Joel Pollak
speaker
2,500 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 8 Sep
Joel Pollak’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Okay.
It's fantastic.
Uh a good example of an enormous persuasion mistake happened during the Republican primary debate on September 16th, 2015, in Simi Valley, California.
Candidate Carly Fiorina tried to cut through the crowded field by graphically describing an alleged video of an abortion that went wrong.
I'm intentionally not describing it here, you'll see why.
When I watched Fiorina's bold move to capture the nation's attention on a key topic for the Republican base, I publicly predicted that she had self-imolated.
I called it the worst persuasion move you are likely to see in any realm.
CNN's poll put Fiorina at 15% during the week of the debate.
As I predicted, she dropped to four percent one month later and was soon out of the race.
If you are not a student of persuasion, you might think Fiorina's strategy was bold and clever.
It guaranteed free attention from both the mainstream media and social media, and it positioned her as the strongest voice on a key election topic.
It was unforgettable, and it matched the emotions of the Republican base.
All of that sounds good.
But here's what she got wrong, and this is more wrong than anything you are likely to see in any realm of life, much less politics.
Fiorina paired her brand with a dead baby.
I knew voters wouldn't want to think about Fiorina's horrible story of a dead baby for one second longer than they needed to.
I doubt anyone consciously interpreted the situation as I describe it.
But humans don't make political decisions for rational reasons anyway.
The persuasion filter says Fiorina lost support because she polluted her brand beyond redemption by associating it with the most horrible image one could ever imagine on live television.
So she went fifteen percent, but Scott's like
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