Syntopical podcast listening: why it's so hard to have a real conversation these days

Despite the cooler fall weather, I’ve still had to mow quite a bit which means podcast listening time.  It’s not all bad though since of late I mostly work from home, which has cut down on my commute related podcast listening time, so about the only time I get to catch up on the 30 or so podcasts I subscribe to is when I’m rolling around on my Dixie Chopper.
As I headed out to the shop to mow last night I saw that two of my “regular listens” had relatively recent episodes, so I added them to my play next, hopped, on fired up, and started to mow.
First up was Episode #309 from Dan Carlin’s Common Sense show (Dan’s new site is very pretty, but I can’t figure out how to link to specific episodes, hence the link to the top level page…if you are reading this later, you’ll have to scroll to find it if you want to listen to the whole thing).
Dan said something that really resonated with me early in this episode when talking about the “envy” he feels for his mom and her book club.  I think perhaps one of the reasons I have been doing book reviews here is to share the things I have read and to try to start up a conversation with people that have read the same thing.  I too am interested in having a conversation about what the facts mean vs. what the facts are.  Dan’s point seems to be this: how can we have a conversation about meaning if we don’t share any common conception of “the truth”?
Here is an excerpt of the audio from where he makes this point (I assume it’s OK to post this…if not, then this section of the post will disapear):

The rest of this episode is fascinating, pretty much like all of them are, so I highly reccomend you listen to it all and suscribe to his cast.
Next up was Episode #449 from the School Sucks Project , which is part 2 of a two part conversation wth Julia Tourianski about a video she created about “50 differences between men and women“.  Before he got into the main discussion, Brett included a clip of audio from a 1984 interview of a former KGB agent, Yuri Bezmenov by G. Edward Griffen, a member of the John Birch society (which every time I hear, I can’t help think of this).  Here is an excerpt of that audio (same note as above…if exceprting / reposting is not allowed by SSP, then I will take this down):

Again, SSP is one of my “always listen” to podcasts so if you find anything in the clip above interesting, make sure to subscribe.  And if you are interested in more of what Bezmenov had to say, you can get an electronic copy of one of his books for free from archive.org.
I can sort of see why Brett decided to include that given where the rest of the conversation with Juliana went, but I found the connection between what I was listening to from Dan just an hour earlier even more interesting.  No I don’t think the lack of meaningful discourse is due to some vast KGB conspiracy to undermine the US (“Мы вас похороним!”), but I do find it interesting that the inability to discern truth is the exact outcome that Bezmenov says comes from the demoralization stage.
But of course this could all be disinformation.  Who can really say?