The Most Important Podcast of Our Lifetime!
If you’ve ever voted in an election, watched the Bachelor, or worried about the end of days, then you’ve probably fallen for a specific rhetorical trick. In this episode, we explore the history of the phrase “the most important election of our lifetime,” and why the human brain is so UNIQUELY, INSANELY, OUTRAGEOUSLY (!!!) susceptible to hyperbole.
EPISODE NOTES
• Slate.com post based on this episode: The history of the phrase “most important election of our lifetime”
• Washington Post montage of “most important election” statements
• Chuck Norris’s anti-Obama 2012 video
• How Human Beings Almost Vanished from Earth in 70,000 BC
• ABC report from 2012 about the Mayan calendar doomsday fears
• Jeff Greenfield’s “least important election” article in Politico
• Robert Cloninger’s Anthropedia Foundation
• Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager
• Robert Thompson, Syracuse University pop culture professor
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