Is A Post-Truth World All Bad? Stephanie Lepp's "Promiscuous Pragmatic Pluralism"
The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum
Meghan Daum
4.7 • 855 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2022
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephanie Lepp is an artist, a film and video producer and Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology, where she leads the production of the podcast Your Undivided Attention. Her latest independent project is Deep Reckonings, a series of "deep fake" videos that depict prominent figures making public statements that have been reimagined as empathetic and morally courageous. In this conversation, Stephanie talks about the origins and goals of Deep Reckoning as well as a variety of concepts that she's developed in response to the current iteration of so-called "post-truth world." This includes her her theory of "promiscuous pragmatic pluralism." She also recounts a conversation she had with economist Glenn Loury on his podcast earlier this spring and why she thinks the next presidential debate will be an "anti-debate" on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Guest Bio:
Stephanie Lepp is the Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology, where she leads the production of the podcast Your Undivided Attention. Her latest independent project is Deep Reckonings, a series of explicitly-marked deep fake videos that imagine morally courageous versions of our public figures.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to just predict right now. I'm just going to make a totally ambitious prediction |
| 0:08.8 | that for the 2024 presidential election, there will be an anti-debat on Joe Rogan. |
| 0:15.6 | The presidential thing that is currently on wherever it is CNN and is not helpful to the public. |
| 0:23.6 | We don't even know where it is. And the point is it's not serving the public. And I mean, |
| 0:29.9 | now that we have independent slash non-legacy media pundits or influencers who have as big of an audience, if not bigger, the |
| 0:41.0 | consciousness goes where the audience. |
| 0:43.8 | If Joe Rogan calls, if he just says, hey, presidential lineup, we're actually going to do |
| 0:49.0 | an anti-debat on my show, because my show is the show with the audience. |
| 0:53.0 | If you can't do an anti-debat, well, |
| 0:54.8 | then you won't be there. And it's going to be a competition for who can integrate the best |
| 0:59.4 | of what all the candidates have to offer. That's the winner. That's who we want to vote for. |
| 1:08.2 | Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest is Stephanie Lep, |
| 1:14.3 | and I'm going to introduce her momentarily, but first, a little housekeeping. You may have heard me |
| 1:21.6 | talking lately about a project I've been working on. It's called the Unspeak-easy. It is a heterodox space for women. |
| 1:31.0 | In my interview a few weeks ago with Jonathan Haidt, I talked a little bit about this theory I have |
| 1:37.1 | that women can have a slightly different relationship to cancel culture than men do. |
| 1:44.9 | Generally speaking, of course, not everyone. |
| 1:47.5 | We're less likely to voice on popular opinions because the social penalties for doing so |
| 1:53.8 | can be more deeply felt. |
| 1:56.3 | I can tell you, if I had a dollar for every woman who's written to me and told me about being |
| 2:02.4 | tossed out of her book club for liking the wrong book or not liking the right book, |
| 2:08.7 | well, yeah, you get the idea. So I am creating something called the unspeak easy. It is an intellectual |
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