Front and Center with Steve and Michael

By: Steve Bhaerman and Michael Maxsenti
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • Front and Center ... ‘From Political Battlefields to Cooperative Playing Fields’ ... Writing Our New Story Together

    We are facing and embracing the irony of our times. We seem more divided than ever, and yet there is a great desire to work together to face our evolutionary challenges. Our "beacon", is what Charles Eisenstein describes as "the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible."

    Steve and Mike will host conversations with leaders and inspirational ‘ordinary people.’ There will be: Visionaries, Heroes of the Heart, Illuminators, Solutionaries and Connectors. People who bring people from all sides together in purposeful dialogue so we can develop a shared vision of the world we want to live in.

    Through these conversations, Steve Bhaerman and Michael Maxsenti will work to deepen and expand our understandings to help us get off the battlefields and onto playing fields of collaboration and communion. There we can create the new story that our hearts know is possible.
    All rights reserved.
    Show more Show less
Politics & Government Social Sciences Spirituality
Show more Show less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
Episodes
  • Beyond Censorship – Mind Control. You Can’t “Know” What They Don’t Show You

    Beyond Censorship – Mind Control. You Can’t “Know” What They Don’t Show You
    Nov 1 2024

    “If a speech falls freely in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, is it still free speech?” – Swami Beyondananda


    Watch here on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v5l72zy-beyond-censorship-mind-control.-you-cant-know-what-they-dont-show-you.html


    Watch here on Locals: https://frontandcenter.locals.com/


    In 1974, the satirical troupe, Firesign Theatre, put out a comedy record, Everything You Know Is Wrong.


    Now, 50 years later …looks like they were right.


    When we think of censorship, we think of overt repression of views, like book banning, or even book-burning. But in these times, where so much of what we think we “know” comes from digital sources, the censorship is so silent and stealthy that we haven’t a clue how the information we receive has already been filtered and focused by someone unknown to us. And how we are convinced we are “thinking our own thoughts” but are in fact parroting planted narratives.


    On this episode of Front and Center, Michael and I review and unpack an eye-opening interview with psychologist and journalist Dr. Robert Epstein, on what he calls the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). Epstein, a former editor of Psychology Today, has written extensively about how Google’s algorithms elevate the data they want you to see and suppress what they don’t. It explains why when you Google “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” you have to wade through pages of negative articles before you can get to anything that Kennedy actually said or wrote.


    Recently, Epstein reports, the same has been true of Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren – who has been critical of Google and their bias.


    An example of how this works. Just go to Google search and put in the letter “a” – what comes up but Amazon, Google’s biggest advertiser.


    More disturbing yet, Epstein shows how this distorted distribution of information has impacted elections – shifting undecided voters from 50-50 to 90-10, by sending them one-sided information and burying the other point of view. Epstein, a Democrat himself, shows that this silent programming is being done to support selected Democratic candidates and squelch dissent.


    Here’s another example. When RFK, Jr.’s independent campaign was surging, he went from 25% support to single digits – all because of how the “news” was being skewed.


    This is how elections are “stolen” without going near a voting booth or ballot box.


    But we don’t know any of this – and we don’t know that we don’t know -- because we never get to see it.


    We DO know this now because we have the ability to monitor exactly what they are doing, thanks to Dr. Epstein’s platform The Tech Watch Project (https://techwatchproject.org/) that is holding Big Tech companies accountable by monitoring internet content with the first ever nationwide "Digital Shield."


    As I’ve said before, these are apocalyptic times when the veil is being lifted on evils of all kinds. We might not want to look, but to get through this difficult passage for humanity, we must. As the Swami has said, the truth shall UPSET you free.


    It’s natural to be upset when you’ve been set up. Knowledge is power.


    Please watch this podcast to find out what you don’t know, and need to know.


    Explore the data and analysis on Epstein's monitoring system at https://americasdigitalshield.com/


    Review Epstein's privacy tips at https://medium.com/@re_53711/seven-simple-steps-toward-online-privacy-20dcbb9fa82


    Learn more about the Tech Watch Project at https://techwatchproject.org/


    RFK, Jr Podcast interview with Dr. Robert Epstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y1YKFdgL5c
    Show more Show less
    44 mins
  • Why Free Speech Is a Life Or Death Issue - It’s Time to Wake Up and Smell the Coffins

    Why Free Speech Is a Life Or Death Issue - It’s Time to Wake Up and Smell the Coffins
    Oct 18 2024
    “It’s not vicious lies they are looking to censor. It’s those vicious truths they’re worried about.”– Swami BeyondanandaWatch the most recent Front & Center with Mike and Steve podcast here.https://rumble.com/v5j2ln9-why-free-speech-is-a-life-or-death-issue-its-time-to-wake-up-and-smell-the-.htmlhttps://frontandcenter.locals.com/Last week I wrote a post suggesting that free speech censorship was the gravest existential threat to democracy. I was heartened by the positive response, although I found something very curious about the few pushback emails I got. Not one of them objected to any of my points about free speech, or even addressed them. All of the negative feedback boiled down to: “Donald Trump is worse!”That’s the problem with “lesser evil-ism.” We accentuate and amplify the evil on the other side (in this week’s podcast you can view the contrast between what mainstream media said that Trump said and what he actually said), while refusing to acknowledge the lies and contradictions on our own side.That’s how evil prevails.So I want to try a thought experiment. Imagine there’s no Donald Trump.(Imagine there’s no Donald …It’s easy if you try …No red-hat wearing MAGA’sThe red team runs another guy …)OK, OK. Enough of that. You get the idea. Seriously, I want to take the topic of this post and elevate it out of “lesser evil land.”So last week, I declared “free speech” an existential issue for democracy. I’ve spoken to people who’ve said, yes but it’s not a life-or-death survival issue like let’s say climate change or nuclear war.Well, I say it is. And what really brought that home to me was a book released this week called The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity.https://www.amazon.com/Pfizer-Papers-Pfizers-Against-Humanity/dp/1648210376Like Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers (https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1162158609/daniel-ellsberg-obituary-pentagon-papers) published more than 50 years ago that lifted the veils on the War in Vietnam, this new work – based on Pfizer’s own documents that were supposed to stay secret for 75 years – blows the whistle on what has to be one of the most toxic perpetrations in human history.As soon as the Biden-Harris administration took office in 2021, just prior to the release of the COVID vaccines, they began a concerted campaign to de-platform any potential critics. They used a shadowy organization with the Orwellian name Center for Countering Digital Hate that identified the “Disinformation Dozen” (individuals that as I said in last week’s post were actually providing missing information intentionally left out of the official narrative). What followed was a relentless propaganda campaign involving every show biz personality and media influencer they could find to promote the shot as “safe and effective.” We all remember the likes of Rachel Maddow assuring us that if we took the shot, we wouldn’t get the infection and couldn’t spread it to others. It turns out they were wrong, and not only were they wrong, those running the campaign KNEW they were wrong before the shots were even available, based on the Pfizer trial documents the FDA was allowed to see, but the public wasn’t. As you will hear when you watch the Naomi Wolf interview with Del Bigtree (https://rumble.com/v5iclf9-dr.-naomi-wolf-reveals-shocking-details-in-the-pfizer-papers.html), when FDA director Rochelle Walensky saw the report, there was a panicky call with other health officials and the result was a 17-page script to spread the REAL disinformation, the “safe and effective” story.No one would know because the actual report was not to be released for 75 years. But then a funny thing happened. A group of scientists and medical researchers sued the FDA under FOIA to force release of hundreds of thousands of documents related to licensing of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.This document that was supposed to be “cryogenically frozen” until the end of the century, all of a sudden became available for all to see. And as Naomi Wolf will tell you in the interview (https://rumble.com/v5iclf9-dr.-naomi-wolf-reveals-shocking-details-in-the-pfizer-papers.html) not only were there 1,200 deaths during the trials, but the shots severely compromised women’s reproductive capabilities, and did in fact cause blood clots and cardiovascular issues.Please remember that all these injury reports were being made prior to the documents being released, and they came up against a wall of denial and de-platforming. (By the way, we aren’t even going to attempt to post this episode on YouTube – our assistant wrote, “I checked the content guidelines on YouTube and for sure this would get a content strike. They specifically mention most of what Naomi and Del are talking about as not allowed.”)So …what’s wrong with this picture? Are you grateful you are being “protected” from this ...
    Show more Show less
    40 mins
  • The True Existential Threat to Democracy - And Why It’s So Hard for Some People to See

    The True Existential Threat to Democracy - And Why It’s So Hard for Some People to See
    Oct 10 2024
    “They’ve taken the Bill of Rights and boiled it down to just one.You have the right to remain silent.” – Swami BeyondanandaWatch the most recent Front & Center with Mike and Steve podcast here.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXL_WYJzrbMIn December 2008, Bruce Lipton and I were writing the final chapter of Spontaneous Evolution. Barack Obama had just been elected President, and I had just returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. – where people were literally dancing in the streets.And why not?We were done with Bush and Cheney, the Iraq War, and the neocon con. It was time for hope and change.So in this last chapter, A Whole New Story, Bruce and I proclaimed that Obama’s election was a sign that “evolution” was at hand. Made sense to us. We were, however, completely surprised – shocked actually – when one of Bruce’s colleagues told us that it was a mistake, that we were limiting our audience by taking a political side. We looked at each other incredulous. That woman – she must be … a REPUBLICAN!Although we softened the “endorsement” a bit when we published the paperback edition a year later, still neither of us could imagine it possible that Republicans were even a part of our audience.My perspective sharply shifted during COVID when I saw colleagues I knew and respected being de-platformed, and things I knew to be lies being sold as truth. I felt even more alienated and disheartened when other close colleagues ghosted me because I chose not to take the shot, and they began spouting the phrases implanted by mainstream media (“safe and effective” …“follow the science”) as if it were gospel truth. Given the disparity between what I knew and what I was being told, I felt like the subject in Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments in the 1950s (go here https://signsoftheupwising.substack.com/p/yes-we-do-have-a-choice and read the section on “Herd Immunity Or Herd Mentality”).Those same progressives who supported the free speech movement back in the day, who had been proud members of the American Civil Liberties Union, said nothing when viable treatments were de-platformed from the web, and even a Facebook group for vaccine-injured individuals to share stories and remedies was taken down. A new Orwellian term was invented – mal-information, meaning something that is factually true but “narrative inconvenient.”So, to go back to the opening paragraph of this post, I speak from my own experience of being so blinded by my progressive blinders that I dismissed and discounted any alternative perspective as irrelevant, if not downright dangerous.I was one of those who compared Donald Trump to Hitler, and I have now been humbled enough to see the jackboot is now on the other foot. While I recognize all the “existential threats” of a Trump Presidency, the most important of which is a President who believes himself above the law, we must – all of us – face the clear and present danger of losing our right to free speech, not at the hands of Trump but by the administration currently in power.This loss is invisible to many progressives for a couple of reasons. First, too many insist on only believing what their side says, and instead of investigating the whole story, they settle for listening to what they are told.As the Swami says, “it’s one thing to have smoke blown up your ass. It’s another to have second-hand smoke blown up your ass.” Secondly, censorship is not just what is blatantly broadcast for all to see – like the right-wing book banning in Florida and other red states – but that which is so under the radar, it can be conveniently ignored. So, regardless of who you plan to vote for – or against – this November, I implore you to get the whole story and recognize that free speech is THE existential issue in this election. It’s time to remove the blinders of “our side is right, and therefore we should be able to impose our narrative on everyone else.”We encourage you to watch these video clips to gain a better understanding of what is happening in America.U.S. Senator John Kerry - "First Amendment stands as a 'major block'..."hammer it out of existence...so you're free to implement change…” https://tinyurl.com/45jx9468Hillary Clinton: Censor Speech Or 'We Lose Total Control'! Part of RonPaulLibertyReport. They give many examples of the Democrats demanding that the government crack down on free speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZco2BiII8I&t=249sThe Constitution, Unplugged: Matt Taibbi on DarkHorse This is an excellent podcast where Bret speaks with Matt Taibbi on the subject of the censorship industrial complex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL_lobY3bKMJust tell me the Truth! Debunking The Biggest Lies Told About Trump Amir Odom shows numerous clips of MSM taking out of context remarks made by President Trump and blatantly lying about what he said to fit a narrative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
    Show more Show less
    35 mins

What listeners say about Front and Center with Steve and Michael

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available