we live in an era in which charm is the keyword of global politics a classic example was Ronald rake oh my god did that guy understand Optics not everything is rational in life there is something called charm there is luck there is love people aren't listening to
the policy positions at all as my friends in Texas would say all hat no cattle it's the reality of contemporary politics that countries run charm offensives particular early authoritarian countries soft power was like marriage you know long-term you have commitment your have values your
have beliefs and so on charm offens none of that it's like an affair it's a Quick Change of Hearts take it from a quad it doesn't necessarily mean that if it can't be measured it doesn't [Music] matter well hello everyone it's Jim o Shany with yet another infinite Loops
today's guest is someone that I've been looking forward to talking to for quite some time because I think her book is hitting at almost the perfect time she didn't plan it that way but a very serendipitous uh outcome that it is being published at the end of this month her name is Julia sonen Bend she's the
associate professor of sociology and communication at the new school for social research in New York City she focuses on the event events icons symbols and charismatic personalities of public life her book charm how Magnetic Personality shaped global politics is coming out at the end of this month and
will be the discussion for most of this uh uh podcast I I'm gonna do a spoiler alert here Julia um you know these lyrics please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste but what's puzzling you is the nature of my game I love it but I don't know where
it's from that is from the Rolling Stones iconic song Sympathy for the Devil great okay and so I thought of it when I Was preparing uh for our podcast because you make the case that we've moved into a world where charm and and Charisma and we're going to talk about the difference between those two but
where charm specifically is really tilting the outcomes of elections in a way that really didn't happen prior to the Advent of visual media so first off welcome and tell us a bit about your book Thank you for having me this will be fun I already see it um so so my book is about
personal magnetism uh with a particular focus on politics um and what I'm arguing in this book is that we live in an era in which charm is the keyword of global politics um how political figures appear on the global stage defines their political power um it's a key quality
that they need to process and um charm is very hard to pin down if you're a social scientist like me We like to finds things we like to quantifies things put numbers next to them and so on a charm is not like that you can't create a straight jacket definition you can't put numbers next to it in every
context it is complicated and that's therefore I think social scientists have largely avoided this term we tend to avoid things we can't Define but then we all know Charming people in our everyday lives right we have them in our families maybe a boyfriend ex-boyfriend um spouse
and so on and they are also there in our contemporary politics um is that a good thing or a bad thing we can probably discuss so I'm wondering uh you know uh you're probably aware of the famous uh in exchange between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy uh when TV was just
becoming popular in the United States and there was a poll afterwards and it was Stark the people who had to listened only to the debate between President Kennedy and President Nixon well either neither had been president quite yet uh the radio listeners believed sort of
overwhelmingly that Nixon had in fact won the debate the TV viewers on the other hand overwhelmingly said that the very charming and very charismatic young Senator John F Kennedy had won and and currently uh you know you you can ask a single question and it determines outcomes more than you'd like
and that is which of these candidates would you like to have a beer with so if if you could if you wouldn't mind expand on that why why have we become so smitten with the in many aspects completely manufactured personality of our political leaders it is really an absurd situation
I mean if you consider well we're looking for politicians who should appear in the media as if they were a next door neighbors and there is a reason obviously why nextor neighbors are not are leading politicians uh nonetheless this is what we expect the the character who appears
um as a person we would like to have a beer with is the type of person we want to have as our political leader and if you think about it um a personable figure an authentic figure in the media may not be the best um when it comes to Leading the country but somehow we set
this requirement going back to the example that you gave what is really interesting about the Kennedy Nixon example that um actually there is very little data to prove this mythology that that was the case that whoever was watching had a different view than whoever was listening but that we had
this mythology already proves that we are fascinated by this question is it the appearance or not actually that pole is really weak when it comes to quantitative data yet we still keep referring back to it why do we have this um that goes back to the difference between Charisma and charm so Charisma
has always been a quality of politics no question that it was always important how politician presented himself but there is a difference between Charisma which was B on distance from audience this you know think Churchill or dougo these kind of bombastic rhetorical
performances far away from the audience the politician appears as some kind of God right in contrast to that now you want to have a figure with whom you want to have a beard with that's a very different understanding of politics so you want the person to construct authenticity in an environment that is
completely fake so we all know that media environments are con instructed we all say oh that's so fake in the media or oh that's just a fake performance but then when somebody goes into this sphere we want them to be authentic they we want them to be themselves you think
about it's a really strange or weird requirement why would you be yourself you know in a in a setting that is really not very natural where you have these microphones and cameras and all that around you yet you should appear as you know this next door neighbor coming
over for a beer um yet we set this standard and it has a lot to do with the changing media environment when you have continuous visuals of politicians then you continuously run these authenticity test so is he authentic is he normal is he looking like me in this setting and then you run
run run this these test throughout and sometimes you know they appear as authentic and you will say fine okay he met the test but passed the test and in other cases you will feel like okay the performance is somehow falling apart it's becoming kind of cringe bake strange and that's when the performance
is failing we all know this right like when you watch politics be it on TV or on on your phone you know these moments right when you feel like oh I connected this is really a moment of fusion and then other cases when you look at it and say oh gez this is so cringe right
that's very interesting and I love the correction on the Nixon vers Kennedy it it reminds me of the the film starring Jimmy Stewart The Man Who Shot Liberty Ballance and he's being interviewed by a he's very successful right it's in the old west of America and he's been very very
successful and he's told the real story to the journalists um and literally they're all like watching kind of shocked because the real story conflicts dramatically from the The Legend as it were or the the public uh uh knowledge and and so there's this great scene
where they're concluding and the lead journalist finishes writing the true story and then he takes it and he goes over to the pot belly stove and starts putting it in and Jimmy Jimmy Stewart's character goes you're not going to print any of it and and the journalist answers
when the legend becomes back we print the legend and I just think that is so interesting because it's it's so difficult often to disambiguate you know when you get a public perception of yourself or of another like a political candidate locked in right it it needs something
rather dramatic to disturb that and one of the things that you do in the book that I think is really interesting is make that distinction between charm and Charisma and the fact that charm it seems to me this is my reading correct me if I'm wrong charm is more easily manufactured I.E we can create a charm
offensive I think for example of Mark Zuckerberg if you go back to 200 15 his public perception of that guy was really bad like literally everyone portrayed him as a yeah as a robot uh you know a a horrible rap finger rap CH capitalist doing all sorts of bad things and then
you've seen recently it essentially flip he changed his hairstyle and he started doing you know martial arts and you know he he appears at least superficial to be a much more at ease much more at peace type person and and and I wonder though uh it does it require a charismatic
person to be able to be perceived as charm I think of uh so for example I I'm going to do a lightning rout with you later and I'm going to go through some political names and ask you you know Charming or not or or not or not Sor me but I think I met I had the opportunity to meet President Clinton uh after he
was president but I must tell you Julia that when I met him um I felt like I was the only human being in the room he looked like a million wat light bulb to me I'm I I myself am not a terribly political person I I have one thing and is I am extremely anti-authoritarian of the left or of the
right he shared that yeah well as aarian you know it's gonna say I don't think I've ever met an East European who lived under communism who was a big fan a big fan of authoritarianism but is there a difference is there do you do you need to be like President Clinton charismatic
to also be perceived as fing or can it be manufactured that's an excellent question and you know what is really interesting that um every single book on Chan or Charisma mentions Bill Clinton and it's always the same story I also read his biography stories about him you
know internationally in the United States and so on and all of these profiles mention that you meet him let's say you don't like him beforehand your politics are different whatever you go into the room and he's like a vacuum cleaner he he sucks you in but most importantly exactly the line that you
gave that he makes you feel that you are the one and only in the room and you are really not alone with this experience pretty much everybody had the same experience which shows that you know regardless of what kind of people he has met he he managed to give
this feeling and does he still remember the details of the meeting of course not but he he somehow radiated that feeling to you that you might and I think that's very important because um we are often just numbers you know statistics We Are One in a crowd particularly as as viewers of politics
and then there is a person who makes you feel that you are the one and only you are one you are an individual you are unique um and that's a core element of charm when when it comes to your question I mean there is a whole industry uh and I don't have to explain this to you that is built on the idea
that you can teach carries one charm to people you know come to our Workshop over a weekend and we will teach you charm and obviously there are qualities you can teach but I also feel that there are elements of it that are very hard to explain that go beyond these trainings
there are people we all know people who you can put through endless numbers of trainings and they will not become charismatic fully and then you have a Bill Clinton who obviously had trainings but that's not the reason why you open operates this way so I think the truth
is somewhere in between and again social scientists hate to say this because we want to say these are the factors and if you do that you will become charismatic but it's not the case I mean that's the unexpected charm of social life right and I'm actually very curious how you
experienced this in business and and and investment like did you use your charm did you get seduced by people who were charming and maybe made the decision you you shouldn't have oh well so uh okay we're flipping rules here for a moment um no I know that's that's the academic
in you which is charming um the uh I I was raised by a mother who always beat into me that you would catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar and so I guess I I had sort of the natural tendency towards that um and and in my experience in business um I I have tried to take people who maybe
weren't so charismatic or charming and kind of give them lessons and unfortunately I I came to much the same conclusion that you have academically I I think that and that's the reason I asked that question was because I think and this is just my opinion and I'm
often wrong I think that Charisma has in innate buil-in sense whereas charm the way you look at it in your book is potentially more easy to manufacture primarily because it seems to need to be intermediated visually right and you know a classic example was Ronald rake right Ronald
Reagan or his handlers oh my god did that guy under understand Optics I mean I am like the speeches he gave were there were always the American Heroes as he called them and they always came from you know regular work a day lives like police officers uh paramedics doctors
Etc nurses and and and then the flags and and he definitely understood these kind of AR typical icons at least for an American and so I'm not saying that he wasn't Charming I've never met him but by all accounts of people that I know have he was and and one of the things that I often hear when people are
referring to famous politicians or people from other endeavors when they talk about Charisma they often say in the same breath I'm mad is he funny or she funny is there a connection between Charisma and humor I do think there is and then it's also through what you said about charm um
because particularly you manufacture it on social media at the moment it is more tweakable and you can shape it a little bit with advisers and if you have a good team they will make the right cuts and you will appear a bit more this kind of relatable everyday person so if if the
listeners are asking oh what do you mean by charm that what I mean by charm this this understanding that the person is just like us you know it he could not be more different when it comes to his everyday life in most of the cases but we still feel that way so that
constructed element and I think there is an element of of of joking of joy you know to use a current key term that is often there as an element and why because humor works as as a form of taking down walls boundaries barriers and and that's what we do with charm and particular in politics when you are
in a complicated situation of diplomacy let's say for instance I analyze in the book the Iranian nuclear deal as an example it's a tedious negotiation about details you know often boring not really meant for the media it means a lot if you have a Charming character right
there um that character makes it more translatable the event more translatable for the international media but we also know of countless cases in which that helped right like you can even tell the collapse of the Soviet Union you know in some ways through moments of charm and
certain politicians made responsible decisions but they also connected over beer or or had a moment in in in which they they acted just like human beings do so I do think there there is an element of of humor I mean if you think about personal interaction just right now as we talk if if we love there is
there is a connection um and we will connect much more with the audiences as well and you know writing this book I've spent a whole lot of time thinking about that in workplaces and in business and politics of how do we connect with people how how do we overcome those
barriers those walls that are between us have you had the experience since writing the book that you find yourself more guarded or on the lookout for uh what you now would uh list as a charm offensive so and do you like take the case studies you present for example you use uh jinda Arden the former uh prime
minister of New Zealand as a case study um and and you walk through five techniques so uh maybe let's take those questions in reverse order maybe we talk a little bit about your case study of the five techniques with jenda Arden the former pres uh prime minister and then
how are you reacting or have you inoculated yourself as a person against Charming or charismatic types it's hard not to start with the second part okay but but I will I will start as as you as me to do so there are these five elements that I identified in the book that are sort of Lego blocks or key
building blocks of charm the first one is performing authenticity it is this idea that you will appear as yourself and as we discussed you know you do this in environments that are really not meant for that if you think about the campaign every second is planned you
these politicians barely have time to go to the bathroom yet they have to be you know appearing as super authentic or let's say they never take a Subway but they have to know how to swipe the Subway card you know although now it's easier with the credit card in New York
but still there are these things we expect them to do or order the right type of burger or you know don't appear as to out of touch to elitist it's it's really a kind of a a very fine line between authentic and and and as my students would say cringe you know that's the keyword that they like to use
for these kind of cases so that's the first element the other is uh the second one is demasking um what do I mean by that so if you are a leading politician you have sort of a mask on you are the president of the United States let's say when there are moments when politicians
sort of drop this you if you remember George W bush reading a kid story uh on on the day of 911 we all remember that picture right when they come and tell him what is happening and then suddenly there is this you know worry in his eyes and he has to leave and um the plane
takes off and he has to figure out who am I at the moment am I a human being being freaked out you know what is happening or is am I the president of the United States and this happens a whole lot of time and there are moments when the humanity of of politicians
simply shines through and that's the moment they drop the mask they appear like you know you and me like regular human beings and then they come back and and and they again appear in that in their formal official role so that's demasking uh the third element is breaking the routine so there is a
routine in media in terms of how you cover events there press conferences they planned events and so on but politicians also create unique sites for instance let's say they go to the beach or they appear on a balcony or in a diner so break the routine of kind of formal reporting and appear in these
regular settings there's a famous picture of Modi from India and and and Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel taking a walk on the beach you know it's not the regular site of negotiations but they somehow you know decided to present this they are not friends obviously they
don't hang out on the beach regularly together it was a message for the media okay that this is a new relationship and this is how we are going to commun communicated so that's breaking the routine uh there's restaging when you create a whole new stage of interaction
so just in the that you mentioned for instance love to take live videos um sitting in a car and saying such a p schedule you know I cannot fit in a a regular briefing to you I'm going to tell you about my new idea or my new policy here right here in the cat this is the moment when I'm going to do that
so that's not a regular stage again for politics but but it also communicates that you have continuous access to the politician um she also posted an image from the waiting room before giving birse so that was this picture of her right there that's again not a typical representation of a politician but she
said let's invite you and then finally The Fifth Element is equalizing when politicians come up with sort of a trick to make you feel that you are part of a community so if you think about countries or especially internationally politicians have very diverse audiences we are radically
different but they say things like oh our community of 10 million or oh our family um these are constructions these are imagined communities and they communicate in a way um so that you feel like you're part of a village and if they do it right you do feel like that
this is my tribe and I'm going to do everything for my tribe and if the tribe makes mistakes or the leer makes mistakes or if there is corruption I'm going to forgive it because I'm part of this tribe and that's what they ultimately want to achieve I'm sure you're familiar with Edward veres uh the
uh I I call him that [ __ ] guy because he was so good at rebranding propaganda and renaming it public relations yes but the power of it is undeniable right like that guy overthrew Guatemala without a single gun being fired and he did it all through this managing the stage have you
seen the movie Wag the Dog oh yes yeah yeah and as I was getting ready to chat with you I thought of that movie because it it uh is kind of trying to demask what actually is going on behind the scenes and how many things are just pure fictionally created right and and I'm
fascinated by that but I'm not going to let you get away from the second part of ear question I was oh my God you know I didn't answer that you're good Jim do you find that writing this book has in some sense inoculated you against Charming or charismatic people
well Jim I'm in Academia so um I wish there were more Charming people there you know so my situation is different than yours okay I would think in business you have that in Academia you sit in Endless boring faculty meetings and you just wish there was somebody finally it was Charming um but actually
um in addition to my history and background as a Hungarian growing up with a lot of charm and charism around me in politics one of the things that inspired this book was actually a hiring meeting um in a previous workplace where my colleague said um you know we have to be extremely
careful in this Hing process because they had these Charming candidates they come in they seduce us and then they're not going to publish anything and they will not teach their classes and it to be a nightmare and that's on I remember sitting there and I thought that was so interesting that that is Harvard
educated you know serious academics and what are we worried about we worried about a Charming person sort of entering our cut um and and changing it you know and and that was actually the direct inspiration of the book and in that sense I do look for it I do see manifestations of it and when I'm
scrolling my phone and and and look at social media obviously I detect oh this is what I thought by charm or this is a moment when it breaks down and then I try to post it and and analyze it uh on various social media sites so that's there I think if you write a book about
charm um you know you change a bit but does it mean that I I don't get seduced by by Charming people no that's not you know as you mentioned Academia I I immediately thought of uh Professor Richard binman who was of he was a quantum physics uh expert and wrote many
books but was amazingly charming and quirky and and and as as I was listening I'm thinking you know isn't that funny Johnny Bon noyman another noted great Storyteller in addition to being one of the smartest men if not the smartest man on the planet when he was when it was on
the planet and and I started thinking wow am I drawn to like reading and following academics who are also charismatic and Charming now I've gotta think about that for the rest of the day so now you have to be very careful Jim from now as you are reading these people but but yes I mean it's not an accident
also why certain academics stand out and and become you know leaders also shaping public opinion if you have that kind of charm you also excel in the classroom you may be able to convince your dean about something and so on so it it has its powers within Academia too but I
think there is a tendency to try to fight it and that tendency I also see in everyday life so I'm sitting on the plane and somebody's asking me oh what are you writing about and I said you know I I wrote the book of a charm then you know in addition to stories and Bill
Clinton and and so on the other thing they say is oh I'm I'm very skeptical I'm very skeptical about Charming people that's just very know uh and I find that so interesting and I have to say particularly in the United States this is a very very often off frequent response I'm getting to my work and and
I'm curious about that so it's it's there is I think this suspicion about seduction which is there you know if you think of about the Bible and and and and important mythologies internationally seductive people or figures are dangerous very often in these stories so there is this kind of
skepticism um somewhat religiously I would say of distancing yourself from Charming people but also because they are unpredictable because it's volatile because you can't fully figure it out um you might want to avoid it there is this reflex at the same time we want know its
power so that's the the the balance that I see between seduction and deception and there's the Spectrum and if you have a Charming person here is selection here's deception and you try to figure out you know which one it is and it's very often in between yeah and then that
gets us back to the lyrics that we open the show with from MC Jagger uh you know if you do or did if there was a devil and you happened to encounter him or her you they would be incredibly charismatic and Charming they would not be the type at all because that's frightening and and and it leads me to
another question about like I personally and again this is an opinion this is my perception I think often people confuse their opinions that are generated in their perceptions as facts I I luckily do not suffer that delusion uh so this is just my or think I don't C maybe I do
I want want to know how how you avoid that but okay let's wait for the question my personal opinion is that in the United States certainly and and maybe more generally globally we are in a period where we have kind of the worst political class of history at least
that's my opin and I'm wondering and I'd always tried to kind of put my finger on why I thought that and when I was reading your stuff and getting ready for it I thought you know this might be a component of that it might be that because we are saturated with visual media social media
um Regular media Etc that the the chance to vote for the candidate who is advocating policies that you yourself support kind of gets lost in the in the charm of this class and sometimes I think you know like sociopaths Psychopaths Etc tend to be able to at least fake
charm and and and do it with with great Plum uh do you think that that the the uh emergence of these visual media of these staged events of things that are not in any way real your example of the two walking on the beach do you think that they're leading a worst class of
person to seek out those High offices that's the1 million doll question obviously um but I think what you described in terms of a stronger Focus towards personalities than to policies is what we see in political science and in sociology as well there is actually quite a lot of research now on that that
the last 30 years has been have been characterized by what we call political personalization which means exactly this process that we focus on personalities and and less on policies institutions values and even facts so if you take that process and then put the media environment there as well in which you
have continuous visuals continuous representation and you have to deal with that you know repeatedly you barely have time to think through the latest video you immediately comment you express your opinion and that's not really an environment in which you would carefully
weigh facts or consider policy suggestions and kind of try to decide which one is stronger based on its merits um it's the reality of contemporary politics that we focus on personalities on the one hand I think it has advantages so if you have a tired audience um nobody's paying any more any
attention to politics then there is a charismatic Charming personality there and that person can energize people and say okay let's discuss something let's think about the future of the country and so on so that's the positive side and I think we often forget that but
then there is the dark side of it as well which is this very volatile environment in which you suddenly have a figure who emerges and then you know fails then again up down up down up down which is not an environment for those policy discussions that you just mentioned so that's where it becomes
really tricky when it comes to the future of democracy and that's not a US story it's an international story um if you have very polarized societies which is again not only in the United States but in many countries internationally you have this media environment and the
strong Focus the person personalities then not only your National politics but your International politics will be this kind of drama this theater this performance again with certain advantages for instance young audiences might start to pay attention uh who haven't beforehand but there is a very
strong risk involved that uh a Charming character could could lead the country astray just with you know the tool of deception and that's a really existing danger not just in the US again internationally too and I think uh would you agree that that seems to have been
Amplified by the just uh ubiquity of always on media I I'm not on Tik Tock uh I I personally don't want to have the CCP of China like uh um brainwashing me and I'm kidding kind of uh but Tick Tock is an amazing amazingly successful media platform and it is all it as as my
friends in Texas would say it is all hat and no cattle in other words when when somebody makes the a wonderful presentation but that doesn't have any like real experience to back it up the tex say all all hat no cattle I love that okay I'm going to Ste it please do please do and and and and and so I just
wonder and then of course you see the uh people who are kind of fighting against this will often despite whatever their political position is will often go out into crowds right and they will assign the the stated platform of the person that they oppose so for example uh if
you were a Harris um uh supporter you you would go out and you would ask ask people uh do you support Trump's position on on this right and and it wasn't his position but it was Harris's you would find very very very quickly that people aren't listening to the policy positions
at all what they do when when you when you do a pull a fast one on them and you assign her positions to him and his positions to her like her mostard supporters are like yeah I Absol I mean you could almost get them yeah Build That Wall and but the same is true on the other side right when you go
to a died in the wall Trump supporter and give that person Harris's positions yeah yeah I'm totally in support of that and that I find creepy and frightening and like is have we come to that I no wonder that you find it GP and frightening and it's again um it is what
we find in research as well that identity is first um there was a long time when in media research we thought that um no you know if you encounter some real life situation that will shape your thinking let's say you know the country has terrible health care or education whatever and if your kid goes to school
that will change your view and so on and that's not the situation what we see internationally as well well what we see is that there are tribes and you feel connected to this kind of leader he leader you're part of the tribe and you will say okay well these are the issues
yeah fine I heard about them that's a problem but I belong to this tribe and that shapes what you described as well it doesn't really matter what the person actually says I have made my decision I'm part of this community and I I forgive some of these things so obviously a trump supporter would
recognize as you know that this sounds a bit weird as a trump position that you just mentioned say well okay maybe he said that right like maybe he said that you know I'm with him uh so that is something that we are Reckoning with in in research uh this this idea that
identity is first that that that the feeling of belonging that we want to belong to group and that trumps everything else um whether we like that or not yeah I again personal opinion um I think that the descent into tribalism and Cults of Personality generally does not lead to good
things um because it precludes and sometimes prevents people from like you know having an actual reading on well maybe their maybe their uh policy on energy Andor on taxation Andor you can list all of the things that government is meant to do you know maybe we might be living in a
better land if people actually paid attention to the policies that uh our politicians on both sides of the aisle uh are recommending and yet it does seem to me that there is this idea that you're writing about in your book that almost blinds us to um the the the serious matters at hand and I wonder I
had a question for you about are there moments in time so I'm going to give two recent examples so when Trump was shot and his reaction was to raise his fist in the air well still in Mortal danger if you look at the photograph and Shout fight and then the other image I think
of was the one they staged most people don't know this but the Marines planting the flag during World War II on eima it was stage only in that the photographer missed the original shot and he was like that's a really great shot could you like do that I my guess my question
is are there moments that are authentic that are real I think also of the the image of the young man standing in front of the tank in Tian Square um are is there a difference between what are seemingly authentic I.E not planned in any way uh images that become iconic and maybe change people's
views on the I I certainly know that when I saw that image of the child of the young student in tenan square I mean I literally got shg talk about talking I'm using quotes here for our Audio Only listeners talk about talking truth to power I mean I I teach that image every year to
my students to my undergraduate students also the iima image first of all I'm trying to sneak in history whenever I can in some way or another um but these are exceptionally powerful images does it matter that there was that element in the evoa picture not so much I think in
in terms of authenticity because the question will be will the viewer perceive it as authentic um and we certainly do um and with the Trump picture what I think is also really interesting that he knew that the cameras were there so it's it's a moment in which you know that this will be
everywhere in the world so even in your Mortal Mortal fear and and as a human being dealing with all that uh if you're a politician it is in your mind in some way U that this will to be captured and you also need to send a message to your followers and whoever will see that and
and that I I thought was really interesting in that moment that he he kind of one way or another thought that's true and created that moment um which was very much also for for international and National media coverage so that that's that I wanted to go back for a moment to to tick Tok and and and your
previous thoughts on that so I teach undergrads every term um and one of the things as a professor I try to do is to show different viewpoints I I I find it very important that I I show them opinions and text they don't agree with that they would hate know immediately uh
but it's not a regular rhythm uh in Academia these days and I think that's a major problem um which I'm I'm you know in my classroom I'm trying to fight it but it is a fight um and that's where it starts that in classrooms we simply have to show different viewpoints and not
cancel it not say that's not okay you know um we can analyze it and we can say it fails in the this and that way but we have to see it to to form an opinion and that's how it starts and when it comes to Tik Tok it also made me think of my classrooms because um I teach 18 year
olds as well so I teach you know PhD students who are in their 30s I teach Master students in their 20s and I teach um you know freshly minted undergrads and I had a class recently 18 undergraduates really excellent students and I asked them what is your new source
where do you learn about political events and all of them said Tik Tok one and only new source you know top university heart of New York you know um private institution and so on it it it really gave me a pause and and made me stick you know deep and hard in terms of how to educate better you
know if that's your one and only new source and you are clearly a good thinker you are excellent in class then how do we deal with that you know and um I don't say it's not scary but it's it's a reality if you are an educator um you have to deal with this so of course you are inviting the
question how do you deal with that how do I deal with that well first of all I trust this generation so I I don't agree with that that they are you know stupid in any form or or shape you know they are very capable of discussions you just have to create the environment in which
they do that so for instance how do I deal with that I say at the first class that you will hear things here that you don't like and that's fine that's what college is for that we Clash ideas and and I you know I introduced that and I've never had a student who complained
I I never had any kind of complaints about that in my classroom so I do think they want that but they might need some explanation on on why you are actually doing within that environment and then I also do a lot of critical media analysis so we look at videos we look at images
we look at Tik Tok um videos as well and we analyze them in detail sometimes we spend half an hour 45 minutes on a on a on a brief video of you know a few seconds or or a minute of a video and we just analyze it deeply you know in the same way as we would analyze a book um
and I think that's a critical skill they have to have and that's something that is our responsibility um and sometimes it happens in high school but very often it doesn't and when it comes to history education you know I often teach students who who did not reach the Vietnam War in in their history
education I asked them what was the last thing but it's it's it's very often the case that you need this kind of critical thinking or being introduced in the classroom and and then they work with that they they do take that seriously but it's up to us and and we have to do that hard I feel like
diogenes and I discovered an honest person which makes me delighted that you are teaching young people I like you have great faith in young people I think that you know the classic older generation dupping on the uh younger generation there's a a joke about when they finally translated the first
Sumerian CIA form it was like oh my God this Young Generation we're going to hell in a hand ask it oh it's easy to say right like you know they're annoyingly young so we want to hate them right and and I I I often think that that's more Envy than anything else uh because as we we get on
in years we're like oh they're so young and so then we go well they're you know we we invent excuses for why they're horrible which I don't uh I don't cling to any of those I like you think that um our younger generation is doing just fine as long as they can get some good
training I had a great personal experience when I was at the school of Foreign Service at Georgetown I had an incredibly charismatic teacher Yan kski uh who was uh a poll uh there's many books written about him and his exploits uh because he was uh one of the first uh people to convey the
information to the United States about what was really happening in the death camps because they threw him into one but what was really interesting he was a member of the Polish underground what was really interesting to me that really just made me like become fascinated with
this man was that in his course which was Modern foreign governments this is I'll date myself this is 1981 and so kind of at the height of uh the showdown between Reagan and and the powers that be in the polit Bureau of the old USSR he was meticulously fair in other
words he he would go on and many people believe these are the benefits of a communist system and here are the people who don't agree and here's what they think so I was always taken by how meticulously Fair was and the way he would approach things especially after visiting his first office hours during
his office hours which I came to cherish far more than the class itself I we got the real story right and and like we we have a film division of OAS Adventures I want to make a movie about this guy because like talk about Charisma and like and and the ability to persist
under horrible dangerous conditions he he was he was captured by the Nazis who tortured him endlessly at one point um taking the severed head of one of his collaborators and putting it on his knees in a cage that he was held in uh where he had no movement uh to escaping that and then
getting caught by the Russians who already had their designs on Eastern Europe and so they through in to a camp where he also escaped from but the reason I bring him up and and my desire to make a movie about him is are there certain things and it kind of ties into the earlier question like the flag at IM
eima and and various other uh the the student in tianan square um are are there certain events that literally are not plannable but that can be transplanted to used as ammunition in a charm offensive my first book is exactly about this question on how you uh construct a
global iconic event it's it's about the fall of the Berlin Wall which was a very messy as as you know um bureaucratic process in many ways and it had a lot of accidents and mistakes and and so on but it's not how we remember it we remember it as this magical moment when people
overcome a power that is is much larger than they are Al that's an example in which you take a messy complicated confusing event and you don't want to remember it as a set of mistakes or as a set of bureaucratic meetings or you know changes in a party system or and so on
you want to remember it as this kind of magical moment of explosion this unique situation so that that's how we construct events and and I often play around with my students as well in thinking through major events internationally from the W house to 911 like what are the conditions that made
it an iconic event and and how how do we communicate its message now and one thing that I found is that you need a core message be trauma or hope or loss that more or less resonates internationally and then you will be able to recycle it in in radically different context uh and this process
involves a lot of simplification you create icons if you think even about the Holocaust there were many camps there were many details of the event goes with went through over years nonetheless you have iconic sites like aitz that stands for the whole event so you create these
iconic representations that that do not represent every detail of the event but they somehow come to stand for it like the famous images of 911 and similarly it's not about all the four planes it's not every detail that happened that day but there somehow iconic representations
so we do weaponize images we do weaponize events and figures and such ways and if they are simplified enough and condensed enough like really syn condensation something complicated confusing condens quickly then you can use it in new radically different context which again have the the the
risk that you might use it in a in an environment where it doesn't belong but it keeps the event alive as well is there a way or methodology that uh that allows people suitably trained to see true these intended manipulations I'm speaking specifically about the use
after the fact right you you mentioned the Berlin Wall I remember watching when they actually brought it down it was broadcast live I got Shivers I'm a human being um and I also remember Reagan's iconic Mr gorbachov tear down this wall and uh speak of an i yes right and also loving history I know
all of what you refer to about what actually led up to that happening and how complicated it was and how you know details were completely omit it I also made me think as you were talking about dday and I often ask people if D-Day happened today do you think it would
have gone down as one of the most unmitigated disasters in history I mean can you imagine if there were soldiers with cell phones recording themselves in every second texting this situation is Spar which is an acronym for [ __ ] up beyond all recognition that people in
the military use a lot right and I if you know the real history of D-Day it was a series of horrible mistakes and disasters and yet it is remembered you know dday the day we began the liberation of Europe thoughts yeah I mean that's the case with historic events I mean almost
all of them I mean they it's a complete mess when it comes to you know events happenings on the ground right and then imagine a media environment in which you broadcast immediately so that was not there at the moment and would be there now yes soldiers there recording
immediately contradicting that would be conspiracy theories is it really happening not happening how it would happen right um yeah I often think about this with events as well I I just visited Budapest um Hungary where where I'm from originally and um there was a very moving um Memorial event dedicated
to rul wenber was a Swedish Diplomat going going to Hungary um and saving thousands of Jews U during the Holocaust he was you know a certies diplomat with no clear mandate or Mission he shows up and one one of the scenes that they were mentioning at this event was that he
went to the bank of the denu he saw people being lined up there and and being shot into the danu and he just started started to shout stop it these are Swedish citizens and you will be on trial for um crime times of humanity if you do so and he managed to stop it and there was this kind of moment of IM
immediate personal courage and I was thinking of that that that's that's unbelievable how certain people have this feeling and an action of Courage immediately in a situation but again there wasn't a media environment that would have interfered with that whole scene and how it would
have cover been covered immediately right there by the soldiers by um everybody who was there in just watching it and so on so every single event we can think through in such a way that wow um I don't know what it would look like now yeah I have my suspicions um and I I think exactly one of the things you
mentioned the whole emergence of all these conspiracy theorist uh mindsets generally speaking historically you you see conspiracies increase dramatically during times of great change during times of it is more difficult for the general P public to understand very very complicated things
and what generated there and why they happened that way and so much easier to tie a bow around it and say you know it was fill in the blank you know was the Deep state or it was the Nazis or it was you know whatever and yet it also makes me think about like I want to play our
our our round of charming or not Charming with some current figures I was hoping they're running out of time but I'm gonna ease you into it I'm gonna ease you into it with a with a historical example and the historical example I want to use is Adolf Hitler versus Joseph Stalin now I personally
find both of these as you know I've already stated my one political thing is I am fiercely anti-authoritarian so both of these people belong in a Rogues gallery of brutal bloody-minded horrible people who managed to take power over large and Powerful uh countries and yet in America
at least when somebody wants to really vilify somebody they always say he's a Hitler he's just like Hitler why don't they ever say he's just like Joseph Stalin was it because then you go Joe right okay if you if you wouldn't mind opining on that one a little bit we can ease into the modern
day figures okay so my book has a chapter on Germany and Angela Merkel as last chapter and I found her an interesting in case because um she does not use these contemporary techniques of Charisma and charm you know we don't see her stepchild no pictures angila Merkel
is really not you know trying to charm you stands there you know the color of the jacket is maybe changing but that's about it right like she's not playing with these tools yet you know she was in power for 16 years she had 80% of approval rate when she stepped down I
mean it it's unbelievable success when it comes to politics um so she was an interesting case and I kept researching why that was possible and one of the things that I have found that in German publics there was a very strong resistance against charismatic politicians because of Hitler you know
so that was very interesting and there is is even a story of Angela mercel first meeting uh President Obama and being very skeptical before the meeting saying that truly doesn't like charming and charismatic people and this kind of idea of giving bombastic speeches is
really not her thing so there is this tradition in in German public and you know no accident that there was Hitler but I think the answer to your question is exactly Charisma Hitler is a reference point because in addition to the absolute Horrors he Unleashed um he also possessed this quality that was
able to convince people to do things they you know really shouldn't have done and that's something that we are fascinated by uh and particularly in Germany with all its historical and cultural tradition um it's um inclusive culture it's it's huge huge Jewish community and so on it's just
incomprehensible to the human mind of how is that country transforming into this killing machine what it what it turned into and there were as we know a lot of discussions is it inherent or not inherent and so on but there is this ultimate fearing us that it can happen
to us right that whichever your country is it will be the same that we have all our culture and education and and lives and and money and and so on but there will be somebody who will radically change us as human beings and that's I think that's what Hitler is an icon for
this kind of transformation that you are deeply terrified about that can happen to you right so we use like on all sides form one another and uh another thought of mine was that uh Stalin as brutal as he was um and as responsible for millions and millions of deaths um now the death sea was responsible were more
of a political nature kind of like ma right uh where they went after uh people because of the class they belong to you know and in both solist Russia and and maist China if you were boy you you would be one of the first up against the wall unfortunately because you're Highly
Educated you're an intellectual and like people like Stalin and M not like people like you and Ma especially made great theater of it right he put the duns hat on them and uh you know uh it was scary but like he did Blitz GRE grads and trying to take over all of his neighbor
countries and so maybe and because he also persecuted not exclusively people for their religion the Jewish people he also you know any what he would call an undesirable a gypsy anyone with any kind of physical or mental handicap I mean he he was a horrible horrible human being
and yet I am fascinated that other horrible for example where are all of the uh outrage movies about alot um who took Cambodia in into one of the largest genocides per capita of any country and if you've ever been to Cambodia the Cambodian people are just amazing at least they were in my experience and
here you're looking at it at I my guide was actually um is my age so I'm 64 and for people who don't know about Paul poot and Cambodia um it was a as I say oral genocide largest per capita ever and I must tell you and here's again to Charisma my my my guide was very
charismatic and uh he uh was my age so he was a teenager young teenager when Paul pot took over he was the son of a mother and a father who were highly educated who were members of the uh academic Community um in in Cambodia who knew their fate they knew that they were
going to be executed so his name was Yoko and is Yoko and so they sent him to the countryside to live with a distant relative they instructed him to break his glasses to when he got to the countryside rub his hands on a tree until they were heavily calloused so that he when when
the Kim Rouge came through he could claim that he you know was a working person not uh the son of a intellectual and yet I I won't go on it's a great story but it takes too um uh he ended up being the one of only two members of his grade school class if I can't remember it's number 25 or 30 to
survive uh all the others were were killed um and yet everybody knows about Hitler most people know about the finality of evil that was uh Joseph Stalin I don't know a lot of people who are like if you were doing a quiz game and you said okay who's worse you know
Paul pot or Vlad the Impaler I I I wonder whether anyone would like especially people who are not history Nots would know both of those is there a reason for for that or am I just Debs I mean that that is a really difficult question because obviously it also has to do with um geography with
with our attention to certain Cal context in contrast to others U the the types of histories we teach in school so I don't think there is one factor to to answer your question why there is more attention less attention I mean the in uh when it comes to banality of evil I mean that is a really interesting term
and it it was introduced in connection with Amman who was key perpetrator of of the Holocaust put on trial in Jerusalem and one of the things that people I mean as you know uh were shocked about it is like how every day he looked he looked like a boring bureaucrat and there this
is very powerful photographs some here of him in in jail in in Jerusalem and um and is reading that having his breakfast and so on and you look at it like is this really the person who who was a key crucial perpetrator of the Holocaust planning the train um trips and that's I mean it's it's really
incomprehensible I think to the mind and we want to have these evil characters if you think of superheroes and villains you know you you want to have like a joker right like he looks terrible he is evil there is no exception you know I have a six-year-old and and he always
ask me is this a good guy or a bad guy you know that's the first question and there's a clear distinction you know there's the good people bad people the the kind of gray zones that are not dead and I think that's where it's it's it's really hard for us to understand that
many of the most evil people internationally look regular or don't have these bombastic visual ual um that you necessarily associate with with with Hitler with the most powerful speeches and so on yeah that is uh one of the great dangers I think um and you're not
escaping the lightning around the lightning around almost did right you almost did I really admired your like I'm gonna get out of this without having the comment uh but so for example um every body uh is aware that there's an election this year in the United States um and
so we're gonna ask specifically about charm not Charisma because as you yourself detail in your writings they're different so vice president Harris vers previous president TR uh Charming not Charming okay which one so again remember how I defined charm as you know trying to appear as one of us
having these um social media performances that construct that so what we are trying to answer is not whether the person is inherently Charming or charismatic I think both candidates have these qualities um it also depends obviously on your political views if you
hate one of them then you're not willing to accept that there could be an element of charm but you know I'm a researcher so I have to take a bit of a distance from whatever I'm thinking of this election and and look at it and I I think we have to see that uh what is interesting about Trump that he he um
former president Trump that he has both the elements of Charisma and charm in some ways so he he triggers in some people this kind of distant um hero Godlike character in his followers but he also when he puts on the you know the red hat make America great again and so
you know here is a million who wants to look like us right so there is that element of charm there and and with Harris as well I mean if you think of um theing videos the dancing videos of as she's telling about her Jewish mother-in-law and so I mean these are all cases in which you see personal
magnetism uh being performed now whether you fuse with it that's a different question because they're you know your politics emerge um that's a a perfectly evasive answer what I love okay the answer they both have it you know I was I was gonna say i' I'd probably answer that the same way
now let's take a maybe an easier one zalinski Putin okay that that is much easier right um I mean I I always thought that one of the reason why noani had to be murdered by by Putin was was his looks his charm his you know he was this tall really Charming guy who you
know had to be eliminated because that EXA is exactly the quality the Russian president doesn't have I have a hard time finding a moment in in in the Russian president's presentation that is considered or could be considered as Charming I mean obviously he has this kind videos of joking or trying to
appear as one of us I mean even he tries to use those tools zeni I think is in many ways a natural but it's again worth remembering he's coming from television is actually not coming from social media catch is coming from television he performed the role of a president yeah
so it's it's you know his Universe in many ways but I do find it very interesting how many really boring European bureaucrats are lining up to take selfies with him because they want to have right the Stardust of Charisma you and charm you want to be with this person so I I think that's a slightly
easier case but again I'm sure that you will have uh listeners here particularly from from Russia would say oh but what about this video or that video so again it very much depends on your or political preference but I think it is an easier case so okay I I agree with
you by the way the more fun one the current mulas of Iran or Kim Jong Yun yeah um so I have a Kim Jong Yun um chapter in the book uh with the title unexpected I know I didn't I I I I didn't pick that just uh just random I know um and I directly picked it because you know here's a
character people would think has no charm but when the Korean Olympics happened he used every possible ways to perform charm you know he introduced um female family family members the cameras he has never done that before in the same way he took selfies he um had life
covered um conversations various very powerful visuals so even somebody like Kim jungan had to perform these you know roles and and use these tricks and I have this chapter directly to convince the reader that you can have a Kim jungan appearing as Charming okay you know the case ofan might be Again
difficult also Cally okay because we perceive it differently than many of our the local followers and and followers of the C in many ways so that that is is a more difficult case to answer but I do have an Iranian politician in the book as well a chapter dedicated to foreign
minister zarif who was the Iranian foreign minister during the Iranian nuclear deal negotiations who was so Charming uh that it was covered you know across the globe as such and it really helped Iran in that moment when it comes to signing the deal and changing its
International image but it was a brief charm offensive as I discuss it in the book it's not a long-term shift in the vestern perception of Iran and I wonder um does that ultimately uh damage more than it helps I mean you can accomplish as you point out it was short term very Charming but longer term not
so much does that damage uh the longer term way people are perceived and or countries are perceived like those people like how they manage to pull off that and now they reverted to throwing people off buildings and putting women head to toe in you know black garments are is there is is there a
price that's paid or no I mean obviously it becomes a reference point and you can make jokes and in that sense it's it's a risky Endeavor but it's the reality of contemporary politics that countries run charm offensives uh particularly authoritarian countries there are
situations in which they either need money or they need a deal to be signed or or there is a a shift in constellations regionally and they have to change their image and then they will run this beef charm offensive I always say the difference um between traditional soft power which is based on
values and charm offensive is that soft power was like marriage you know longterm you have commitment you have values you have beliefs and so charm offensive none of that it's like an affair it's a Quick Change of Hearts you know you are seduced and so on but it
can accomplish major things in diplomacy within a brief period of time the tricky part is exactly as you describe that it doesn't change Hearts long term so that's a tradeoff you might need it still because you need that deal so much or the shift of public opinion of your
country very much so you need to do that but it can also become a reference point okay use that trick are you still that character who did that but I think there is quite a lot of tolerance for charm offensives because most countries do this you know regularly it's it's just the reality of contemporary politics
because of the media environment in which politicians operate and I wonder about that too because um you know the the idea of the bumkin villages that they set up in the old USSR um like those are historical facts there's been books written about how diluted many of the western journalists
were not diluted but uh misinformed tricked into into believing and for those who aren't aware of what tempkin village was uh they were literally stage ruts uh that they would drive or train the foreign journalist paths and they would build these seemingly prosperous wonderful
communities that like if you looked around the back of them were basically like a a stage front you see in Hollywood how can we know about this objectively right how could Ed and and here I'm speaking really about like educated people educated people who know about the pkin villages who know about
the strategies like Iran used Etc is it just human OS that lets us be fooled again and again and again well he get fooled again again and again right like in everyday life in politics and so on I mean it's I think it's very hard to say oh there is a clear way to avoid that but there are
some things we can do I mean I think one is resisting this um request to respond immediately we all have that we see something we immediately comment we like it dislike it and so on and just take a moment okay take a moment and try to think it's through you know who is
trying to force me to give an answer immediately who is benefiting from this what what is the construction that I'm seeing here what is this video about so that's exactly what I'm trying to teach my students to like con you know not this kind of reflex kind of War reaction
of like immediately I have to cancel immediately I have to approve but take a moment to to think it's through uh and I think if you if you do that you will see overtime patterns of influence persuasion um that is trying to charm you trying to seduce you and and that can create some form over a distance so
it's it's very much temporal too it's it's about time giving you that kind of moment of thinking and and if you think of the techniques I've described if you look for them you know you will see them you know repeated and and that can create some form of distance as well but
is there like you know this kind of final medicine I can give and you will never be Charmed again in that in your life no you know like that that you know I wouldn't say yeah I think that no right sometimes we do want to be Charmed so think use that too very true very true um one
thing I tried to uh you know habituate in myself was the idea of whenever I'm reading something especially something topical or news oriented I I I have internalized the questioning for myself why am I reading this now what are the intentions of the person what do they want me to
believe believe it right and I find that helpful and and I think your uh guidelines are also excellent if you can for a moment not react and for a moment it's like President Lincoln used to write very angry letters to people and then put them in his desk door and he decided
over several days whether to send that letter or not hint he very rarely sent the letter and you know even back to Alexander the Great that probably apocryphal but it's a great story at least and that is that apparently the apocryphal Legend goes I have to be careful with an academic like
yourself um be careful with academics all the time it's a good good approach but apparently before deciding on a strategy of attack when they were off Conquering the World Alexander and his generals would discuss it formally and soberly and they would agree on what
they wanted to do and then they would get Rip Roar and drunk and when they woke up the next day if they still believe that that strategy was right they would proceed uh execute against it uh but that's that probably an apocryphal story but what I liked about it is elongating the process not
reacting emotionally not like saying this is what we're going to go do now let's go do it right and so putting some distance between yourself and something you're looking at reading hearing watching is not bad advice and I I think it's quite I I feel that we are quite lucky to have you teaching young people
today because the more that we can learn those types of things I think for the most part better well I am getting the hook finally from my uh nty as I joked to you about uh earlier I I tend to go on because you your subject and you are very fascinating um we do have a final
question but before getting in that final question tell our listeners and viewers where can they buy your book I hope everywhere um and where they can find you on on on the internet so thank you for having me first of all I'm really enjoying it so I could just go on
and on um yes you can buy the book everywhere it goes out um it's it's published on the 20th of August um you will see when you release this episode but um so yes you know all all the regular um sites Amazon and so on prinston you will be able to find it and when it comes to finding me you can find
me on Instagram you can find me on Twitter X you can find me on Facebook and I also use that old medium called email um so you can also send me an email and I know that's you know radical for many of my students that we still use this email version um and yeah shoot me an email and I'm always happy to
discuss ideas in the same way as as I discuss it with with colleagues and friends and with my students as well well this has been terrific I think your book is amazing I wish more people were talking about this um that's what really drew me uh when our good friend mutual
friend told me that I would really like you she was right good judge uh now for our final question uh we are going to wave a one and we are going to make you the emperor of the world you can't kill anyone you can't put anyone in a re-education camp you can't run a charm offensive in your case
specifically what you can do is we're g to give you a magical microphone and much like the movie Inception you're going to be able to insect in the world's population two ideas and all you have to do is speak both of these things into the microphone and the next morning whenever their
morning is when people wake up they're going to say you know what I just had the best two ideas and unlike all the other times I'm gonna actually act on both of these ideas starting right now what are you what two things are you going to incept into the world's population that is a
great idea I think one tool or idea I would introduce is try not to assume the worst you know you receive an email you receive a call from somebody you read an article you see a video and and you your immediate reaction is that this is an expression of the enemy or this
something I really don't want to deal with right and try to assume that that's not the case right that it's it's a another human being maybe with an idea or a mindset that is radically different from yours it's annoying I know it like it's annoying for me too when I'm
encountering people with very radically different views but we should try to learn to deal with that in in this course and not with violence and attacks and and and assuming the worse so that would be one element and the other maybe would be that to accept that not everything is rational in life that
there is something called charm there is luck there is love that are all these qualities right that are not so easy to Define to quantify to capture but they still shape us and that's okay so we don't have to have always as this perfectly rational and objective human
being so just um you know we are just not that I love both of those and and to uh put them in in my lexicon the first sounds a little bit like uh remember the Golden Rule uh treat others like you would like to be treated you probably and I know God I do uh things that are
misunderstood and so getting I have that too yeah getting a a little bit of time uh away from them is is a very good thing and and then and then the second one is absolutely true um in fact um we we are not purely rational creatures uh we are often very emotional creatures creatures and just being aware
of that and this is coming from a former Quant right where everything was empirical Jim I can't believe you're saying this right this is coming wonderful family pictures behind you and that's you know another quality of life that is not entirely rational in many ways but it's
it's really important to many of us yeah and take it from a Quant it doesn't necessarily mean that if it can't be measured it doesn't matter there are in fact lots of things in the world that can't be measured precisely that matter a lot so I love both of those uh I think those
are both great inceptions and if only people would act upon them I think we might be able to scooch the universe to be a little bit better because right th those those are two great ones well this has been so much fun thank you so much for coming on thanks so much really enjoy this