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#183 - Agitation, Retribution, and the Matrix Mind
Toddzilla X-Pod #171
Recorded Sept 17, 2025
In this spontaneous and gloriously unmapped episode, Todd takes stock of a country whose fabric is visibly fraying and reaction has become the story. He opens with the online ghoulishness around Charlie Kirk’s killing and the equal-and-opposite counter-reaction: firings and public consequences for people who cheered it on. The line he draws is clear: speech is free; consequences aren’t, but the state must stay out of it. (He calls out attempts to criminalize awful speech, noting the backlash from the right against that idea.)
From there he unpacks why debate keeps collapsing. Using campus showdowns as examples and borrowing from Jonathan Haidt’s “elephant and rider” model, Todd argues that many disputes start with a snap emotive conclusion and then invent reasons to justify it. When the rationalizations run out, the insults start. That feeds a broader doctrine, “words are violence”, which quietly normalizes physical confrontation by redefining speech as a violent assault.
Finally, Todd examines why the cancel-culture boomerang snapped back this week, warns against turning subjective “hate speech” into a government weapon that will eventually change hands, and returns to a recurring theme: social media as the staging ground of a civil war. Finally, a familiar concept gets a new name: The Matrix Mind. Bodies live in the real world; minds live in the feed. When we reduce people to avatars, it becomes easier to treat speech as violence — and to answer it with the real thing.
Unfiltered, candid, and uncomfortable by design.
Subscribe, review, rate, SHARE!! Algorithms suck.
📡 WBCQ 7490 kHz, Mondays 10 p.m. ET
📡 WWCR 4840 kHz, Fridays 11 p.m. CT / midnight ET
View all episodes
By Todd Thompson
5
33 ratings
Toddzilla X-Pod #171
Recorded Sept 17, 2025
In this spontaneous and gloriously unmapped episode, Todd takes stock of a country whose fabric is visibly fraying and reaction has become the story. He opens with the online ghoulishness around Charlie Kirk’s killing and the equal-and-opposite counter-reaction: firings and public consequences for people who cheered it on. The line he draws is clear: speech is free; consequences aren’t, but the state must stay out of it. (He calls out attempts to criminalize awful speech, noting the backlash from the right against that idea.)
From there he unpacks why debate keeps collapsing. Using campus showdowns as examples and borrowing from Jonathan Haidt’s “elephant and rider” model, Todd argues that many disputes start with a snap emotive conclusion and then invent reasons to justify it. When the rationalizations run out, the insults start. That feeds a broader doctrine, “words are violence”, which quietly normalizes physical confrontation by redefining speech as a violent assault.
Finally, Todd examines why the cancel-culture boomerang snapped back this week, warns against turning subjective “hate speech” into a government weapon that will eventually change hands, and returns to a recurring theme: social media as the staging ground of a civil war. Finally, a familiar concept gets a new name: The Matrix Mind. Bodies live in the real world; minds live in the feed. When we reduce people to avatars, it becomes easier to treat speech as violence — and to answer it with the real thing.
Unfiltered, candid, and uncomfortable by design.
Subscribe, review, rate, SHARE!! Algorithms suck.
📡 WBCQ 7490 kHz, Mondays 10 p.m. ET
📡 WWCR 4840 kHz, Fridays 11 p.m. CT / midnight ET