TRIGGERnometry - September 01, 2025


Careful What You Click On - Konstantin Kisin

Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Guests
Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Tucker Carlson Deborah Francis White Benjamin Netanyahu Konstantin Kishin Jordan Peterson Brigitte Macron Kathy Newman Hunter Biden Kanda Sowen Ann Coulter Jeff Bezos Joe Rogan Owens
They Arrested And Strip Searched Me... - Lois McLatchie Miller The Real Story of Margaret Thatcher - Iain Dale

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

165.53

Word count

1,469

Sentence count

114

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the role of gatekeepers in shaping the way we think about the world, and the role that gatekeepers play in shaping our understanding of right and wrong, and how they shape our perception of the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:43.380 Can you believe it?
00:00:49.660 That is a common question around the metaphorical water-cooler trigonometry these days.
00:00:54.080 And for good reason.
00:00:55.660 Our journey so far is as improbable as they come.
00:00:58.440 Two unknown circuit comedians start a podcast in a room above a comedy club.
00:01:03.680 They borrow a camera from a photographer, buy 50-pound microphones, and launch.
00:01:08.540 Within three weeks, their producer quits due to ideological differences.
00:01:12.340 She's woke.
00:01:13.200 They're not.
00:01:13.940 At this point, their interviews average a few hundred views.
00:01:16.900 The next producer lasts nearly twice as long and quits for a different reason.
00:01:21.540 He likes to get paid.
00:01:22.560 Soon after, the comedy club, which lets them use the room, kicks them out.
00:01:27.080 Again, for not being woke in the middle of the pandemic.
00:01:30.320 Five years later, they're interviewing world leaders and averaging close to a million downloads
00:01:34.780 an episode.
00:01:35.220 As remarkable as the story is, what makes it satisfying is not actually how far we've traveled from a lowly start.
00:01:42.620 After all, every success story seems unlikely in retrospect.
00:01:46.780 What's special is that we've done our best to approach our newfound role as content creators in the right way,
00:01:52.820 and haven't been crushed by the algorithm or the competition in the process.
00:01:56.320 The right way does not actually belong in quotation marks, but I use them to emphasize that in today's
00:02:01.840 media climate, our incentive structures have perverted our understanding of right and wrong.
00:02:06.900 Today, merely claiming that there's a right way of doing things seems grandiose, arrogant, and presumptuous.
00:02:13.340 The slow but inevitable decline of mainstream media is, as I've written before, partly driven by
00:02:18.440 technological change.
00:02:20.060 Lowering the barrier to entry was always going to end the legacy media monopolies and information.
00:02:24.900 But the emergence of new media challenges coincided with the mainstream media showcasing its own
00:02:30.100 corruption and inadequacy.
00:02:31.940 Kathy Newman's hostile interview with the then-emerging Jordan Peterson became an internet sensation
00:02:37.120 because it revealed so clearly that much of journalism had ceased to be about truth-seeking.
00:02:43.540 Instead, it had become a tool to exert force against those who were seeking the truth.
00:02:48.480 The treatment of dissenters against government authoritarianism during COVID,
00:02:51.900 the deliberate lies such as the Russia collusion hoax, and the covering up of Hunter Biden's
00:02:56.860 incriminating laptop, all served to further underscore the partisanship, bad faith, and
00:03:02.280 corruption of the media.
00:03:03.760 As people often do when faced with an extreme they dislike, we proceeded to try out the opposite
00:03:08.920 extreme.
00:03:09.960 The problem, it was concluded, was not human behavior, the corrupting effect of power, or the
00:03:14.780 lack of competition.
00:03:15.940 The problem was gatekeepers.
00:03:17.760 This was a partial diagnosis at best, but it was felt by many that breaking open the oligarchic
00:03:23.520 cabal and democratizing the marketplace of ideas would lead to a better media environment.
00:03:28.980 And in some ways, it did.
00:03:31.080 The market is brilliant at two things at least, driving down prices and increasing consumer
00:03:36.320 choice.
00:03:37.460 Today, the array of media publications available for free is astounding.
00:03:41.660 In the process, however, it was decided that the problem was curation itself.
00:03:45.900 This is why much of new media is actively hostile to the idea of self-regulation, even at the
00:03:52.040 level of the individual.
00:03:53.780 Successful podcasters often reject the notion that they have any responsibility for the content
00:03:58.800 they produce, to suggest otherwise risks being accused of calling for certain people to be
00:04:03.820 no-platformed, cancelled, and so on.
00:04:06.560 These same people are, of course, highly selective about the guests they have on their shows, but
00:04:11.500 the pretense that they're not is critical to maintaining their free speech credentials.
00:04:15.900 The impact of this is easiest to see in individuals.
00:04:19.360 Tucker Carlson, as a legacy media journalist at Fox News, was controversial, to be sure.
00:04:24.320 But he had to free himself of the shackles of his gatekeepers to descend into actual lunacy,
00:04:29.920 like claiming he's been scratched by a demon.
00:04:32.260 The power of Christ compels you!
00:04:35.100 Kanda Sowen spent her formative years doing excellent work at the Daily Wire, pushing back
00:04:40.020 against the progressive narrative on race in America.
00:04:42.980 Today, free of the oppressive gatekeeping of her former employers, she spends her time
00:04:47.640 focusing on whether Brigitte Macron is in fact a man.
00:04:50.600 You were born a man and you will die a man. 0.99
00:04:53.440 That's the point I'm making.
00:04:55.280 So give us a sample.
00:04:56.760 I'll send my doctors to take your blood. 0.99
00:04:59.160 We're revolting against the perverts that run the world. 0.98
00:05:02.660 And I want to be very clear here. 0.96
00:05:03.820 I count you among them.
00:05:06.060 This may sound like a critique of Carlson and Owens, but I'm afraid I'm actually doing
00:05:09.900 something much more taboo, criticizing their audience.
00:05:13.660 Their drift into insanity is understandable once you consider the dynamics of the new media
00:05:17.960 marketplace.
00:05:19.340 Born of opposition, but Kastastan cannot survive when its party is actually in power.
00:05:24.640 Trump's dominant victory and swashbuckling approach to government has left the right's
00:05:28.820 new media talking heads in a pickle.
00:05:30.460 Well, beating up on the Dems is like punching a man who's been knocked out and is lying
00:05:34.640 defenseless on the ground.
00:05:36.360 There is no election to get the vote out for, and even trans issues no longer generate the
00:05:40.980 same clicks.
00:05:42.240 Under this downward pressure and unable to create content that actually informs, moves
00:05:46.500 and inspires, the only way out is to crank up the crazy.
00:05:50.420 Over the last few months at Trigonometry, we've released episodes with historians, world leaders
00:05:55.240 and major media personalities.
00:05:56.780 As best we could, we've avoided the pitfalls of both legacy and new media.
00:06:02.140 On the one hand, we do not harangue our guests to impress fellow journalists, even controversial
00:06:06.780 politicians like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
00:06:10.320 On the other, we respectfully challenge them, whether they're on the right like Ann Coulter
00:06:14.380 or the left like Deborah Francis White.
00:06:16.640 This is why our growth is so satisfying.
00:06:19.180 We are proving that going tonto is not actually the only way out.
00:06:22.840 My point is, the power to shape the media landscape is not actually in the hands of the New York
00:06:27.940 Times, Jeff Bezos, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson or Constantin Kishin.
00:06:32.060 It's in yours.
00:06:33.340 The end of gatekeeping means that, for better or worse, you are now your own gatekeeper.
00:06:38.380 What you reward with your clicks is what you create more of in the world.
00:06:41.680 That is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.
00:06:45.320 If you enjoy these videos, you should know that they're available in my sub stack at
00:06:49.300 ConstantinKishin.com, days, weeks, sometimes months ahead of time.
00:06:54.120 Head on over to ConstantinKishin.com and subscribe today.
00:06:58.060 The news doesn't just tell you what's happening.
00:07:00.660 It so often tells you what to think is happening.
00:07:03.400 And these days, the biggest red flag isn't what's said.
00:07:06.400 It's what gets left out.
00:07:07.900 That's why I use Ground News.
00:07:09.740 It's the only site and app that compares coverage from across the political spectrum
00:07:14.120 and highlights which stories are being ignored entirely.
00:07:17.920 See for yourself at ground.news slash trigonometry.
00:07:21.180 Their blind spot feed is one of my favorite features.
00:07:24.000 It surfaces around 20 stories a day that are being overlooked by either the left or the right.
00:07:28.960 It's a simple but powerful way to track media bias in real time.
00:07:32.940 Like this, NIH scientists recently published a declaration
00:07:36.660 criticizing Trump's cuts to public health research.
00:07:39.740 That's a major move.
00:07:41.180 And yet, only 2% of the coverage came from right-leaning outlets.
00:07:45.840 A new study found that 2024 saw the most armed conflicts globally since 1946.
00:07:51.560 A staggering statistics.
00:07:53.240 But you would have missed it if you'd only read left-wing news sources.
00:07:56.220 Ground News gives you the full picture.
00:07:58.200 Headlines, ownership, bias ratings, and context.
00:08:01.020 So you can actually understand what's going on, not just react to what you're told.
00:08:05.260 Head to ground.news slash trigonometry for 40% off their unlimited advantage plan.
00:08:11.680 The same one we use.
00:08:13.040 And start thinking for yourself.
00:08:31.020 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything.
00:08:34.320 Like packing a spare stick.
00:08:36.080 I like to be prepared.
00:08:37.680 That's why I remember 988 Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline.
00:08:41.580 It's good to know, just in case.
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00:08:47.980 Anytime.
00:08:48.340 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government of Canada.