2444: Opportunity Cost and Leverage in Real Estate Investing & The Science of Subliminal Persuasion

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com. We got our last couple in the quad rented, and we got the last one of a duplex rented. And so we, we have full occupancy, and it sure feels good to get the full check every single month. It's just a great feeling. And so hopefully in December, we're going to take over two more And actually before then, take over some from Alabama, actually all, and then Memphis as well.

Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self-made multimillionaire who's actually been been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer, and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Good day, Empowered Investors, and welcome to episode 2444. You know, I talk a lot about that book, The Behavior Gap. You know, that little book with the cool sketches about investing and about how to think about money and all of this kind of stuff. And one chart from it, uh, one sketch from it, I should say, talks about decisions. And we are all different when it comes to decisions. Now, I don't know if you believe in astrology, and I don't really believe in astrology. Well, not too much, but it does appear to be kind of eerily accurate sometimes. It is the oldest personality assessment in the world, right? And I am a Libra, and Libras have one fault. Yes, only one, only one, and that is We tend to be indecisive. Now, I've overcome this over the years. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure. So it changes. That's a joke, by the way. But yeah, you know, I find with myself, and I'd love some feedback if you're watching on video, please comment below on this and tell me what you're like and tell me, hey baby, what's your sign? Like they used to say in the '70s, right? But do you feel better doing research and marinating in the thinking about it, in the discussion, in the research, in the should I do this, should I do that, that conversation going on in your mind? Do you feel better with that, or do you feel better just making a decision and Moving on. And I gotta tell you, when I was younger, I used to just marinate way too much, and that was a mistake. And as I've gotten older, I think I have become far more decisive, and that has been hugely beneficial to my life and my success. And I would encourage you to think about that as well, because what this little chart shows is the cognitive load that we have when we are doing more research versus the cognitive benefit of just making a decision and getting it over with. And you know what? A lot of times the biggest cost is the opportunity cost of not doing something. And I wanna take that into the realm for just a moment of something I haven't talked about enough on the show, and that is Home equity investment. So you all probably know that I have a little startup company called Equity Liberation. We are offering HEI, or home equity investment, and many of you have looked at it. You've gone to equityliberation.com, you've checked out the offerings, uh, maybe you've looked at some of the other companies in this very small cottage industry space, but it is blowing up fast and you're going to hear a lot more about it. If you're not familiar with HEI or also called HEA, Home Equity Agreement, or Home Equity Investment. If you're not familiar with that, you're going to be because you'll hear a lot about it over the coming years. I, I promise you, it's, it's becoming a very big thing. And basically it offers you the opportunity to pull equity out of a property with no payments to essentially take on an equity partner in a way. And, you know, they own part of the equity. You have to give up part of the equity, but you have no payments., and the overall cost of this varies because it depends how the property performs in the future. And as Yogi Berra used to say, the future ain't what it used to be. Yogi Berra had all these great sayings, you know. Anyway, equity liberation or home equity investment offers you a giant opportunity, and here's why. You might look and think, okay, well, the cost of this. If the property doesn't appreciate or doesn't appreciate very much or depreciates, God forbid, the cost of this will be fairly low. But if it appreciates and I give up an equity chunk, then the cost could be kind of high. Maybe it'll be 19%. And I could borrow money. I could get a home equity line of credit or just refinance and borrow money. At, I don't know, just call it 6.5%, 7%, right? Okay, I mean, it depends how you structure it and if you do a second or a first and what the blended rate is, and it's complicated. Okay, but we can help you analyze that. Our investment counselors can help you with that. But here's the thing: what you tend not to think of is the opportunity cost of using that money with— if you do an HEI with no payments, literally no debt increase, right— of using that money to buy more properties. The same is true on 1031 exchanges. So in a 1031 exchange, people massively underestimate how income property is the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. And one of the ways it's the most historically proven asset class and the most tax-favored asset class in America is the 1031 exchange. That is not on any pro forma that we do, and it's not on any pro forma really that I've ever seen, because it's really hard to calculate. You know, if you buy a property today and then you have a gain on it, and then you sell it in 7 years, for example, and you do a 1031 exchange and trade it for a new property Here's the thing. If you bought stocks, if you bought cryptocurrency or precious metals or a business, you would just have to pay the tax. But with income property, you can trade it all your life and pay zero tax. 1031 tax-deferred exchange. Pretty darn phenomenal opportunity. But people kind of think, okay, well, I had a $50,000 gain. That I get to defer with the 1031 tax-deferred exchange, you know, so what, $50,000, that ain't that big a deal. So I pay tax on $50,000. Not true. That's not the way to think of it. The $50,000 can buy you— I don't know, take the number— $250,000 worth of property. And that whole $250,000, because you're financing the property, unlike stocks, cryptocurrency, precious metals, or a business, which you usually don't finance, usually just pay all cash, right? You roll that into making yourself much bigger. That's what leverage does for us. It allows us probably in most cases, a 5-to-1 increase in our size. So if you're 6 feet tall, you become 30 feet tall. Think of the advantage, right? Well, it might be hard to find clothes, but if you're 30 feet tall, you can do some pretty powerful things, right? You're a giant man. That's what leverage does. It allows you to be bigger than you really are. It's such a powerful tool. So that 1031 exchange, it's not about the amount that you don't pay taxes on. It's about the amount It buys you in terms of increasing your property portfolio in the future. And that math is a little hard to calculate. And the same with home equity investment. If you can tap money and get it out of a property today where you've got a bunch of equity tied up and you can do that with no payments at all and reinvest that and just go to JasonHartman.com/properties and click around the pro formas. On there, add them to your own portfolio with a free Property Tracker account, propertytracker.com. Get yourself a free account and learn how to do the math. Learn the numbers of income property, the most historically proven asset class in the world, and you can arbitrage the difference between the cost of the HEI and the return on investment in the new property. And then you take that new property or properties that you buy with the HEI proceeds. You get cash now with no payments, no increase in debt, doesn't affect your debt-to-income ratio or anything. And then you later do a 1031 tax-deferred exchange on— maybe you bought 2 properties with HEI proceeds. Do you see how the multiplier effect is happening? Do you see how you're getting so much bigger so much faster? And growing your wealth so, so quickly in this era where we have a massive housing shortage and where we are probably coming into an era of lower rates. Now, I know we've all been thinking that for quite a while, and yeah, rates are a little bit lower, but again, it's nothing to write home about, right? We need rates to see the market really just fly again. We need them sub-6%. I think we're going to see that. Okay, our new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, has a new way of looking at inflation. He spoke to that in his very first speech, and his new way of looking at inflation says inflation is lower than the current measures being used. Now, why does that matter? Well, it matters big time, because if the Fed chair allows the Fed to think inflation is lower Now, it doesn't matter what it really is. That's a different discussion. We can talk about inflation-induced debt destruction and all of that great stuff. But let's just talk about what the Fed is allowing themselves to think and believe. If they believe inflation is lower, then they have cover to soften up on rates. And remember, it's not just about rates directly. Remember, the Fed doesn't control the mortgage rate. They control, you know, the front end of the curve, right? But mortgage rates react to that, certainly. And let me just show you a chart on mortgage spreads because I think this is really important. I showed this yesterday, or last night I should say, at our monthly Empowered Investor Pro Zoom meeting. And it's really important to look at this. I don't talk about spreads enough and I should talk about them more. For those who don't know, what is the spread? The spread could be any spread, right? You could talk about the difference between anything. It's like an arbitrage, you know, the differences in things. But arbitrage isn't just knowing about the differences. They're about exploiting the differences. And that's why I talk about my strategy, the Double Inflation Arbitrage. So incredibly powerful. But back to mortgage spreads. And if you're watching on video, you see this on the screen. Mortgage spreads in 2024 were pretty bad. Okay, that's the difference between the 10-year Treasury and the 30-year mortgage. That spread was pretty high. Now, it means many things, and lots of analysts will tell you about what the mortgage spread is telling us. Okay, but I think the most important thing it tells us is what the bond market thinks about the future of interest rates. And what it thinks about the supply of money. Remember, there's not just the cost of money, there is the supply of money. And with that Fed rule change allowing the banks to buy more Treasuries, and with the Genius Act, which was massive, massive genius— I mean, literally, that was maybe the most brilliant thing the U.S. has done since Bretton Woods. It's just incredible. Really, really incredible. But what it does is increase demand for U.S. Treasuries, thereby solving the debt problem and solving, or at least putting a big dent in, both, both the debt problem, the national, you know, the $40 trillion almost that we owe, right? And it also creates a whole bunch of new buyers for our Treasuries. And what does that mean? That means They don't have to pay such high yields to get investors because they've got these built-in buyers, 8 billion of them potentially around the world, that want to buy stablecoins that have to be backed. Okay, so super powerful. But anyway, let's get back to the, the spread. And if you're watching on video, you see this chart I've got up here. You see that in 2024, the spreads were the highest between the 10-year and the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, the 10-year Treasury, 30-year mortgage. And then In 2025, they got better. The spread got lower. Okay, it got to about 2.25% to about 2% by the end of the year. And right now it's even lower, and it was even lower before the Iran war. And so with these spreads being lower, that implicates that there is a greater supply of money in the market and investors think rates are going to be lower in the future. And this is extremely positive for all of us as real estate investors. So we'll see what happens, but that's my outlook. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Does someone else you know need to hear this? Forward this podcast episode or this YouTube video to anyone else who needs to hear it, who doesn't get it, because The biggest cost in life almost always is opportunity cost. It's the dogs that don't bark. It's not doing something. It's the profound impact of things that didn't happen in our lives or things that were unseen. You can't hear the dogs that don't bark. This is the opportunity almost everybody is paying the most for in their life. It's the opportunity cost because you didn't take an action. Because you didn't make a decision. What would have happened that would have benefited you and your family that didn't happen? The dog that didn't bark. Super important. That's opportunity cost right there. And then the other component of that is my old saying, compared to what? Look, income property certainly isn't perfect. Nothing is perfect. Life is not perfect. It's just better than everything else. Okay? That's what we're offering. So book an appointment with one of our investment counselors, have them help you. This is totally free. You know, have them do a portfolio makeover for you. Have them do a portfolio review for you. Have them take a look at what you've got and what you could have. And you'll just be amazed at how much better you can do with a well-structured income property portfolio. And for those of you who are already clients of ours, and already engaged with us. Many of you are Empowered Investor Pro members and you're meeting every month. Many of you come to our monthly masterclasses, the free second Wednesday of the month masterclasses, which by the way is today. But by the time you hear this recording, it will have already happened. So join us next month for the masterclass. I get really concerned because I see a lot of you. I talk to you, I hear your feedback, I hear what you say, I see your emails. I hear secondhand conversations when you have them with our investment counselors about what you're doing or not doing, and I'm telling you, you are leaving money on the table. Some of you are just making grave mistakes. Don't let that happen. If you want to meet with me directly, book a one-on-one coaching session with me, and it's, it's kind of expensive, okay? But compared to what? I mean, if you spend you know, $700, $800 to have a coaching session with me, and I prevent you from making a mistake that in the near term cost you maybe $50,000 or $100,000, and it depends how— it might be millions of dollars depending on how big your portfolio is, and in the longer term saves you or makes you hundreds of thousands of dollars or maybe millions or tens of millions of dollars. I mean, it's a drop in the bucket. It's a nothing burger. So get engaged. So how do you do that? Let me just review. Free meeting with our investment counselors. Free monthly masterclasses. Free property tracker software account. Paid Empowered Investor Pro membership for our smaller group meetings monthly and our community. Cheaper than a health club. Okay. And probably the best thing you could do for your health. Okay. Because when you take care of the money, you can take care of a lot of other things.

All right.

And maybe an individual coaching session with me. So you can do any of these things. So that's that. Jasonhartman.com. I've given out all our other websites, propertytracker.com, whatever. Look in the notes below and you'll see some links for you, some handy links. All right. Let's get to our guest. I wanted to represent this. This ran a while back. On my Holistic Survival Show, protecting the people, places, and profits you care about in uncertain times. I launched that show during the Great Recession, and it's kind of a prepper survivalist type show. That's the vibe of it. After interviewing about 250 preppers and survivalists, I realized that these people kind of have a sickness, you know, they're so busy preparing for the end of the world that they may never live in the first place, right? You know, but that's another discussion. I've mentioned it before, but this show I wanted to replay here today because you probably haven't heard it, and it's just about how the media is just programming us. So I think the guest has some really interesting insights. So let's go to that right now.

It's my pleasure to welcome Jeff Warwick to the show. He is the filmmaker behind Programming the Nation, which is about the history of subliminal messaging in America. And you know, I remember in high school we were talking in class one day about a book, and on the COVID of the book— and I'm sure we're going to cover that in this interview with Jeff— was a picture of an alcoholic drink. I think maybe it was vodka, I'm not sure. And the— in the ice cubes you saw the letters S-E-X, and I'm sure all of you listening have probably seen this very famous example of subliminal messaging. But after watching the film just a few days ago myself, I learned that there's a lot more to subliminal messaging than just putting it in print ads or flicking the word Coke or popcorn on the movie screen real fast. So we're going to learn about that today with Jeff, and I think you'll find this interview to be very interesting. Jeff, welcome. How are you?

Good, thanks. Thanks for having me, Jason. I appreciate it.

My pleasure. So you are in the Southern California area because you, you are premiering in Los Angeles right about now for the film, and then you've also, I believe, done New York, and San Francisco's next. Is that how it's going?

Yes, exactly. New York premiered in August last month, and LA is at the Lemley Sunset 5 in West Hollywood, so we're real excited about that, followed by San Francisco So fantastic.

Well, tell us, what, what is subliminal? Just maybe let's start with kind of the basics. What is subliminal messaging or subliminal advertising?

Well, I think for most people, the term subliminal, most people think of like what you just described, the sex in the ice cubes, you know, phalluses hidden in tobacco and alcohol ads and things like that, as well as the blipping of popcorn or Coke on theater screens. Our film takes kind of a much wider, more broad approach to explore kind of the history of this in a wide variety of, of areas. I mean, it covers the alleged history of some of these things that we just discussed, and there's some validity to it and a lot of examples of that. But it goes much further, exploring things like subliminals in motion pictures, for example, and rock music. Advertising is covered very, very thoroughly by a lot of experts, and as well as politics, government, political propaganda that uses subliminal techniques. And kind of advanced weapons technologies. So, yeah, we cover a wide lot of territory.

Yeah, and when you talk about advanced weapons, we recently had Nick Bagic on the show, and I know he was in, in your film as well. So we talked about HAARP and all that stuff, so the listeners heard about that. But tell us more. I mean, first of all, you probably believe this is being used on the population. There are some who don't, some who think this is just a coincidence coincidence. It's kind of like in the film, I know you covered the part about playing the music backwards and so forth.

Right.

A lot of people think, "Oh, that's just, come on, it's just a big coincidence." What are your thoughts? I mean, can we know definitively if these images and so forth are really being placed in advertising and this is really happening, or is it really subject to debate?

Well, I think it is very debatable, and I mean, let me start by saying I went into this as a skeptic. Skeptic myself. I actually thought it would be kind of fun to debunk the whole subliminal messaging theory. And when I started interviewing some of our experts, I found that my own predisposed notions were kind of flipped upside down and started doing a complete 180 on my philosophy and my belief on this stuff. Clearly there's plenty of examples that it's being used. I don't think that's even a doubt in my mind at all anymore. How it gets inserted, why it's inserted, those are all questions that I still have that I did not walk away with from in the production of a documentary. I mean, for example, in Disney films, there's a lot of examples of this. Why is it put there? I mean, I don't think Walt Disney sent a commanding order down to his graphic designers and his artists to insert this stuff. Maybe it's disgruntled artists that are doing it, but it's clearly there.

Maybe it's like a computer hacker who's just playing a joke or something like that.

Absolutely. I mean, there could be a variety of reasons. But I think when it comes to, and in music, I mean, there's clear examples examples of it being used, as well as in advertising, and in government and politics, and by our military. So it's clearly being used. I found more than enough evidence and give plenty of examples of ways that it's being used in all these areas. The question is really still for me, what effect does this have on people? And so that's kind of what we try to explore in the film.

Yeah, well, before you go to what effect it has on people, which we definitely want to talk about that, Give us some examples of, maybe some more specific examples, I gave some general ones and so did you, of where it's being used or where you think it's most likely true and maybe less subject to debate whether it's there or not.

Well, one of the most eye-opening sections for me in the film and information that I learned was the fact that it was at one point being used in department stores as an anti-theft technique, using it as what was called a black box. I mean, there was a Time magazine article that was written in 1979 about an inventor by the name of Hal C. Becker who invented this black box that basically uses subliminal messaging in department stores, whispered messages below the threshold of consciousness saying things like, "I am honest. I do not steal," repetitively over and over again while people are shopping. And the article actually goes on to explain how it significantly reduced shoplifting rates in a number of department stores that it was being tested in. Since then, it's kind of gone underground. I did attempt to try to go into a few stores to see if it's being used. There are some humorous moments in the film with me trying to explore that, but I could not get any answers on it. That's just one area that people are totally unaware of. If you think about it, a lot of people might be, "Well, big deal." I'll walk into a store and they're whispering these messages.

That's a good thing that people aren't stealing, right? Or shoplifting.

It's a good thing, but at the same time, I mean, let's face it, the effects of subliminal messaging are really vast. It really varies, I think, from person to person and what type of effect it has. It can be all over the map. I mean, our minds are very unexplored areas, just like the universe in a lot of ways. You know, how much do we know about that? Our minds are kind of very very similar to that. I like making that comparison because people kind of get it. But I think that if you are walking into a department store and they are using messages without your knowledge, there should be some kind of disclaimer on the window that at least lets you know hey, they are using these kind of techniques. And if you think about what other messages could they be sending us, I mean they could just as easily insert messages like buy more, shop more, there is an excellent sale going on on aisle 11. I mean, those are things that I would be concerned about with that kind of technology.

The government using it, I mean, that's, that's interesting. What is the government doing?

Well, I think with government propaganda in general, a lot of it is kind of happens at a subconscious level, but we found some really clear examples of subliminal messaging in, in some ads that were run for in the 2000 election. For example, there was an ad by the Republican National Committee for George W. Bush his campaign which blipped the words "rats." It was actually using the end of the word "bureaucrats," but it was discussing the difference in philosophies between the healthcare plans that the Democrats and the Republicans had. And it clearly was on screen for about, I don't know, 1/30th of a second. And it was outrage when people saw this. I mean, it actually ran for about 1.5 seconds news cycles, and Bush actually had to step forward and defend himself on this, on these claims.

And then he couldn't say the word subliminal properly when he tried to.

So we—

which actually is an excellent way of, you know, no plausibility, or, or how could he have had any, uh, been involved if he can't even pronounce the word, right?

Yeah, he seemed too dumb to understand the concept, you know. So yeah, that was kind of funny. It really was. So maybe this stuff is being used. What was interesting that I learned from the film is about the history of it, when I guess the first example, if I recall correctly, was the movie theater example in the '50s, right? And a lot of people have heard about this experiment, the Vicary experiment. Yeah, okay. And a lot of people have heard about this at one time or another, but just in case they haven't, or to refresh their memory, why don't you tell them what happened?

Well, in 1957, a marketing researcher by the name of James Vickery claimed to have done this elaborate experiment where he brought people to— while they were watching the movie Picnic with Kim Novak at a New Jersey movie theater, he claimed to have inserted the words, "Hungry, eat popcorn," and "Drink Coca-Cola," during the movie at something like 1/3,000th of a second using a device known as what's called a to kistoscope, so it's completely separate from the projector that they're using to display the movie. And he claimed that he increased the consumption of these products enormously. So this really outraged people. I mean, at the time, I mean, it caused a huge fuss. The government started looking into it. The public demanded to, you know, know to what extent it was being used, and so on and so forth. Well, 5 years later, Ashley Vickery admitted that he falsified a lot of the information in that experiment, and it's become questionable whether— to what extent it even took place at all. Now, there have been other experiments following that, and I mean, it is possible. I mean, a lot of these other experiments have shown that you can increase the consumption with innocuous words like "drink Coca-Cola" and "eat popcorn," but definitely not to the extent that he claimed, based on these newer experiments. So That's kind of one of the urban legends that we explore. I mean, there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there on the subject matter. So that's kind of why I thought this would be an interesting topic to explore in a film like media, because I mean, it's so visual and a lot of it's auditory. Perfect medium for kind of exploring this in depth and kind of clearing up some of these misconceptions of the technology.

Well, what was really interesting to me is what happened after the video. Vickrey experiment, where Congress started, I guess, worrying about the impact of this, and basically, I guess, they were thinking of passing laws against it, and then all of the big media organizations rushed in and said that they would self-regulate, right?

That's exactly what happened, and they actually created, I guess, the National Association of Broadcasters was created as a result of some of this.. And if you look at the NAB now, they are clearly one of the largest lobbyists to media groups, all the major conglomerates that own mass media. They're one of the biggest lobbyists to these groups. So, I mean, it seems to me like they're more working in conjunction with one another than they are self-regulating. But yeah, it's very fascinating how Congress did step in, and I mean, it's caused a a huge outrage. Well, you know, it kind of quelled down in the '60s, and in the '70s it resurfaced again with a book by an author by the name of Wilson Bryan Key, who we were actually lucky enough to get in our film. He's passed away since then, but yeah, Wilson Bryan Key's book Subliminal Seduction really kind of brought this subject back into the forefront of American public. So I think that, you know, that's, that's definitely something that we explored in the film, and the book is really fascinating for people who haven't read it. He has written a series of books on this subject matter. And then after the books in the '70s, it kind of died down again. So I think there's a— once again, there's a lot of misinformation out there that we hope to shed some light on with our documentary.

Well, going back to kind of the government concept of it, certainly there are many conspiracy theorists out there, but there are also conspiracy facts, actual conspiracies. I mean, all it takes is more than one person. That's the definition. 2 or more people, right, wanting to make something happen. I mean, the formation of the United States was a conspiracy. There are a lot of conspiracies out there. But is it possible that there are, there are subliminal messaging campaigns going on as part of a large global conspiracy to influence the population? I mean, you just look at how we are just bathed in this world of media nowadays, and it is so powerful. And you know, I've traveled all around the world and I've been to 64 countries, and I tell you, and this is not subliminal, I guess, but it's just amazing to me how, how the, the reach of American media— it is in every part of the globe. Young kids dress like the kids on MTV. It is mind-boggling, the power behind it. But what do you think about sort of the darker side of this, the possible conspiratorial side?

Well, I definitely think that there is a lot of possibilities that it's going on in much larger ways than any of us has any idea of. You know, we talk about conspiracy theories, and I get labeled that sometimes, and the film kind of has been mentioned as being in that category by certain people. But I think really in the same way that the film tries to expand on the notion of the term subliminal, We really need to, you know, as a society expand on what a conspiracy is. I mean, when you look at mass media like you were describing, I mean, and really there's only about 4 or 5 companies now that own these huge media conglomerates, and they're global. I mean, they're in every continent on the planet now, pretty much own everything, I mean, almost virtually everything that we see, hear, read in newspapers and magazines, radio stations. Uh, and all the television channels are owned by several companies. Now, that's a conspiracy in my opinion, uh, how we let it get to that point, and the FCC with deregulating all this allowed this to happen. Now, that's where the conspiracy's at.

Just to be clear there, what you're talking about is media consolidation, right?

Yeah, the consolidation of mass media. And so when you look at these 5 companies and they all work in in conjunction with one another, and they all share boards of directors. So yeah, I definitely think there's huge potential when you have such power amassed in such a small group of companies for a lot of things to be going on. And, uh, subliminal messaging is just one of them. But I mean, there's a lot of other examples of how mass media has affected us as a society. And you described a few just with the way people dress. I mean, it used to be that art imitated life, right? But I think it's really gone— it's done a 180 where now life much more imitates art than the other way around.

Well, and the reason for that, I would say, is because art now is so much more powerful but also so much more pervasive. It's just everywhere. I mean, when that saying came up, it was probably— art was a few things hanging on your wall or a performance you would see. But nowadays, it's— it's— we're just bathed in it. We're drenched in it. Really all the time, 24/7. So talk to us about some of the more evil kind of weaponized things. I just find it interesting, and I think it was Manuel Noriega, if I'm not mistaken. I believe he was in Panama. This was years ago at the time, and they were— they were— the U.S. military was trying to get him to come out, and they were playing country music that he didn't like through loudspeakers.

And well, the same thing happened in Waco, Texas during the David Koresh, uh, the Branch Davidian standoff back in, uh, what was it, '95, '93. But yeah, I mean, these are, you know, a lot of people don't realize, but there's secret, uh, they're not exactly secret, but there's other branches of our military within the United States Army that are called psychological operations units that actually their mission is to go in and influence people and ultimately change their behavior. And so, you know, obviously we just shared a couple examples— the Noriega thing where they used music. They did this in, like I said, in Waco with the Branch Davidians and the messages that they were sending to David Koresh. And a lot of them were, you know, whispered messages coming from different people and family members and things like that that they were not aware of consciously. That were being sent through these. And I have, you know, credible sources that have shared this information with me, so it's pretty— I mean, it's definitely much more pervasive, and it's happening on a much broader level than people would realize.

What other kinds of weaponry are we talking about here in terms of influencing populations and opponents and so forth?

Well, I mean, they use a lot of techniques, and the psychological operations is typically used against warring nations, right, by things like— well, they have C-130s, for example, which are these enormous airplanes that they fly over targeted areas that will, you know, from way up high, they can broadcast a message down to influence whatever audience that they're targeting. And they can also piggyback subliminal signals on the carrier and subliminally translate other information So, I mean, if you're talking about— we're speaking of Iraq or in the Middle East, how this is being applied, you have all the people that are on the battlefield or in a population that are, for example, listening to the music, mosque, and prayers that are going on on a station. So then you can have these messages broadcast to them that create fear and anxiety on a subconscious level. So that's one way that they do it. They also plant false stories and pay journalists to plant fake stories in their newspapers. And I mean, when you think about it, how we live in a globalized society today, it has a very severe blowback effect where you plant a story there and it gets quoted back here.

Yeah, so for example, as part of, I guess we'll call it a public relations campaign in Iraq or Afghanistan, Afghanistan, for example, or Libya. Everyone seems to forget that we're at war in Libya. And we're still in Gitmo, too, which was another big promise we heard would go away, right? But let's not go there. So plant a story in the news media over there, and with the idea that it will just simply blow back to the U.S. and other countries, rather than planting it over here, where it may be tougher to get it into the media and through credible sources. So that's interesting. They're like reverse engineering it, huh?

Exactly. And I mean, they do plant fake stories here as well. I mean, um, we explore that in our documentary as well with things like video news releases, or VNRs as they're called. I mean, this is nothing new. They've been using them since World War II, pretty much since the advent of television. Um, presidents, all the different branches of the government and administrations within the government use these basically what are PR campaigns. They are produced by public relations organizations. And then they are sent out in various ways to broadcasters all across the country, all over the world in fact. And a lot of these smaller stations, they are short on staff. They are short on funding. So to fill a news hour, they will grab some of these stories and they will insert them into the 6 o'clock news and they will present them as news stories because they look just like a reporter doing a segment on whatever it may be that they're doing. But in reality, what it is, is a PR campaign. You're really being propagandized through public relations media and planting of news stories like that all the time. And I think the Bush administration took this to levels that had never been seen before, and all on the tax fair dollars.

Well, how do they do that? What do they do?

Well, I mean, for example, they'll have the Food and Drug Administration, and they'll hire a PR, a PR company to produce this fake news story. It looks like a news story where they're talking about, um, something that has to do with the FDA's agenda on a particular product or, um, on a certain drug, for example, on their viewpoints with pharmaceutical companies. And then they'll send them out to these news stations, they'll pick them up They'll run them as news, and then people are sitting there watching this going, "Hmm, maybe pharmaceutical companies really are looking after our best interests." Is that different than any president or any administration?

I mean—

No, but I mean, the levels at which they were used far surpasses any other administration in the history of the usage of VNRs. So that's documented.

But, you know, a VNR is just really another form of a news release or a press release. Just done with video, so it's, it's more powerful because it's got audio and images and so forth. But people put fake news releases out there, mislead with things and so forth, and, and it's really just the same thing expanded to more media, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

No, absolutely. And it's not exactly— doesn't exactly fall in the traditional term of subliminal either. I wouldn't call that subliminal, but in the same way, I mean, it's just the way in which media operates at such a subconscious level, this definitely falls into that category, I think.

Right. And here's one that is maybe more on the border of subliminal and advertising, and you covered it in the film, which I thought was interesting because I'd never really seen it covered in a documentary before, and that's the concept of product placements in movies. And so, right, you know, this isn't subliminal per se by the definition of it's hidden. It's not hidden, but it definitely is not overt advertising, and you never know when it's advertising and when it's not. The movie when the guy picks up a can of Coke or drives a certain car or wears a certain watch or whatever. I mean, the product placement business has expanded quite a bit over the last few decades, right?

Oh my God, without a doubt. A lot of films rely on funding specifically from product placement to produce their films. So, yeah, I mean, now it just shows you how you have mass media and companies that, that produce all the media, including Hollywood and all the studios that are tied into that system, in conjunction with the other corporations to basically sell other products. I mean, it's— so I mean, when we think about conspiracies, you know, I think it's— we really need to expand our notion of those things because obviously this is a conspiracy as well.

Yeah, yeah, we sure do. We sure do. Well, what else would you like people to to know about subliminal advertising and this kind of influence it has on us?

Well, I think most of us have a tendency to think that we are uninfluenced by advertising. We think, "Oh yeah, those dummies over there, yeah, it's affecting them, but either maybe I mute the commercials when they come on or I don't pay attention to them." But studies have actually really shown that most of us do a lot of things, we think, have a lot of thoughts for reasons that we're totally unaware of. And, you know, the impact of this stuff definitely reaches all of us. The only question is really to what extent. I mean, you think about it, we only use— researchers have shown that we only use 5% of our brains. So what's the other 95% doing? I mean, it's all probably working on a subconscious level. And So to target that area of the mind with things like this is pretty insidious. It really is something that we all need to question, we all need to become more aware of. And really, I think that's the goal of the film, is to kind of create a heightened sense of alertness and raise that level of consciousness. Because when you do that, you know, it no longer really affects you on a subliminal level if, you know, if you're consciously aware of the techniques that they're using.

Well, Jeff, can people buy the DVD at the website?

It's not— hasn't been released officially yet, but we're getting really close to being able to where we're going to do that. So I'd say within the next month it definitely will be available for purchase on our website, which is programmingthenation.com. And I mean, aside from that, there's a whole host of other information on other screenings that may be coming to your area. We're planning a screening in Ashland is coming up, Ashland, Oregon, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and little one-night screenings all across the country. So definitely check out the site. There's a blog, there's other clips, there's a ton of information there, so.

Fantastic. Well, Jeff Warwick, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for enlightening us on the programming of the nation that is going on, and I urge everyone to go out and see the movie.

Thanks, Jason, I appreciate it.

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