Show Notes
It’s an election year and these internet streets are wild! This week, we give a 101 on misinformation and disinformation. We define the terms and talk about ways we each can identify misinformation and disinformation. We also offer many resources to further learn how to identify misinformation and disinformation and how to talk to friends and family who post misinformation and disinformation.
Mentioned on the show:
- “Misinformation” vs. “Disinformation”: Get Informed On The Difference via Dictionary.com
- EEDA Newsletter Volume 2, Resources 7: Video Captions, Tree.fm, and Fighting Misinformation
- EEDA Newsletter Vol 4, Res 20: Gaza, Caring for Yourself, & Information Literacy
- EEDA Newsletter Vol 4, Res 23: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Eternal Sunsets
- Stop being fooled by misinformation. Do this instead via CNN
- Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook: Fake News Edition via On the Media
- How to Talk to Friends & Family Who Share Misinformation via Los Angeles Public Library
- How to Talk to Friends & Family Who Share Misinformation: An Election Tip Sheet via PEN America
- Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better by Woo-Kyoung Ahn
- How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff and illustrated by Irving Geis
- For more information about how the practice of disguising PR as academic research, see the now defunct Bad PR website via the internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230515082029/https://badpr.co.uk/
- Antivaccination Parents Dig In Heels Even after Receiving Medical Info via Scientific American
- The info in the above article is sourced from: Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifler, Sean Richey, Gary L. Freed; Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial. Pediatrics April 2014; 133 (4): e835–e842. 10.1542/peds.2013-2365
- Conspiracy Theories and How to Help Family and Friends Who Believe Them via ADL
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
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Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Patricia: Hey brats. Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I didn’t fact check that, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording this show on July 15th, 2024.
Patricia: Well, a lot has happened in the world and this nation since we last recorded a show.
And all I can say is that the United States is a real soup sandwich right now.
Nicole: I was not familiar with that term before this episode.
Patricia: Yeah, it’s a real goat rodeo.
Nicole: Do you, like, open the can of so…? Do you make a big bowl of soup and tr…? How does this sandwich go together?
Patricia: I mean, it doesn’t, and that’s kind of the point of it.
Like, any way you try to make it, whether it’s soup on the outside, fillings on the inside, or if the soup is the filling, like, it’s just a mess.
Nicole: You just end up with some soggy bread.
Patricia: It’s just gonna be a mess.
Nicole: Nobody’s happy.
Patricia: No, nobody’s happy.
Nicole: And that’s the point of it all.
Patricia: [Laughing]
Nicole: I would go to a goat rodeo, though.
Patricia: [Laughing] I, hmm.
Nicole: I don’t know if it would be terribly exciting, but I think there would be some fun goat noises.
Patricia: I feel like there’d be a lot of injuries.
Nicole: Well, there’s goats.
Patricia: Well, yeah.
Nicole: Someone’s gonna get headbutted.
Patricia: I mean, someone’s gonna get headbutted, that’s true.
Nicole: Also, current state of the U.S.
[Laughing]
Patricia: Yeah, someone’s gonna get headbutted.
Nicole: That would make the debate more interesting.
Patricia: My gosh, don’t get me started.
Nicole: Oh my god.
We have a Patreon.
Patricia: We’re really trying to make a little little safe space on the internet.
Nicole: And I guess the Patreon is the home for that. And we now have two levels on Patreon. I guess technically three because people can just follow us.
Patricia: People can just like follow us for free and you’ll see all the free public posts.
Nicole: But we do have two paid subscriber levels, and we really appreciate each and every one of those who can support us there, both our Helpful Helpers and our Enthusiastic Encouragers.
Patricia: Yes.
Nicole: And a reminder to everyone out there, if you do sign up at either of these levels, you will receive a survey or something that you can sign up to receive one of our rainbow prism window clings, which helps just bring a little rainbow love into your world.
Patricia: So for this episode, I…
We’re sitting here recording this podcast and I’m like, this is just still… It feels so weird with everything going on in the world to even be making
Nicole: Our silly little show.
Patricia: Our silly little show. Or, I hesitate to call it art, but
Nicole: What I’m doing here is art.
Patricia: What, oh, clearly, yes.
Anyway. For this episode, we’re going to talk about information, primarily misinformation, disinformation, and what you can do to try to sort out what is valid information or news and what is not. We’re going to try our best to not get too much into the weeds.
Nicole: Now, there is a lot of both misinformation and disinformation out there right now, trying to really influence our behavior.
Two major sources of this, and these are, this is not like an exhaustive list, are politics, and this is information coming from both within and outside the United States, and from both government and non government sources, but also we receive a lot of particularly misinformation from capitalistic sources.
These are people or businesses trying to sell you something, and we’re seeing a lot of this now, especially with people generating what looks to be desired products using AI and then selling you junk.
Patricia: And then selling junk once it’s ordered. And I also am thinking about, and I know I am, probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m also thinking about wellness, as this is a self help podcast.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Like, wellness is big business.
Nicole: Wellness and health.
Patricia: Wellness and health.
Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah, I see a lot from health.
Patricia: Mm hmm.
Nicole: Especially as someone who works in healthcare.
Patricia: Exactly.
Speaking of, why should you even be listening to us about misinformation and disinformation? Like, who are we to talk about these things?
Nicole: We’re your queer aunties on the internet.
Patricia: We’re your queer aunties on the internet.
Also, though, I have a master’s in library and information science, and some of the things that were my particular interest when I was in grad school, and even now, are information literacy. In thinking about how people can understand information, I think a lot about information access and how people seek out information and look for answers to their questions.
And I think a lot about what we’re talking about today, which is people being able to tell the difference between what is real and what is not real.
Nicole: I, on the other hand, am not a library sciences person. My background is in, well, what’s on my degree, it says experimental psychology. And what that means is my graduate education was particularly focused on experimental design and methodology in psychology. And for those of you who are not familiar with that field, you have to be particularly rigorous when trying to study human behavior, because there are a lot of what we refer to as extraneous variables that can influence what you’re doing.
So, I also taught as part of this research methodology, and I even continue to work in medical research to this day. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about and looking into kind of how research is conducted, sources of information, and how to assess the validity of research and information.
Patricia: So all that being said, we can both easily geek out on information, how people look for it, why people believe it, and all of that.
Just to kind of keep it 100. I want to point out the inherent white supremacy and colonizer mindset that can pop up when valuing academic knowledge over non-academic knowledge and the privilege of being able to earn graduate degrees. And we are definitely trying to pass on some of this knowledge.
Nicole: But what it comes down to is we sure do know a lot about research and information literacy, which is why we’re here talking to you about it today.
Patricia: If you want to learn more about some of the biases at play behind why people believe some of these things that they do, I’m going to have a couple of book recommendations later in the show.
Nicole: This sounds like a common thing that we do now, but we’ve used some terms without defining them and we should probably really start off this conversation by talking about what those terms are. Particularly, misinformation and disinformation.
Patricia: Dictionary.com actually has a really great primer on the definitions and differences, so I’m going to link that in the full show notes that’ll be on our website. But, while we’re on the show, let’s start with misinformation, which Dictionary.com defines as false information that is spread regardless of intent to mislead.
Nicole: Disinformation, on the other hand, is misinformation that is spread intentionally and typically with nefarious intent. So this is information that someone’s trying to actually do harm with. And this is usually seen in the forms of… It’s spread by governments, political parties, propaganda, or someone trying to sell you something, and things like that.
Patricia: Yeah, so all disinformation is misinformation.
Nicole: Correct.
Patricia: But not all misinformation is disinformation. It’s like a circle and a square kind of thing. No, square and rectangle.
Well, I was thinking, no, it’s a square and a rectangle, right?
Nicole: Why did I…? I wasn’t, uh, I gotta go back and learn my shapes.
Patricia: Shapes are hard.
Nicole: Shapes are hard.
Patricia: Sending you back to kindergarten.
Nicole: That sounds lovely. I’ll have some juice and crackers and I’ll take a nap.
Patricia: Wait, I want to go.
Nicole: And then we’ll have story time.
Patricia: Beautiful, beautiful. I’ll meet you there.
I want to put it out there that you are not unintelligent or foolish for unknowingly spreading misinformation or disinformation. It’s really easy to spread online and disinformation is meant to be destructive and divisive even if you share it on accident.
People at varying levels of education do it at some point, so I don’t want to sit here and say, like, well, I studied this and that. I never do it, because I absolutely have unknowingly shared misinformation.
Nicole: Oh, same. Big same.
Okay, so, Patricia, how do we even know if something is mis- or dis- information?
Patricia: There are a few things that we can all do. Once again, you don’t have to go to years of school to do these things. There’s something that is within all of our power to do. And so we’ll talk about a few of ’em right now. And then I’m, of course, going to link to further resources for you to find out even more ways that you can tell the difference.
Nicole: I think one of the first things to start with when trying to assess whether something is mis- or dis- information is who. Who is giving you this information? Where is this information coming from? What do they benefit from you believing it and sharing it?
Patricia: I remember being told about, you know, you see these studies like, oh, dark chocolate decreases your chances of cancer and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then you look at the sponsor for the study and it’s like Hershey’s.
Nicole: Oh, this is a whole like cottage industry.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: This was particularly big with certain newspapers in the UK, but they would commission a survey
Patricia: mmmm
Nicole: and there were companies that would like get paid to do these surveys and then report the results and it would usually be like paragraph five or six or something, would be the like tagline lead into what is basically an advertisement, like a hidden advertisement.
But they’d be reporting it as though they were academic survey results. And you, you can spot this sometimes even in really common publications. And it’s these weird little things like, 97 percent of women say they love dark chocolate and a glass of wine an evening. And then you look in paragraph five is like, Jeffrey Hershey from Hershey’s says that dark chocolate.
And you’re like, wait a minute.
Patricia: Yeah, it’s just like, you just have to do the smallest amount of peeling back or digging.
Nicole: Once you learn to spot the loose threads in these things…
Patricia: They’re so obvious. Yeah. I also see a lot of when we’re talking about like, who is giving you this information? What do they benefit from you believing it and sharing it?
And I see this a lot in self help, which is why I do what I do with this podcast with my newsletter, because I see so many things out there, like, oh, these are the six signs that you have ADHD. Listen to my show to find out. And they don’t really care if this is actual true information. It’s usually, even if they believe it’s true, it might just be misinformation because they might have gotten it from TikTok or something like that.
But what they want you to do is listen to their show, and then listen to the ads, and then they get ad dollars. And self help is so often trying to sell you things.
Nicole: Yeah. You need this new course.
Patricia: Yeah. Which, hey, maybe we’ll have courses someday, but I actually want you to walk away with it, from it, with something.
But I think it’s a lot of clickbaity
Nicole: mm hmm
Patricia: stuff.
Nicole: Yeah, clickbaity stuff is there to definitely carry you through to put your eyes on advertisements. You shared an article in the EEDA newsletter, uh, about misinformation, and we’ll link to that in the show notes, but there’s a quote in there that just really sticks with me, and it is, quote, “they found false information is more believable if it comes from groups people belong to, if they judge the source as credible, or if it stirs emotions such as fear and outrage.”
Patricia: Yeah, I am absolutely guilty of resharing something without fact checking it because it’s from a person I trust, just to eventually find out that it was misinformation, because I didn’t do my due diligence, and surprise, neither did they. I recognize it is tedious to fact check everything. And that’s part of the reason it’s so easily spread to like, not everyone is going to fact check everything.
And I think we kind of need to think about what things are worth fact checking and, and how would sharing it add to any harm.
Nicole: Thinking back to the kind of clickbaity-ness. But, also, the, you know, people judging information, more credible if it stirs fear or outrage or some sort of emotion in them. One person I really like their content for this kind of thing is Dr. Inna. She’s on TikTok and Instagram.
Patricia: Yeah, we’ll link to her profile.
Nicole: But she’s particularly adept at this with all of the, while you were saying like self help stuff, all of the kind of people who will say things like, psychology says, and give some, or like the six signs of ADHD or something like that, that have no basis, like, psychology says if she twirls her hair while she’s talking to you, she’s interested.
And she just has, like, this great line of, like, psychology says no such thing. And I really adore her for that. And then she digs into the research, though. Like, she does the job of kind of fact checking for this.
Patricia: Yeah. And I admit, I feel like such a party pooper every time a friend or family member shares a cool product or a cool picture with me.
And I respond like, that’s not real. That’s AI. Like it, no one likes to hear that. And I just feel like such a downer, and at the same time, I’m like, that’s not real. I don’t want to normalize this.
Nicole: Yeah, we’re having to get good at spotting AI stuff really, really fast, and not everyone is adept at it.
So we do our best on this show to cite our sources, and Patricia even does it in her newsletter, and everyone needs to kind of take that critical eye that they have on April Fool’s Day, and hold that as you are browsing social media, because there’s just so much there.
Patricia: Well, and I think you’re making a good point, because so many of us, we have these skills, we know how to do this on April Fool’s Day, it’s just the other 364 days of the year, or 365 if it’s a leap year, it just goes out the window. So we need to hold onto that and we need to practice that every day.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s almost like exercise, you kind of have to exercise it to keep that really strong and usable.
Also, like, we’ll admit, we sometimes don’t catch these things right away. There’s been once or twice where, like, I’ve had to edit something out of this show a day before it goes live because I thought I had something right, and we finally fact checked it, and it wasn’t. It wasn’t right at all. And so had to, had to pull that little section out of what we were talking about.
Patricia: Yeah. When we go over our script and we talk about things, we’re constantly asking each other, like, what’s your source on that?
Nicole: Yeah. Getting better at that. And not just saying, I know it in my brain.
Patricia: It’s just vibes. [Laughing]
There are some great tips in the Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook by On The Media, which again, I’ll link in the show notes, but we’re going to go over a few of them.
Nicole: A really dark red flag, or waving red flag, I guess one would say, is headlines that are all in caps. Or, if a news site is using another news site as their source, that’s probably at least a yellow flag. It’s one of those things where like, oftentimes they’re linked in the article and you just kind of got to click through the links a couple of times.
But if you find yourself on like a website that’s full of banner ads and pop up ads, and it’s really like, it’s, it’s bogging down your computer and it’s really hard to actually determine where the actual news article is. Probably not a reputable source. They’re probably just trying to drive traffic there to show you ads.
Which is why it’s full of ads, because they’re trying to really just make money on showing people those ads.
Patricia: Also, look at the URL. Look at that domain name. Is it a reputable news site? Is it trying to pretend to be a reputable news site? Like, it has dot com and then it has whatever, you know, abcnews.com, but then like dot CO, dot whatever. Like, is there, are there additional things in that URL?
Is there an about page? On the site where you can learn more about the site because reputable sites are going to have an about page. What if you do a really easy web search where you search for the name of the site or the social media account or whatever where you’re getting this news and put the word fake in the web search. You know, whatever news site and put fake, what comes up? It might not necessarily be fake, but it might be heavily biased, which is also when you’re getting your news, another red flag.
Nicole: Along those lines one I try to particularly look out for is like sites that look like news websites, but they’re just a little too generic.
Like, it’ll just say like, channel five news. But there’s no, like, region attached to it or anything? No, like, station call letters or anything? Like, which Channel 5 news? Channel 5 in LA is different from Channel 5 in San Francisco. Like, who is this? And I think that’s something that is really kind of out there right now, are these websites that are made to look like news websites.
Another thing you can do is check the date on wherever you’re getting this information. If it’s like a screenshot of something, a lot of times people might deliberately crop out the date of, say, if it’s a screenshot of a Twitter post or something.
Patricia: Or even a screenshot of an article headline.
Nicole: Yeah
Patricia: Like sometimes it has a screenshot of the headline and the leading picture, but then if there’s a date under that, they crop it out.
Nicole: And this is really important because on social media in particular, old news stories pop back up at the weirdest times. The amount of times I’ve seen a headline and be like, Oh, wow, that seems like really important news. And I find the article and it’s from like 2012.
Patricia: Yeah, or, you know, what it’ll also be, though, is people trying to drive engagement.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Right.
Nicole: The other thing I really try to do a lot is compare multiple sources. If I see something just posted on Instagram or something that looks like important news, I’ll actually head over to Google or whatever search engine you want to be using. A lot of times they have a news button. You can click that. And kind of use some keyword searches. I try to see, are major news outlets reporting on this? Is there an Associated Press article? Something that can help me confirm that this is going on and it’s not just coming from, again, like, nonspecific generic Channel 5 news.
Patricia: And remember, that gut check. When you read something, does it seem fishy?
And I fully recognize that not everyone has an internal BS detector, or like Nicole said, it’s like a muscle. You have to, you have to practice it. And you have to kind of work that, exercise that muscle to, to get that detector. But I think it’s fine to question things, right? Like if it’s fishy, because, you know, sometimes you’re going to look and you’re going to be like, oh, that’s actually true.
Right? Like we’re not out here saying everything is misinformation or everything is disinformation. We’re just saying that it is prevalent and there are ways that we can check on this.
The other kind of glaring red flag is does this social media post, this quote, this headline, this whatever, does it elicit a really strong emotional reaction from you?
Because if it does, then that is another red flag that it’s like, oh, this was written in a way, or this was created to get that reaction and then be shared out.
Nicole: Again, they, they’re looking to get engagement and typically to drive you somewhere for advertising dollars or to sell you something else.
Patricia: Or to sell you something else.
And I think the other thing to recognize, especially in this election year, big news brings out all the fakers.
Nicole: Oh my gosh, we saw this so much this last weekend.
Patricia: Big news brings out all the fakers.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Everyone is trying to capitalize on whatever is happening.
Nicole: Capitalize in the truest sense of the word.
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: It can be really sometimes frustrating or difficult seeing a loved one spread myths or disinformation. It’s important to remember that it happens to all of us, and there are ways that you can address this. Ideally, if this is your goal, in ways that won’t lead to arguments or defensiveness. PEN America and the Los Angeles Public Library both have really great resources on how to talk to your family members about false information, and we’ll link to those in the show notes.
Patricia: Absolutely. They mentioned first, of course, doing your own fact checking, right? Make sure you have all your ducks in a row before you think you’re going to go and have a crucial conversation with someone else about what they posted.
Nicole: You mean my just feeling of the vibes are off?
Patricia: The vibes are off on this, but I’m just going to start commenting that on everything.
There is also some advice in these resources on making a public comment versus sending a private message. Because if you make a public comment on something on social media, that is going to kind of be a point of engagement and that helps the algorithm see that, oh, people are engaging with this thing. We should share it more. And sometimes making that public comment, even if that comment is you’re wrong, delete this, take this down. That is just going to spread the information wider.
I also want to point out with the making a public comment and driving engagement is there is content out there that is deliberately trying to make you get in arguments in the comments because any engagement positive or negative is going to get their content spread and get eyes on it and get followers and get engagement and so this is why you’ll see really terrible plant advice you’ll see terrible all kinds of advice because they want people to jump into those comments and say this is wrong this is terrible because they want the engagement.
Nicole: This is even the reason behind those weird math problem posts you see that like cause people in the comments to argue over whether the answer is like 7 or 42. This is what they’re doing. They’re trying to drive engagement.
Thinking about that like whether to engage with someone in a private comment versus a public comment, also remember that if you want to actually continue to have a good relationship with that person, repeatedly particularly calling out in the comments that like this is false information, this is misinformation, you’re sharing misinformation, that may adversely impact your relationship with that person.
And additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that the more closely that information, that misinformation or disinformation, is tied to that person’s identity or culture, the more likely they are going to dig their heels in when confronted with the idea that that is not true. Both of these things together, if you publicly call them out on it too, they’ll dig their heels even, in even more because on top of you challenging their identity or their culture, you’re also causing them to potentially lose face in front of their community. And so it can be really difficult and often take a long time and can be kind of a circuitous route if you want to try to help dig people out of these positions where they maybe are in a place where they are spreading a lot of misinformation or disinformation that is particularly tied to some aspect of their identity or culture.
It’s not something you’re gonna be able to kind of approach head on. You’re going to have to work at this from a lot of small and obscure angles to help try to dig them out by giving them the tools they need themselves. I’m pretty sure there’s articles out there. We can find them. I remember seeing this in particular when it came to beliefs about vaccines.
But even when shown, the scientific literature, it did not change people’s beliefs. And in fact, sometimes they did just entrench themselves further in their beliefs. You can’t just confront people with the facts. Sometimes you have to work with them to give them the tools to find their own way out.
Patricia: Yeah, just as I’ve, I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, just because something is a teaching moment for you does not mean it’s a learning moment for the other person.
Nicole: I think I’ve heard that from a famous philosopher.
Patricia: We cannot, unfortunately, we cannot control what other people post online and some people don’t care that what they’re posting might be flat out wrong or flat out misinformation or disinformation, like some people just don’t care, which is wild to me. But they’ll post misattributed quotes. They’ll post, you were telling me earlier, wrong image descriptions of archaeological things
Nicole: mm hmm
Patricia: and ancient art and like, people will call them out on it, and some people will be like, well, I like the sentiment, I like the vibe, I like
Nicole: mm hmm
Patricia: the, I’ll be like, this is not real, well, I like how it looks.
Some people don’t care that they may be posting misinformation or disinformation, and we can’t control that. But we can at least try to be mindful of what we ourselves are putting out in the world, especially in an election year.
Nicole: Okay. So what are, what are the key takeaways? What’s the TLDR on this one?
Patricia: So I think for mine, I’m going to say sharing misinformation is unfortunately really easy. We all do it at some point and it’s not a sign of unintelligence.
Nicole: I want you to take away to try to be mindful of what information you are putting out in the world, but also be mindful of the information you’re taking in and try to assess that as well.
Patricia, you mentioned a book at the top.
Patricia: Yeah, I have a couple of books actually.
The first one is Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better by Woo-Kyoung Ahn. And I believe she is a Yale professor and she teaches a lot about all kinds of cognitive biases. And, you know, she talks about the fluency bias, I think.
So that one is she showed her students a, I think, K pop dance video. And she showed the video, she showed it a couple of times, and she said to her class like, okay, who thinks you can get up here and do these dances? And it’s this kind of fallacy that you see something and someone does it so well, it looks easy, and so you think that you can do it.
Nicole: mmmmm
Patricia: She goes over confirmation bias, she goes over all kinds of things, because sometimes you’re like, wow, how can people even believe these things. And so, Thinking 101 by Woo-Kyoung Ahn talks about all of the biases behind or some of the biases behind why people believe what they believe.
The other book is an older book. It might be from like the fifties or something. So some of the examples are really outdated. Some might even be, uh, I mean, definitely not politically correct, some of the examples, because this was written in the fifties, maybe. But this book is titled How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff, illustrated by Irving Geis.
This book is a very short book. I read it years ago and I have given this book to so many people. My nickname for this book is How to Not Be Foolish. That’s, that’s what I call this book. And it was especially helpful when, you know, infographics had like a really big thing, like 10 years ago, like everything was being made into an infographic.
And this book, even though it was written seventy years ago, talks about ways that imagery can be misleading when you’re talking about statistics and the differences, like, you know, one of the things, one of the arguments right now, he doesn’t talk about this in the book, but it’s something I think about is police violence and saying people arguing, well, police actually kill more white people when they’re looking at like the full numbers
Nicole: absolute numbers
Patricia: of people. But actually, what you need to look at is the proportion.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: The proportion, and people don’t know that. And this book helps you understand that. Again, it’s How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff, and we will link both these books in the show notes.
Nicole: I think I’m gonna have to put that Thinking 101 on my, see if I can get that from the library.
Patricia: Yeah, you could get it from the library. We also have a physical copy.
Nicole: Okay, Patricia. What is filling your cup?
Patricia: Books! Surprising, no one. Specifically, we recently went to a book event. We went to the book launch for the YA graphic novel, The Worst Ronin, by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, who is lovely. And that was something that because of the pandemic, we weren’t going to a lot of book events.
And we’re slowly very, both deliberately in feeling about the ways in which we feel safe or not, we’re still masking everywhere. But it’s like, oh, here’s a book event by a friend. And we went and it was lovely. We got to see another friend there, which was also great. And I just miss going to book events and I want to do more of it. And that is filling my cup right now.
Nicole: We weren’t the only people masked there either.
Patricia: We weren’t the only people masked there either. Yeah.
Nicole: It was great.
Patricia: Nicole, what’s filling your cup?
Nicole: Books, she says, as we record, in a room surrounded by books. To her wife, who said, books. For me particularly, I got really excited as we were prepping for this episode, and I realized that just as the month of June ended, I surpassed fifty books read this year.
I’ve already read, like, 51, 52 books at this point. I’m on track to maybe break 100 this year, and I’m very excited about that.
Patricia: That is really impressive, especially for someone who books aren’t your job.
Nicole: No, books are not my job.
Patricia: Like, that’s, that’s really impressive.
Nicole: Books are just that thing I do.
Patricia: I love it.
This is why we’re married.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com, and we’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There, you can also find a link to our Patreon, our Bookshop link, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter.
You can also find us on Instagram and BlueSky at eedapod and email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would also appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings.
It really does help other people find us.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who could subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself. Drink some water and read a book.
We’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: All I can think about when we talk about misinformation is a show I watched as a kid called Hysteria, and there was a tour guide taking kids on a tour through history, and her name was Miss Information.