Podcasting “I Quit”

My essay on smoking cessation, doubt, denial, and the worst corporations on Earth.

This week on my podcast, I read “I Quit,” a column I wrote for @medium that connects the dots between smoking cessation, tobacco denial, climate inaction, and anti-maskers.

https://doctorow.medium.com/i-quit-9ae7b6010c99

Specifically, it’s about how the cancer denial playbook has been iterated and sharpened by successive generation of corporate murderers and their enablers in the PR and Paltrow-Industrial Complex.

The goal of science deniers isn’t necessarily to convince you that covid isn’t real, or that vaccines are bad for you, or that privacy is overrated, or that there isn’t a climate emergency — their goal is to convince you that these things just can’t be known for sure.

It’s a form of weaponized skepticism and it has deep roots, going all the way back (at least) to Darrell Huff’s famous HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS a book I held in high esteem…

Until I read Tim Harford’s brilliant THE DATA DETECTIVE and learned that Huff was a paid shill for Big Tobacco and his major motive wasn’t to debunk bad stats, it was to obscure the link between tobacco use and cancer.