rogan 38:08 Is the solution finding some method of profiting off of pulling carbon from the atmosphere? It seems like if, if it becomes very effective to do that, that could be an enormous way that these companies can kind of shift.

Barbara Freese 38:23 Yeah. Well, uh, I'm not sure that these companies will shift.

Joe Rogan 38:26 Some.

Barbara Freese 38:26 Some of them could, because they do have drilling technology and whatnot, so they (laughs) could end up being, you know, leaders in actually burying the carbon that they once extracted and put into the atmosphere (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 38:36 Oh, that would be so weird.

Barbara Freese 38:37 Um, that would be weird. One o- one of the things that's so weird about this whole debate for decades now is that you y- you've got folks talking about how incredibly terrific markets are and how they can handle all these problems. Um, and, you know, starting in the '90s or so, folks were saying, "Great. Okay. Let's put a price on carbon," because otherwise, the markets are totally blind. If you can pollute for completely for free, the market has no incentive to reduce polluting or to draw carbon out of the air and bury it. But the people who seem to have the most faith in the power of markets are the ones most opposed to putting a price on carbon.

Joe Rogan 39:17 Mm.

Barbara Freese 39:17 So the, the advances we might have made ... And, and some states actually do have a price on carbon, but the advances we might have made more nationally and globally have been blocked by people who, who love markets. And, and here's another ironic part to this. The country who's like our main competitor and, not incidentally, a huge, huge polluter, is China, ostensibly Communist. They believe more in market power (laughs) than, you know, the, the right wing of the Republican Party.

Joe Rogan 39:46 How so?

Barbara Freese 39:46 They have put a price on carbon, and they are using market forces to try to reduce pollution.

Joe Rogan 39:53 Really? So China is more progressive in, in terms of trying to reduce pollution than Americans? Is that-

Barbara Freese 39:59 Well, China is polluting a huge amount.

Joe Rogan 40:01 Yeah. That's what I was gonna say.

Barbara Freese 40:03 But on this particular issue of w- how c- can the markets help us, uh, reduce pollution, they're using market forces to try to reduce their pollution and we're still not.

Joe Rogan 40:12 Another really divisive aspect of this is that it's become some sort of a Left versus Right ideological issue. Like, there's a lotta people on the Right that I've had conversations with people that really don't have any idea what they're talking about where they instantly deny that climate change is a real issue. And when you press them on it, and just c- it's one of the benefits of having, uh, the sort of long form conversations.

Barbara Freese 40:35 Mm.

Joe Rogan 40:35 Is that if you're doing this on CNN and it's one of those talking head things where you only have seven minutes and there's three people shouting over each other, it's very hard to get to the heart of, "Why do you believe this?"

Barbara Freese 40:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:45 But when you're talking over long podcasts, hours long, you get to these people and they'll adamantly deny that it's an issue, but they don't know why.

Barbara Freese 40:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:00 Do you know what I'm saying? It's like a thing-

Barbara Freese 41:01 Yeah. Uh-

Joe Rogan 41:01 ... if you're a Right wing pundit or a Right Wing person and you're saying Right Wing things, you're gonna say, "Climate change is not our issue."

Barbara Freese 41:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:08 "Our issue right now is the economy."

Barbara Freese 41:09 Right. Okay.

Joe Rogan 41:09 "What, what we gotta do right now is support jobs and people. There's a lot of people that need to put food on the table. There's a lot of people that need to ..." And then they get this sort of, uh, ranting, raving, pro-economic standpoint-

Barbara Freese 41:20 Mm.

Joe Rogan 41:20 ... and it becomes a denial of environmental problems that s- becomes Left versus Right, and it's very strange.

Barbara Freese 41:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:28 I don't understand why anyone ... Like, how can that be n- that not be a universal issue? How could anyone not want the world to be better for our grandchildren?

Barbara Freese 41:37 Mm.

Joe Rogan 41:37 How do, how could anybody not want less pollution? But it, it becomes this thing where we have all these different categories that are Left and Right.

Barbara Freese 41:45 Mm.

Joe Rogan 41:46 And once you're on one side, you automatically seem to oppose those things that are, that are, uh, in the, uh, the other party's ideas.

Barbara Freese 41:55 Well, in fact, uh, there's one, uh, survey I cite in here that showed that climate change was the most polarized issue in the American political landscape, even more than abortion.

Joe Rogan 42:07 Really?

Barbara Freese 42:08 Um, and-

Joe Rogan 42:09 More than abortion? That's crazy.

Barbara Freese 42:09 More, more than abortion. Now, that was a snapshot in time, and I think maybe that's changing.

Joe Rogan 42:14 Ah.

Barbara Freese 42:14 Certainly, you see with younger Republicans a lot more concern about climate change. But you're absolutely right. I mean, it remains very polarized, and I don't think you can understand it. It, you know, it's not in ... I, I don't think it makes sense from an ideological standpoint. I think it makes sense from a tribal standpoint-

Joe Rogan 42:30 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 42:30 ... that we have divided and, and it feels good to believe the same things as the people you are affiliated with.

Joe Rogan 42:37 Yes.

Barbara Freese 42:37 And it's tense to, to not believe the same things.

Joe Rogan 42:40 Yes.

Barbara Freese 42:40 That's a s- that's a source of, of hardship, and, you know, the, the reason it's such a big problem here is that this isn't just about making the world better for our grandkids. It's about avoiding catastrophe-

Joe Rogan 42:50 Yes.

Barbara Freese 42:50 ... for our grandkids.

Joe Rogan 42:51 Yes.

Barbara Freese 42:51 Um, and, and so that's why, you know, I, it is finally rising to the surface within the Democratic Party. I mean, it's been ignored or, or downplayed for too long. And certainly in the national campaigns, it was never perceived to be important enough or winning enough an issue to get a lot of attention. Now we see, largely driven by the youth movement, um-... an insistence that, yeah, it is time, it is absolutely time, it's 30 years past time, that we get very aggressive about this. And, and so I don't know what happens now with, with COVID, with George Floyd, obviously there are other issues dominating the news right now. But I really hope we, we hang on to this issue as a critical one for the election, and, and, and don't stop there, because this is going to continue to require lots of pressure to make sure that we make the changes we need.

Joe Rogan 43:43 Yeah, I don't think it's gonna go away, I think, but other issues do come to the forefront. But what I, what you said that I think is really interesting is that it gives you comfort to agree with the other people that are in your party, in your group. And that's something that is exacerbated by social media, and manipulated by social media. And it's one of the weirder things about it, is that a corporation could legally, um, create hundreds if not thousands of fake pages, and then use those to ma- Like, I'm sure you're aware of the, uh, the Internet research agency from Russia-

Barbara Freese 44:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:15 ... that had an impact on the 2016 elections.

Barbara Freese 44:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:18 And, um, uh, Renee DiResta did some pretty fascinating work on that, where she did a deep dive into how these accounts, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or what have you, have been manipulated, and how they, how they use them.

Barbara Freese 44:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:33 Where the, in one ta- point, they had a, uh, pro-Texas group meet up, uh, at the exact same time as a pro-Muslim group on the exact same block. Like, they, they manipulated it.

Barbara Freese 44:46 Yeah, they-

Joe Rogan 44:46 Like, there was no one from-

Barbara Freese 44:47 ... it's like child's play, it seems.

Joe Rogan 44:48 Exactly. It was like they were moving pieces on a chess board-

Barbara Freese 44:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:51 ... and they, they literally set up altercations. And you would imagine that ... I mean, I don't know what these fossil fuel companies or, or any kind of company that's involved in any some- anything that would be s- con- considered sketchy environmentally would ... I don't, I don't know how many manipulating sites they run-

Barbara Freese 45:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 45:10 ... or manipulative, uh, social media accounts they run. But I would imagine that's gotta be part of the game plan, because online discourse, it's so easy to throw monkey wrenches into the gears, it's throw easy- so- to throw sand into the gas tank. It's so easy-

Barbara Freese 45:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:26 ... to sort of monkey with the, the numbers and change the ideas that are being discussed, and change the narratives, that it's, uh, it's a, it's a turn- it's just a way that you can sort of, uh, shift the public's interests and opinions on things.

Barbara Freese 45:42 Yeah. I mean, and if you're willing to lie and manipulate, then you act- you have a- obviously a huge advantage. But there's also just the basic human tendency that when we talk to people we already agree with, we tend to then become stronger in our opinions. And so we, we, we get polarized, basically. And that's even before social media. So then you sort of weaponize that polarization, that tendency, and, and you've got an algorithm that says, "Well, if you liked that video, how about this video?" And suddenly people are getting, you know, totally radicalized, (laughs) you know, on, on climate change or on other issues. And so yeah, I mean, it is, it is a huge problem. How do we overcome the social divisions, the social distrust? How do we overcome the denial? Um, and, you know, I, I think if, if the patterns in, in the book come to the fore, we will, society will find ways to build trust again. It'll probably have a lot to do with maintaining long-term accountability and not just a flash reaction to what you hear. But it could very well take decades, and we will have a lot of damage done in the meantime.

Joe Rogan 46:47 I wonder if there's going to be a time where there are laws against social media manipulation like that. 'Cause right now there are not, and-

Barbara Freese 46:56 There will be.

Joe Rogan 46:56 ... it's, yeah, it seems like there has to be. 'Cause if, if you ... I, I can't imag- I'm not naive enough to imagine that what's happening with the internet research agencies in Russia is not happening here.

Barbara Freese 47:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:07 It has to be. They understand the effectiveness of it. It's been d- well-documented. The idea that, that corporations are gonna step back and go, "Well, that's not our business."

Barbara Freese 47:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:15 "That's not what we do." I mean, that's a, an incredibly effective tool. And if you were gonna use it to manipulate opinions on whether it's climate change or, you know, anything, you know, pharmaceutical, uh, drug overdoses. Like, whatever, whatever it is-

Barbara Freese 47:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:29 ... that you want to manipulate people with, I would imagine that that's a, a gigantic issue, but it's not something that really gets discussed in terms of, uh, in, in terms of passing legislation to prevent that stuff.

Barbara Freese 47:41 Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and hopefully it gets more and more discussed, because it is very scary. I mean-

Joe Rogan 47:47 Right.

Barbara Freese 47:47 ... it turns out we ... Humans are easily manipulated, and were easily manipulated even before social media. But now there is this incredibly sophisticated engine to drive us apart, to, to drive us, uh, in the direction that those best at manipulating us want us to go.

Joe Rogan 48:03 Yes. And it's addictive, which is even crazier.

Barbara Freese 48:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:07 It's a completely addictive mechanism.

Barbara Freese 48:10 Yeah, it really is.

Joe Rogan 48:11 Like, people are lost in their phones and lost in their computers. Like, when they're checking their social media stuff. And that's one of the, the, more interesting things about these social media algorithms, that, um, it's been determined that when people are upset about things and when they're angry about things, they post more, so it's more valuable.

Barbara Freese 48:31 Hm.

Joe Rogan 48:31 So the algorithms favor people being upset. So they'll send-

Barbara Freese 48:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:35 ... you, if you, if you, uh, find, uh, abortion a hot topic or environmental issues, they'll start sending you those. That's what's gonna show up in your feed.

Barbara Freese 48:43 Hm.

Joe Rogan 48:43 You're gonna get more of it, 'cause this is what you engage in. And, uh, it's, what's fascinating is it's, it's not even really malicious, in that it's just pragmatic. Because I have a friend who did an experiment. My friend Ari, uh, wanted to find out what would happen if he just looked up puppies. So he just looked up puppies on YouTube and looked up puppies everywhere, and his feed was overwhelmed by puppies.

Barbara Freese 49:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:08 So it's not like there's some vicious plot to only feed you things that you hate.... just human nature-

Barbara Freese 49:16 Mm.

Joe Rogan 49:16 ... we tend to look at things that piss us off.

Barbara Freese 49:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:19 Which is really-

Barbara Freese 49:20 Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Rogan 49:20 ... kind of crazy, it's like-

Barbara Freese 49:21 And now we have a, a very sophisticated machine to drive us in the direction of getting more pissed off.

Joe Rogan 49:27 And that sophisticated machine is clearly using the same sort of deceptic- deceptive tactics to try to diminish their responsibility for what they're doing.

Barbara Freese 49:38 Yeah, exactly. And, you know, one, one of the things that makes these tactics, I think, work so well is that they really are based in human nature. I mean-

Joe Rogan 49:47 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 49:47 ... I think that if you are an executive, uh, you know, your, your instinct is that you are doing fine, and your instinct is that the other side is wrong. And that, and that psychological reflex then, you know, becomes the foundation for a corporate strategy. And then that corporate strategy becomes the basis of kind of its own new industry of, of public relations folks, and advertising people, and lawyers and, and think tanks who will promote that. And then that becomes an ideology.

Joe Rogan 50:16 Mm.

Barbara Freese 50:16 And that's certainly what we saw the progression for climate change, and I, and I think, or climate denial. Uh, and that's a dangerous trend.

Joe Rogan 50:24 (smacks lips) Do you co- you do cover social media and denial in this? No?

Barbara Freese 50:28 Uh, no, I, I don't really get into it. I mean, I talk a little bit about, uh, yeah, no, it's really not a factor. I mean, the more, the most recent industry that I talk about, the two most recent industries are the fossil fuels denying climate change, and also Wall Street denying the, the, uh, the products and activities and, and hazards that led up to the financial crisis of 2008.

Joe Rogan 50:51 That's a can of worms in and of itself, right?

Barbara Freese 50:54 (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:54 You've, you've read Matt Taibbi's work on that?

Barbara Freese 50:56 I, I've read some of his work, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:58 Yeah. He's-

Barbara Freese 50:58 The vampire squid, uh-

Joe Rogan 51:00 Yeah. (laughs)

Barbara Freese 51:01 ... clam to the face of humanity. Yeah, that's an immor- immortal line, so his description of Goldman Sachs.

Joe Rogan 51:07 Yeah, his work is fascinating and terrifying on it.

Barbara Freese 51:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:10 Just you, you... And he's not a guy with a financial background, so he had to do a deep dive into all that stuff for years-

Barbara Freese 51:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:17 ... to sort of get a grip on how they do things-

Barbara Freese 51:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:19 ... and what they're doing. And the f- the idea that that is the backbone of our civilization, in terms of our economic civilization, is really crazy. What a goofy system.

Barbara Freese 51:28 Yeah. And, uh, and, of course, that industry's become, you know, so much bigger, as a percentage of GDP, and so much pr- more powerful without any evident social benefits, as far as I can see. And, you know, I, I'm also not a person with a financial background. I came to this, you know, f- as an environmental lawyer, um, and not as a particularly naive person. But I have to say, I was really astonished at, at the depth of the exploitation. I mean, just the attitude. It wasn't even like we're, we think we're trying to do the right thing for our clients, or we think we're trying to do the right thing for, you know, society. It was, it was just this full-on take the money and run-

Joe Rogan 52:09 Mm.

Barbara Freese 52:09 ... and, and exploitation. I mean, there's a, they have this cute little code on Wall Street, uh, that was prominent before the crisis. I don't, hope it's not so prominent now. It's, um, IBGYBG, which stands for I'll be gone, you'll be gone, which was the answer when somebody said, "Wait a minute, we're, we're pumping all this risk into the system. Th- this investment product is going to fail. This is all gonna hit the fan, this is all gonna collapse." IBGYBG. And, and-

Joe Rogan 52:39 Oh, Jesus.

Barbara Freese 52:39 ... the bonuses for selling these crazy risky products, uh, were all front-loaded. So you sell somebody a multi-year product and you get the bonus right up front, so you don't care what the long-term risk is. And the attitude toward their clients, I mean, there, there's a, uh, uh, an author in, in Britain who interviewed all kinds of people, um, and promised them anonymity from the British, uh, uh, the, the, uh, the British financial industry, but it overlaps very much with the US one. And the, the culture was, "Hey, rip your client's face off." You know? "You eat lunch or you, uh, be lunch." And-

Joe Rogan 53:18 Oof.

Barbara Freese 53:18 ... I mean, a lot of really, really vicious stuff going on. And, uh, risks that y- were, were so obvious that you, you can't believe that they were denying them. I mean, obviously when there's a housing bubble, it will burst.

Joe Rogan 53:32 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 53:33 And there was an obvious housing bubble, it was denied for a long, long time, and that ultimately became the basis of all of this really toxic debt that got magically transformed into triple A investments. And it wasn't, I think, that the industry was denying that it was going to burst, they just felt they were gonna get in and out before it burst, so they could pass the risk off to the next party before it happened. So, um, I don't know, do we call that, uh, rationalization? Is it... I mean, it's, I, I put it all under the very broad category of denial, but, but, uh, it, uh... Actually, the head of JP Morgan later would testify to the, uh, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, "Somehow, you know, we just missed the fact that housing prices don't go up forever."

Joe Rogan 54:18 (scoffs)

Barbara Freese 54:18 I don't think they really did miss that fact.

Joe Rogan 54:19 They really said it that way?

Barbara Freese 54:21 That's what, uh-

Joe Rogan 54:22 Just paraphrasing?

Barbara Freese 54:22 ... Jamie Dimon said, yeah. I, I may have a word or two off-

Joe Rogan 54:25 IBGYBG.

Barbara Freese 54:25 ... but, uh, that's actually what he said. I, I suspect he regretted phrasing it that way, because that's pretty astonishing.

Joe Rogan 54:31 I wonder how many IBGYBG tattoos there are out there.

Barbara Freese 54:34 (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good question.

Joe Rogan 54:36 There's probably a lot, right?

Barbara Freese 54:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:37 A disturbing number.

Barbara Freese 54:37 I think there's probably a lot. You know, there's one, actually one anecdote in the book that I, that I, uh, retold from a book that Mike Hudson wrote called The Monster. And he's talking about, first of all, they, they, we had this new breed of mortgage lenders, the folks who actually went out to sell the subprime, "subprime" mortgages to the low-income people who, uh, were often defrauded and, and certainly not the most sophisticated financial consumers. And this one particularly bad company, uh, was, was out there. And, and Lehman Brothers sent a vice president to visit with this company because he- they wanted to know how they were doing. This was, I think, in the, in the '90s. And he writes back and says-... that this is a sweatshop, it is high-pressure sales for people in a weak state, and it, it is a check-your-ethics-at-the-door kind of business. And Lehman Brothers writes back (laughs) and says, "We enthusiastically welcome the opportunity to partner in your future growth." And ended up then, in fact, partnering with them and financing these, these, uh, mortgages, and then buying them back, packaging them up, selling them to investors, and then, of course, eventually becoming the biggest bankruptcy in history.

Joe Rogan 55:50 And getting bailed out.

Barbara Freese 55:51 Well, not Lehman Brothers-

Joe Rogan 55:52 Oh, that's right.

Barbara Freese 55:52 ... but the other ones did.

Joe Rogan 55:53 Right. That's ... What a crazy thing-

Barbara Freese 55:55 Many others.

Joe Rogan 55:55 ... that they just sort of laid it out like that.

Barbara Freese 55:58 Well, yeah, this was, uh, internal stuff that, that came out, but yeah, the, the fact that-

Joe Rogan 56:04 Ugh.

Barbara Freese 56:04 ... they, they were, you know, so happy to, to partner with an unethical business, and in fact, there's also a lot of evidence that Wall Street was just continuing to get the mortgage lenders to reduce their standards even lower. Because, you know, you started out with these very, very aggressive new companies. These weren't banks. These were lending companies, and they were new, and they wanted to get huge very quick, and they were super aggressive. But they made so much money that the more traditional banks started following and, and doing what they had been doing. And so Wall Street gets involved and, and basically they're saying, "You don't need documentation of income." And, you know, the, the banker would say, or, or the lender would say, "Well, how do I know they're going to pay it back?" And, and Wall Street would say, "You don't need to worry about that." Uh, and in fact, they didn't, because Wall Street would buy it. Um, the, the point wasn't, will this ever be paid back? The point was, is the, is the interest rate on the surface of the mortgage high enough that we can package it into what looks like a lucrative investment? Um, and of course they would package, uh, lots and lots of these together and then slice and dice 'em and stack 'em and, and keep rearranging them and, and essentially then threatened and corrupted the, the ... and manipulated the ratings agencies so that they would give them triple A ratings so that your pension fund could buy it.

Joe Rogan 57:26 That was one of the things that was so disturbing about Matt Taibbi's work is it's- it's so sophisticated that it takes so long to understand how they're doing it and what they're doing-

Barbara Freese 57:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:36 ... that the average person that doesn't have a background in finance, as you- you get into it, or economics, if you get into it, it's like (exhales sharply) you gotta start from scratch several times and go, "Okay, what are, what are the ... how are they doing this?"

Barbara Freese 57:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:47 And, uh, why is this legal, and how is this legal? And, and when you're dealing with just numbers too, that's what's disturbing to me. There's something about environmental impact that at least it seems somewhat tangible.

Barbara Freese 57:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:59 Like, it's a thing, right? It's ca- carbon in the atmosphere. It's a ... there's an impact. The, the temperature rises, the sea level rises, the ... You know what I'm saying? Like, there's physical things, whereas numbers are these weird things where if your whole business model is predicated on increasing the amount of numbers-

Barbara Freese 58:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:18 ... that you earn, you can find ways, especially if other people are willing to go along with that, you can find ways to screw with those things.

Barbara Freese 58:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:26 And that's, that's the most disturbing thing about finances to me.

Barbara Freese 58:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:31 Like, the Bernie Madoff situation, for example, like how many people had to know that there's something wrong with the amount of money they're earning? How many people had to know that?

Barbara Freese 58:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:43 How many people had to ... How many people ... And how many people were like, "Listen, these are just numbers. We're just getting these numbers. We're putting numbers in, we're getting numbers back. We're getting more num- numbers back than we get in, so we're good."

Barbara Freese 58:53 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:54 Like-

Barbara Freese 58:54 Well, uh, you know, and I think any industry, like finance, that is incredibly complicated-

Joe Rogan 58:59 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 58:59 ... and abstract in, in that way, that doesn't feel quite right, but, but who really knows, is one that is absolutely ripe for denial, because, uh, the complexity means nobody really knows the risk. It also means the industry can, and it did, go to Congress and say, "You don't get this," which was true.

Joe Rogan 59:16 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 59:16 Um, and so okay, we're selling these derivatives, and yeah, maybe they're super complicated and nobody knows what they are, but you regulators, hands off. We, you know, the market, we are self-disciplined. We, the industry can ... will not take crazy risks. Uh, and, and by the way, you should get rid of those Depression-era laws so we can do some other stuff.

Joe Rogan 59:35 Hmm.

Barbara Freese 59:35 And then eventually, of course, you have the financial crisis. But the abstract nature of all these numbers also means that whatever little bell might go off in somebody's head saying, "This is gonna hurt somebody," it's gonna be muted, it's gonna be ignored, because it just feels so abstract. I mean, you're just, okay, you sell a bond, you know, you sell this security to a pension fund and maybe way down the line it'll, it'll fail and maybe some people won't get to retire, but you don't know who they are, and maybe that won't happen. I mean, the more abstract it is, and of course the more globalized our economy becomes, the more distant the impacts, the harder to imagine they are, and the easier to ignore and deny.

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 And then you add in the fact that they're able to manipulate politicians.

Barbara Freese 1:00:22 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:00:23 They fund their campaigns. They ... The, the really creepy one is when they give them money to speak, like enormous-

Barbara Freese 1:00:30 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 ... sums of money after they get out of office, like what-

Barbara Freese 1:00:33 That can be a little, uh, corrupting, huh?

Joe Rogan 1:00:35 But it's just so gross and obvious.

Barbara Freese 1:00:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 I mean, when you're giving a former president or a former secretary of state a quarter of a million dollars to talk for an hour-

Barbara Freese 1:00:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:45 ... like, why? What is, what is that person saying?

Barbara Freese 1:00:48 That's a, that's-

Joe Rogan 1:00:49 It's so fascinating.

Barbara Freese 1:00:50 That's a very high rate of return for-

Joe Rogan 1:00:52 Yeah.

Barbara Freese 1:00:52 ... a quarter or a half an hour of work. That's true.

Joe Rogan 1:00:54 Well, when Bernie Sanders was upset at Hillary Clinton, it was like, "Release the transcripts. Let me hear what you said." And there's not a chance in hell she's gonna do that.

Barbara Freese 1:01:01 No.

Joe Rogan 1:01:02 I mean, what do they say during those things that warrants a quarter of a million dollars or more? It's a-

Barbara Freese 1:01:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 It's a shady system, and there's no motivation to, to shift it, change it.

Barbara Freese 1:01:15 Well, there's, there's no mo- motivation for, uh, those who are benefiting from it, certainly those who have the most money and, and are able to manipulate it. I do think there's ... I mean, if you were a politician-... and you are constantly raising money. I mean, I think many of them hate that and would love a system that didn't require them to be constantly doing that. Um, a- a- and it isn't like those poli- the politicians who are raising money for the campaigns, they don't get to walk away with it. They- they're using that for their campaign, so-

Joe Rogan 1:01:43 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 1:01:43 ... so I think there is motivation a- among the elected people not to have to keep doing this. But i- in the meantime, those who are benefiting from this and w- who can manipulate the system are gonna resist any efforts to try to change it. So, that's a huge problem.

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 There might be motivation, but there's no tangible alternative. There's nothing like where you can say, "Look, we've got a clear path. You don't have to raise money anymore."

Barbara Freese 1:02:07 Well, there is ... there are ways to whittle away at this, an- and, you know, it didn't used to be quite this bad.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 1:02:12 And- and certainly you can provide some additional public funding or- or require- require networks to give politicians time on the air, uh, things that allow them to speak to the- to the public, which is, of course, what this money is supposed to give them a chance to do without having to go to other people who have money to give them the money so that they can get access to the public. I mean, I think there are ways to do this. I- I wouldn't pretend to be an expert at all in campaign finance reform, but I think it is a field, and I think that the reforms of the past have been, you know, blocked or undone, and- and we can- we can try to put some of those back in place.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 What you're doing with this book is essentially you have a magnifying glass on some of the worst aspects of human behavior.

Barbara Freese 1:02:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:57 Is it depressing?

Barbara Freese 1:02:59 Uh, kind of. Uh, it's, you know, it's kind of depressing. I- I've also had people tell me the book is infuriating-

Joe Rogan 1:03:05 Oh, yeah.

Barbara Freese 1:03:05 ... which, um, you know, I really didn't intend that. I- I kind of thought, "Well ..." Uh, let me tell you. When I first imagined this book, I imagined that we were gonna go through climate denial, we were gonna snap out of it because it was so obviously suicidal, and then we were gonna look around and go, "Woo, how did that happen?" And how do we make sure that never happens again? And I would be able to say, "Look, here are some factors that have contributed to this throughout history, and- and here's ... you know, maybe this will lead to some reforms." Um, and obviously it didn't work out that way. This book has come out when we have a- a climate denier running the country. Uh, so-

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 Is he really a climate denier? Like what-

Barbara Freese 1:03:43 Well, he- he has called it a hoax several times. Now, I think maybe he's been talked out of using that term lately, but he's still pushing back the regulations and- and trying to rein back-

Joe Rogan 1:03:54 So he really said climate change is a hoax?

Barbara Freese 1:03:55 Uh, I th- he's- ... I said that several times, and- and I know at least in one tweet, maybe more, um, a Chinese hoax, uh, that China was trying to- to perpetrate on us. So, um, so in any event, you know, it- it ... I- I wrote an infuriating book. I didn't mean to. I meant to write a kind of "Let's all step back and look at this" sort of book, but it just turns out you cannot write about infuriating topics without writing a kind of infuriating book. I do try to keep some perspective here and- and, you know, look at- look at the good parts of this history, which is to say in each case, you have members of the public, you have scientists, you have journalists, you have movements stepping up and confronting that denial and eventually, in most cases, overcoming it. Um, and, you know, we do have other segments of our society that are designed to try to not just pursue profit, but to seek truth, the scientists-

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 1:04:52 ... and- and journalists. And that doesn't mean they're not also trying to- to pursue profit sometimes or at least get paid for- for their work, but, you know, we do have systems in place that have successfully confronted this, and so it's not like we're starting from scratch. We are just in a very big hole right now, and particularly about climate change and particularly with so much corporate power over Congress and- and frankly the states as well.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 W- what w- what subjects were ... have ... where you see there's actually progress been made?

Barbara Freese 1:05:25 Well, you know, p- people have been fighting climate change on the state level, and we have done some things also federally for a long time over the years. I mean, many, many states have put in place climate targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Many have put in place renewable energy standards which have been enormously successful in building up the wind industry, the solar industry, and- and those technologies, as they deploy and improve, have gotten so much cheaper. I mean, it's really much, much easier now to imagine getting rid of fossil fuels than it was, you know, 40 years ago when the industry first confronted this or when society first really started looking at this. Um, a- and- and on the federal level, they- they've made major improvements in, uh ... they've required efficiency standards which have been really helpful for, like, major appliances. We've had auto efficiency standards now. Obama put some strong ones in place. Trump has rolled those back again, so that's going to limit the- the progress exactly when it needs to be accelerated, so that's- that's maybe not b- one of the good- good pieces of news you were asking about. Um, we have ... well, I mean, I think that's gonna be largely the focus. And- and even though we have the ... Trump has said we're not going to be part of the Paris Agreement anymore, which by the way every other country in the world, you know, is a part of. There's a handful that haven't ratified it, but everybody else is part of it. Um, even though he said that, you have many states and- and many cities stepping forward and saying, "Well, we are still part of it, and we are going to be working to reduce our emissions." So, you know, that's all very good news, the technology, that we do have a deep bench of- of policy experience. We- we know a lot of good things that we can do, uh, that will work, and we have the rising concern, the youth movement, you know, all around the world really that ... who are- who are really stepping up and saying, "Uh, enough. We have got to deal with this, and we've got to deal with it now, and because you grown-ups have wasted 30 years, we've got to deal with it particularly aggressively."

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 ... now, you cover how many different subjects in this book?

Barbara Freese 1:07:31 I, I cover eight different campaigns of denial.

Joe Rogan 1:07:33 And it seems like for you, in particular, climate change is the most disturbing, or-

Barbara Freese 1:07:38 That's, well, that's the one that threatens-

Joe Rogan 1:07:40 ... resonates.

Barbara Freese 1:07:40 ... the future of human civilization (laughs) and, uh, and the one that, that I got started on, yeah. But, um, but yeah, I cover, I cover seven other industries, including slavery, radium, um-

Joe Rogan 1:07:51 Radium?

Barbara Freese 1:07:51 Radium.

Joe Rogan 1:07:52 What's the-

Barbara Freese 1:07:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:53 ... industrial strength denial take on radium?

Barbara Freese 1:07:56 Radium. Radium is a crazy, crazy story. Um, radium is this insanely, uh, radioactive element that was discovered, you know, around, just ar- right, right around 1900 by the Curies in France. And it was a mystery. I mean, it was way more radioactive than uranium and people didn't even know what radioactivity really meant, but there was a, you know, this sort of aura of wizardry around it. And, and when they discovered it, they didn't, uh, uh ... well, the first thing they discovered, and they discovered this the hard way, was that it burned your flesh. It didn't burn it right away, but you'd carry some around and then in, in s- a few days, you would have a burn there, because it was sending off all this energy. So, they thought, "Okay. We have this flesh-killing, cell-killing element. What can we do with it?" And they thought, "Well, let's try to kill cancer tumors," which was a, actually a very good idea, and they experimented with that. That was the, the medical use for radium. "We're going to put this radium next to a tumor, and then we'll take it away and it'll shrink and we can use the same radium for the next tumor." And so it was a very efficient thing.

Joe Rogan 1:08:59 What form was the radium in?

Barbara Freese 1:09:00 They would put it ... well, they somehow d- would refine it and distill it into, you know, tiny, tiny little amounts, and then they would put it in a needle or put it in a vial or something and just position it, uh, near a tumor. It started out as ore and they had to refine it and refine it down, down, down, down, down. Um, and so, the, the governments at the time in Europe and Al- and also in the US thought, "Great. Here's this weird, crazy, valuable stuff. Maybe we should control this ore so we make sure it gets used to actually cure cancer." And, and in Europe, that's pretty much what they did. In the US, we tried to do that. But the industry, there was a brand new industry that was just forming, and they stepped forward. The, the first company was called Standard Chemical. They stepped forward and said, "No, no, no, no, no. I- if, if the government starts taking over radium because it's radioactive, radium ore, well, everything's a little radioactive. Where will this stop?" It was this classic sort of slippery slope argument. And somehow it, it succeeded and so what happened was this mysterious and potent element became another commercial project, uh, commercial product to be exploited by this, this company, Standard Chemical. There were some others that later popped up. Standard Chemical was founded by this guy named Joe Flannery, and he was, uh, he had a background as, uh, his family w- were morticians, and then he went into industry, and then he was kind of a snake oil salesm- salesman and he kind of failed. But he wanted with radium, he told Congress, to cure cancer. He had a good motive, but he also wanted a big market, right? Cancer is, you know, just one disease, and if you reuse the radium, that's not a market. So, he was determined to expand that market. He actually opened what, what was called the first free radium clinic in the world in 1913 in Pittsburgh, and he invited patients in and hired doctors and thousands of them were injected with radium or they drank radium. So, if you can somehow prove that consuming radium is healthy, then you have a market, right? And many of these people did have cancer, but it turns out that, that injecting them with radium would actually kill them a lot faster than the cancer would have. And one of the clinic doctors was, was questioned before Congress, and, and he explained, well, the way he looked at it, he was just shoving them over a little more quickly. So, he wasn't worried about the fact that he was, he was killing the cancer patients. And they weren't just treating cancer patients. They were treating anybody. They were treating arthritis, they were treating joint pain. And so they were, you know, giving this very toxic substance to people with low level chronic problems. And then he would ... he, he actually formed his own, um, medical journal, and he would have his doctors write up the results of this and, and put it in there and send it out to all the doctors. Uh, so yeah. I mean, it, it was really pretty crazy, but he did succeed in launching this health fad where suddenly there were lots of products that contained radium. Now, some of them said they did, but didn't, but, but many of them really did. Uh, and you could buy your radium, get your radium in all kinds of different ways. If you wanted a radioactive drink, you could drink it. You could still get injected. You could take pills. You could, if you wanted to soak in, in radium, you could buy bath salts, ointments. There was radio- there was radium toothpaste.

Joe Rogan 1:12:29 Whoa.

Barbara Freese 1:12:30 Uh, yeah. Um, and, and, oh, and, and one of the, the more interesting ones, there were, uh, radioactive rectal suppositories. And these were marketed, uh, basically for male sexual dysfunction. That's not what they called it.

Joe Rogan 1:12:47 What did they call it?

Barbara Freese 1:12:47 Uh, they, they said this was for, as I recall, weak, discer- discouraged men who wanted to perform the duties of a real man.

Joe Rogan 1:12:56 (laughs)

Barbara Freese 1:12:56 Um, so yeah. And that was, you know, I think what happens is if you're, if you're going to sell a quack product, you try to identify problems that people are kind of embarrassed about, so they're less likely-

Joe Rogan 1:13:06 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 1:13:06 ... to go to their doctor. They'll, they'll buy it out of the back of a magazine, and then-

Joe Rogan 1:13:09 Mm-hmm.

Barbara Freese 1:13:09 ... if it doesn't work, they're not gonna complain about it. They're not gonna sue you. Um, so, and, but these were not just marketed for that. They were marketed for colds. They were marketed for obesity, for constipation, for insanity. That was a big one, trying to cure insanity. So yeah, it becomes a health fad. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:13:25 How long did this go on for?

Barbara Freese 1:13:26 Well, pro- it pretty much fizzled out in the '30s, largely because one particularly prominent and wealthy individual could afford to poison himself very thoroughly by drinking these radium drinks, uh, every day. And ultimately, his-... his facial bones started to dissolve.

Joe Rogan 1:13:46 Oh, God.

Barbara Freese 1:13:46 His teeth fell out, he had, like, holes between his sinuses and his mouth.

Joe Rogan 1:13:51 (exhales)

Barbara Freese 1:13:52 This is actually what happened as well to a, a group of workers who were painting radium paint onto watch dials, which is actually a more well-known part of this history. Um, a lot of young women were hired to paint radium onto watch dials. Not just watch dials, they put them onto-

Joe Rogan 1:14:08 Oh my God.

Barbara Freese 1:14:08 ... all kinds of products.

Joe Rogan 1:14:09 Look at this, these images.

Barbara Freese 1:14:11 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:14:12 You can see it up here.

Barbara Freese 1:14:13 Called radium jaw. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:15 Ugh.

Barbara Freese 1:14:16 Jaw necrosis.

Joe Rogan 1:14:17 Oh my gosh. So this-

Barbara Freese 1:14:18 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:14:18 ... this went o- look at that one guy-

Barbara Freese 1:14:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:19 ... with his lower jaw is just gone, on the second row.

Barbara Freese 1:14:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:24 Ugh. So this... Oh my God. Yikes.

Barbara Freese 1:14:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:29 So-

Barbara Freese 1:14:30 Radium.

Joe Rogan 1:14:31 ... this went on for 20 years?

Barbara Freese 1:14:32 Um, well, yes. I mean, uh, the, the industry got going in the mid, uh, 19 teens. Um, this, this one man I was just talking about died in the early '30s, got lots of press, and that helped the health fad part of it go away. The, the worker exposure, the, the young women usually who were disfigured and died from, from this, that part of the industry of, of radioactive paint lasted a bit longer, uh, into the '30s. Um, they, the, uh, w- when they began, they taught these women, uh, young women, they might have been 15 when they got hired, they taught them to make a nice sharp point on their paintbrush with their lips and tongue.

Joe Rogan 1:15:12 (groans)

Barbara Freese 1:15:13 And because there was this health fad around radium, they told them that this would, would put a glow in their cheeks. And you've seen these pictures, that they really had some, some change in their cheeks, but it wasn't a glow. They... And it...

Joe Rogan 1:15:26 (groans)

Barbara Freese 1:15:26 They told them it was good for them. Um, and so a lot of them, not all of them, I mean, so, uh, you know, not everybody died, which made it easier for the industry to actually blame them. And, and later (laughs) the industry would say that these people with these horrendous disfiguring diseases, that they were suffering from a preexisting condition, that this was somehow not the fault of radium, that they had hired, uh, cripples and, and other, uh, people who, who weren't super strong because this was easy work. And when they got sick, everybody blamed them and they were being punished for their generosity of hiring these folks in the first place. And, and, uh, and by the way, these women had radioactive breath at this point, when they were working.

Joe Rogan 1:16:09 Ugh.

Barbara Freese 1:16:09 So it's not like there was any doubt that they had radium lodged in their bones.

Joe Rogan 1:16:14 What is radioactive breath, exactly?

Barbara Freese 1:16:15 It means they're exhaling radon.

Joe Rogan 1:16:18 So this was measurable?

Barbara Freese 1:16:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:20 Oh, Christ.

Barbara Freese 1:16:20 Even, even by the standards of the time.

Joe Rogan 1:16:23 Oh my God.

Barbara Freese 1:16:23 Yeah. Now, now one thing about the radium industry is, i- you know, denials like that, blaming the victim, are appalling. But, uh, one of the things we did see is that the leaders of that industry, including the guy who invented that radioactive paint and including Joseph Flannery, uh, died and, and c- certainly the, the radia- dir- the inventor of the paint died because of radium exposure. His teeth had fallen out. I- uh, according to Time Magazine, his fingers had been removed. Uh, nobody else covered that particularly gruesome detail, but then he died of anemia. These are all radium-induced ailments. Joseph Flannery, the guy who launched Standard Chemical, well he had this great idea that he had all this radioactive waste, right? So he hired a botanist to find out if it could be a fertilizer. And then they published a report that you should, yeah, spread radioactive waste on your food crops because it's great. Um, he actually had him spread waste on his own garden, uh, and then six years later Flannery died. And the, the industry didn't mention this, but his birth certificate, which I managed to dig up, mentioned that he had a contributing factor in his death of anemia, which is something that radium exposure causes.

Joe Rogan 1:17:33 You mean death certificate? Is that what you meant?

Barbara Freese 1:17:35 Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, death certificate.

Joe Rogan 1:17:36 You said birth certificate.

Barbara Freese 1:17:36 (laughs) Did I bad... Yeah. Right.

Joe Rogan 1:17:38 Yes.

Barbara Freese 1:17:38 His death certif- thank you. Um, so yeah, he had, uh, anemia. And, and if he believed his own clinic, his own, his own sales pitch, he probably drank more radium to treat his anemia.

Joe Rogan 1:17:51 Oh God.

Barbara Freese 1:17:51 Um, so, so he did die. So, so in these two characters, at least we have people believing what they said enough to actually kill themselves as well as other people.

Joe Rogan 1:18:00 So it seems, again, that this is, there's this human characteristic that this, this tendency when you start making money, you start justifying, you want to keep that money coming in, so you start justifying your actions, manipulating the facts, and just continuing to push out whatever it is that you're doing-

Barbara Freese 1:18:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:17 ... that's allowing you to earn this profit.

Barbara Freese 1:18:19 Yeah. Well, and, you know, one of the reasons I talk about Joe Flannery is that he's, he's a, I think a really good