The Josh Boone Show Josh Boone

There's an artist on Instagram called DrFakenstein, and he does weird short meme videos, like having Snoop Doug's face on a little girl. That is known as a deep fake, and while the memes are hilarious, there are much more nefarious uses for this technology.

What happens when this is weaponized, and used for extensive PR assassinations, or false flag operations by government agencies around the world?

What happens then when the far-left or far-right starts habitually doxxing and attacking people over false accusations?

Do we continue to spiral into chaos, or do we sign all digital media with some sort of blockchain certificate of authenticity?

And let's say there's massive data breaches, and someone gets access to a celebrity or politician's iCloud account, all there photos and videos – or someone pulls an Edward Snowden and releases tens of thousands of government documents – what if 99% of that is real, but 1% is secretly-doctored and that's what the media runs with?
Even if the truth surfaces, the damage is largely done, as the retraction is gonna be buried in the news cycle – and in fact, it'll become a conspiracy theory that the retraction itself is the real fake news.

How do we protect ourselves from being hacked, both in our data, and in our world-views?

That's some of what we dive into today with our guest Jay Smith.

Jay is a Digital Forensic Analyst, Private Investigator, US Army Veteran, and White Hat Hacker based in Louisville, KY – with a degree in psychology from the University of Louisville, and is now an instructor in Digital Forensics and Security at Loyola University.

He currently operates Alliance Investigation Group, where he merges private Investigation services with modern cyber security methodologies to offer support, protection and education to individuals, families and small businesses.

And that is what fascinated me about Jay is how he operates at the intersection of all of these areas and has a uniquely holistic perspective on the current digital landscape.

Some of the topics we dive into are:
The threat of deep fakes.TikTok, misinformation, doxing, and open-source intelligence.Anti-doxing legislation and it's implications.The weaponization of Reddit.Gen Z and their relationship to online identity.The long-term effects of social media, echo chambers, and self-referential feedback loops.The threat of social credit scores.Decentralization, blockchain, and dispersing the power of data.Wall Street Bets, Gamestop, and the hypocrisy of the financial institutions.The psychology of social engineering.The 80/20 of online security and what you can do to protect yourself.The illusion of anonymity and permanence of data.The emotional weight of working as a private investigator.Tribalism and the rise of the binary world.And much more.
Links from this episode:
DrFakenstein on InstagramMail Out OutKevin Rose podcast with founder of Arweave
Connect with Jay – LinkedIn: @jaysmith502 Website: AllianceInvestigationGroup.com

Music by Kirby Johnston – check out his band Aldaraia on Spotify

In 1999 the Star Wars film "The Phantom Menace" released and garnered widespread acclaim amongst fans. But ever since, people gradually started seeing the movie in a very different light; the enthusiasm waned, and the critical perception diminished significantly.

This is a common phenomenon that is like a collectively unconscious lens that distorts through nostalgia. That collective experience is known now as “The Phantom Menace Effect.”

And ugh. Well, history repeats itself... and my guest and I today observed a similar phenomenon this year with the Japanese Evangelion franchise's final film release.  

Evangelion fans largely seem to love this new adaption at first in spite of the movie embodying the very things that the series originally intended to deconstruct and destroy. And just like in 1999 with Star Wars fans, this seems like another instance of The Phantom Menace Effect. It makes you question, if they legitimately enjoy this adaption — what did they even like about the original to begin with?
And in this is episode we're going to use this experience as a case study to discuss some larger topics:
The journey of an artist.Creative decline.The lifecycle and segments of cult fandoms.Deconstructing what's causing The Phantom Menace Effect.My guest today is Mikel Dever. Mikel is a writer and film director with a Master's degree in Film & Television Production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is also well known online as GoatJesus, where his YouTube channel garners millions of views for his meta-analysis on Japanese animation, most extensively on the Evangelion franchise.
Outside of that, we also dive into:
The structure and process of filmmaking.Embracing pain & failure.The struggle of dealing with criticism and online harassment as a creator.Childhood trauma.Self-hatred, imposter syndrome and staying true to yourself as an artist.George Lucas, and the derailment of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.The poison of success, and death of creativity.And much more.This is a condensed form of the conversation that Mikel and I had focused more on the larger general themes and less on the specifics of the plot of the final movie and this series. If you want the "Evangelion fan" extended version, check it out on YouTube here.

Connect with Mikel – YouTube: @GoatJesus


Music by Kirby Johnston – check out his band Aldaraia on Spotify

Norm MacDonald did an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit in 2018, and when asked what life's purpose is he said:

"Well, it depends on your view I suppose but it's been my experience is that life's purpose is to suffer. To abide the inevitable pain and to bear it in a noble way."

For many, particularly in the West, there's this notion that if someone "pays their dues," then one day they'll be able to do what they truly want to do.  Their entire life they've been running, even chasing this horizon of retirement: the "dream" of just sitting on a beach all day. Then they can relax. In reality, this societally-shared concept of earned paradise is often a coping mechanism to avoid the uncomfortable work of confronting your current situation.
What if that mindset is ironically guaranteeing an unhappy life?What is the cash value of living your life in a way that fulfills you right now vs. betting the farm on something 20-40+ years down the line, which is both untested and not guaranteed?Could true retirement exist within a flexible lifestyle? What is 30 years of the compound interest of increased happiness worth?My guest today is Chris Giuseppini.

Chris is a cinematographer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sondor Media. He's helped YouTube influencers increase their reach by 100,000 subscribers and 2 million views in under a month, worked on videos that advertised for legendary video and photographic technology players, Sony, Canon, and Fujifilm. Now, with his own brand, Chris is taking his experiences working with some of the most fascinating video influencers to help entrepreneurs grow their business through authentic, powerful storytelling.

Some of the topics we dove into:
The path of least resistance when creating content.How to be vulnerable while connecting your personal passions to your professional content.Finding the right online platform for your content that resonates.Emotional investment with client work.Creative risks, split testing, and the positive downstream effects of failure.How to ask provocative questions to get to know someone quickly.Breaking through tribalism.How creativity and innovation are wasteful processes.The new rich, retirement, and the arrival fallacy.Life as a series of split-tests and sprints.Boredom, dopamine-fasting, and cultivating resiliency.Why you should embrace seasonality in your life.Lifestyle-creep, freedom, and minimizing responsibilities.The subjective nature of status, influence, and imposter syndrome.Connect with Chris – Website: SondorMedia.com  LinkedIn: @ChrisGPresents
Music by Kirby Johnston – check out his band Aldaraia on Spotify

As a rule of thumb, the most “successful” people I know are depressed and brutal on themselves. These are people with extreme wealth, and by all accounts innovators and high-performers in their fields.

This isn’t just my experience; a recent study by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco detailed the personality, mood, and human factors that are common among entrepreneurs in which:
Self-reported mental health concerns were present across 72% of the entrepreneurs in this sample, a proportion that was significantly higher than that of the comparison group.49% reported having one or more lifelong mental health conditions, 32% reported having two or more lifelong #mental health conditions.The entrepreneurs were significantly more likely to report a history of depression (30%), ADHD (29%), substance use conditions (12%) and bipolar diagnosis (11%) than were comparison participants.5.4% of the entrepreneur participants were suicidal, more than double the control group (2%).This cultivates a subterranean culture of isolation that breeds further anxiety, depression, and self-hatred – especially among young professionals who already overwhelmingly struggle with imposter syndrome.

As you'll hear in this discussion, I am one of the 32% of entrepreneurs with two or more mental health conditions. As someone diagnosed with ADHD, generalized anxiety, and bipolar II, it's something I cope with on a daily basis both in my professional and personal life.

George and I didn't know each other prior to recording this. We were just two entrepreneurs meeting to talk shop. Over the course of these two hours, I came away feeling like I knew him better than some people I've known for years. I felt seen, and a little less alone. I hope he did as well.

That in my opinion, is how we begin to move past this stigma – by sharing our experiences through these kinds of vulnerable and real conversations.

George Kapernaros is a marketing consultant based in Athens, Greece with a degree in Political Science & International Relations. His innovative work is at the intersection of behavioral marketing, retention, and applied conversion psychology, which he has applied to over 200 product launches and multi-million dollar campaigns.

Some of the topics we discussed further:
Are entrepreneurs more likely to have ADHD?How business partners expose strengths and weaknesses.The struggle of dealing with imposter syndrome.Marcus Aurelius, stoic stress testing, and behemoth to-do lists.Childhood influences, over-achievement, and abusive self talk.Is balance even achievable as an entrepreneur?Self-moderation, and the momentum trap.Implanted aspirations, and what is a "free" life?Risk taking, and the illusion of security.Consuming vs creating, and scarcity vs growth mindsets.Turnover, mindless corporate growth, and the compound interest of bad decisions.The struggle of passion projects vs maintaining cash flow.What you can learn from studying comic books, conmen and cults.Marketing, the randomness of success, and the importance of testing your beliefs.The butterfly effect of stress, caffeine, nootropics and health optimization.AI, UBI, and jobs of the future.The looming issue of climate change, and how to prepare for the disruptions ahead.Connect with George – Website: GeorgeKapernaros.com  LinkedIn: @George-Kapernaros
Music by Kirby Johnston – check out his band Aldaraia on Spotify

There's never been a better time in history for someone to make money remotely. Especially last year with COVID and the mass adoption of remote work.
There's a massive community online, that's growing every year, of digital nomads. People that freelance or start a business that affords them location independence and flexibility to design the lifestyle that fulfills them.
This is actually something you can do, and sooner and easier than you may think.
And today, we're going to talk with someone that's done it and, and discuss the real talk of what that lifestyle is like.
Jules Costa is a content and communications specialist, who built a career on a $200 laptop during the pandemic and visited over 21 countries before the age of 24.
Some of the topics we dove into:
The struggle with balance, moderation, and inner insecurities as an entrepreneur.Are entrepreneurs "wired" differently?Self-regulation and "unplugging" in an always-on society.Social media and the illusion of connection and learning.Starting out, and finding mentors to guide your transition into freelance.How the nomadic life is waking up in a new reality every day.What it's like growing up with entrepreneurial parents.Internships as a low stakes way to split test career pathsImposter syndrome and reframing it as beneficial.Pricing, self-worth and how fear of rejection is limiting your income.Burnout and the early warning signs.Navigating grief and mental health with clients and coworkers.Anthony Bourdain and what is on the other side of escapism.Coming to terms with death.The "Groundhog Day" of long-term full-time travel and how it changes you.Tribalism, reality distorting algorithms, and how things changed after COVID.Gen Z being arbiters of their own reality, TikTok and the rise of nihilist meme culture.Lifestyle design, digital nomads, and arbitrage.Space capitalism and the existential dilemma ahead.Crypto, decentralized finance, and the coming disruption of power structures.Hurdles to mass adoption and reframing how the public perceives cryptocurrencies.Bad user experiences and unconscious desires.Elon Musk, and the financial incentives bottlenecking global innovation.And so much more.Connect with Jules on Instagram: @julesontap

Music by Kirby Johnston – check out his band Aldaraia on Spotify

Do you ever feel like we're now living in some sort of alternative reality?
Like there was some glitch in the matrix and we diverged into some other universe in the simulation?

Sam Harris has a line "most people spend every waking moment of their lives in the 'movie' of their lives."
What happens when the illusion of that movie is broken?
Today Josh speaks with Sam McNerney about the Insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, "alternative realities", the subterranean spaces online that fueled them, and the repercussions that occur when those "alternative realities" conflict with the "real world."

Some of the other things we dive into are:
The growing division between Joe Rogan and his audience.Declining trust in institutions, mental viruses, and rise of the conspiratorial "They."Bad incentives and how COVID was handled so poorly.Astroturfing, the "stolen election", and who influenced those that stormed the Capitol.Do we live in a "post truth" world of alternative realities?The gamification of the media.How could we align the incentives for real institutional change?Can the next generation escape these feedback loops? How do we inspire that in a demoralized world?As a society, what are we optimizing for? What metrics do we measure that success by?How do we align the politically and socially divided on long term goals?And much more.Sam McNerney is an applied behavioral scientist, market researcher and brand strategist based in Brooklyn, New York. He has worked with brands such as Walmart, Procter & Gamble and CitiBank.
As a writer he has interviewed business and academic leaders including Arianna Huffington, Andrew Yang, Jonathan Haidt, and Charles Murray – and his essays have been featured in publications like The Washington Post, Psychology Today and Scientific American.
Now as an independent consumer insights specialist, he specializes in using surveys to help businesses answer questions about their customers that unlock the greatest value.
Connect with Sam – Website: sammcnerney.com Twitter: @SamMcNerney

Music by Kirby Johnston – check out his band Aldaraia on Spotify