Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Religion War, by Scott Adams (with Matt Lieb)

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Robert reads selections from Scott Adams's terrible novels to help unravel the great mystery: who is God, and how can we kill him?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I don't actually have a bit ready for this. Met Lee! How are we doing today, Matt? I'm doing great. I am right now hidden in my bedroom because my baby is on the other side of the house. And I don't want to wake her up with all of the loud noises that I intend to make. That is fair. Now, Matt, you are, if folks are not aware, if our listeners are to wear,

you are the host of a number of podcasts, including a soprano's podcast called Pod Yourself a Gun. That's right. And it's a wire podcast called Pod Yourself the Wire. Yes, which you can find on a feed called Pod Yourself a Gun. Yes. It's nice and confusing. If you see Tony Soprano's face in the logo, you know it's a show about the wire. That's very extremely clear.

Now Matt, both of those titles are obviously a reference to the intro music for the sopranos, which the refrain is something like, woke up this morning, got yourself a gun. That's right. Now guys, what are we doing today? Do we have another Sky Adams book? Oh yeah, not all that long ago. We did our deep dive into Sky Adams. We talked about the life of this man. And he's got a couple of books that he wrote that he considers to be. He thinks that his cartoons in time will be forgotten.

But generations from now his novels are what people will remember of him. He said this. He's got the record about this. Are these graphic novels of Dilbert that we're calling books or are these just words? No cartoons. Yeah, they're just words and they're real short. He says they're real short because he wanted something that a person could read in an afternoon, which is a fine goal for a book. Normally, I consider brevity to be an example of skill and craft. But in this

case, it just means he didn't tell a story. I love starting off a book with the idea of like, no, shorter, shorter, better, shorter, good, less words, more read fast. Yeah, I'm going to publish like a big 300 page book with a fancy title like the origin of mankind. And it's just going to have two words and it just fuck it on page one empty space the rest of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like a dick in the middle of it and you have to search for the dick and then you find it, you win. Yeah. And it's a whole book for like, yeah, you can, you can just like say you finished it in a day and have it out on your desk when people walk by and be like, finish this one. Who boy? Haven't busy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, me. I've just been reading all these books here. You have a whole fucking shell filled with them. People are opening them up and there's nothing in them,

except for that dick that they find. And then they feel like they're one. Yeah. You find the dick. You email it to us and you, you, you, you make a sacred pledge never to tell anyone that there's not an actual book in there. Exactly. Yeah. It's like Santa Claus. We all do it and we all benefit. So Matt, he wrote these books, the Religion War being the one that we're going to talk about today and they're terrible. And I went back and forth, should we do a book episode about this? Because another podcast, I really like quite a lot, House of Decline, H-A-U-S, has done, got over both these books with the lovely Rory Blank as the guest.

And there was one other podcast that did at least one of these books. So we're not, we're not breaking totally new ground here. And I got kind of like self-conscious about that. And then you know what I said, Matt. What did you say? I said who gives a fuck Dude, that's how I live. That's that's what I decided as someone who does TV rewatch podcasts of 20-year-old shows Exactly, you know done doesn't matter. Yeah people need the content. They want more This is this is all we all have a moral right and a moral duty to access Scott Adams his terrible books for free because they're available for free on the internet archive.

Don't ever spend money on these. We are not. No. No. And that's what we're going to do. I love it. That's great. You know, this is nice for me because it's not a Nazi.

Well, okay, let me take that back. I'm going to rewind that a little bit. It's not that it's not a Nazi. Well, okay, let me take that back. I'm gonna rewind that a little bit. It's not that it's not a Nazi. It's not a guy who was in the Nazi party in Germany in the 30s and 40s. And that's nice for me. Yeah, now Scott would have loved to be a Nazi. Oh, yeah.

Don't get me wrong. But tragically, I mean, he probably would have been like Fips, the cartoonist who did the illustrations for Dare Sturmer if he'd gotten the chance because modern Dilbert's not all that far off. Yeah, it's mostly just dog Bert looking around for some Laban's realm. Yeah, he would have used the Elgatan Nazi gold to build a swimming pool shape like Dobert's head instead of just using the money that he got from Dobert to make a swimming pool shape like Dobert's head. He has a swimming pool shape like Dobert

head. That's what he did. Matt, if you if you look that up, you might find something you don't want to find. So what I'm going to tell you is, you know, sometimes it's good to just have faith in things. These are like, this is like, you know, how the Holy Spirit, the Catholics don't want to tell you what it is, but you got to, you got to think it's really just a big deal. Yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's like, this is like the Holy Spirit. The Dilbert head swimming pool in Scott Adams' backyard is the Holy Spirit of making fun of Scott Adams. And you just have to accept it and you don't believe it. I believe

it's an article of faith that he has this Dilbert had shaped swimming pool. He does have a tower in the back of his house shaped like Dilbert said. Um, anyway. Now I should note here that the religion war is actually the second book in the series, but chronologically it happens before the second book. We're going to read them in order, which will be my first step towards correcting Scott Adams's numerous mistakes. Oh, my God. So you're telling me now I was assuming this was nonfiction, you know, okay.

Wait, is this, is this nonfiction or is this a novel? Well, Scott Scott actually has a lot to say about that. In his first book, he's like, you know, I don't know whether I should call this fiction or nonfiction because fiction, you know, like this is this is based on like characters and stories that didn't actually happen. But it's kind of nonfiction because it has an impact on the reader. And I was like, that's not the definition between fiction and not fiction. That's the reason. It's impacted a lot of people. And we did not have a war of the ring. I've checked.

I listen, if there had been, I would have been firmly on the side of Sauraman. He seems like he takes care of his workers. You know, he's got a menu. You've got that much down. That implies restaurants and I've true. They have menus. Yeah. And sometimes meat is back on the menu. Yeah.

Yeah, which also means that presumably there are vegan and vegetarian options. I love that. Yeah. That's important. Yeah. All right. So let's finally start the introduction to this terrible book that we're reading because I needed a week to not write a script about a Nazi. So the religion war, this is his little intro, the prologue.

The religion war is a different kind of book. It's written in traditional fiction form with a plot. Yes, a plot in parentheses, involving the smartest man in the world trying to stop a pending war between Christian and Muslim forces. The story takes you forward to a few decades to imagine where a current delusions about reality might lead us. And in the end, it poses some questions that I think you'll enjoy rolling around in your head and jabbering about with friends while sipping a beverage. It's not a...

I'm sorry. Are they trying to... Is he trying to sell the reader on the book they've already purchased? Yes, yes, he is. And he's trying to tell you... Oh, you're really gonna like this book. That was, I think, the opening to Blood Meridian? Yeah, yeah, that's Kormac McCarthy was like, boy, I hope you enjoy the story of the judge, a psychopathic, dimmi-er-age character, fucking ranting about how

he wants to murder birds. Yeah. That's great. Good. Yeah. Have a good time. Roll some questions about this around in your mouth with your friends while sipping a tasty beverage. Yes. Get your favorite treat, sit down and start reading this piece of shit, and then ask your friends, hey, you read that fucking thing. That'll be fun. It does tell you the difference between, you know, Kormac McCarthy is like the platonic ideal of like a real author. And then Scott Adams, the Scott Adams. And like, Scott's like, I hope you've enjoyed my book. Please sip it. Well, like, discuss it with your friends. They'll sip a tea. And Kormac McCarthy is like, if you

were to walk up to him on the street when he was alive and say, I'm interested in reading your book, his response would have been to pull a handgun. Like, yeah, that's, that's like a real artist. Yeah. Here's the prologue. In the year 2007, a brilliant and charismatic leader named Al Z began his rise to power in the Palestinian territories. He was the architect of the 20 year plan for eliminating Israel. Now, let me tell you what this plan is, Matt, this 20 year plan for eliminating Israel is that we all kind of like calmly actually, you know what I can scroll down to the chapter where he talks this all out Because this is low key. So a couple of things you should note. You know how the Islam includes both Sunni and Shia, right? You know like there's different kind of like, you know how there's Catholics and Protestants and Christianity. Yeah

Scott doesn't know that So everyone's like Iran, you know, how there's Catholics and Protestants and Christianity. Yeah. Scott doesn't know that. So everyone's like Iran, you know, Palestine, it's all the Sirac. They're all the same. They're all in there together with like the Turks. And they're in the basics of this is that like, yeah, he destroys Israel and kills all of the Jews and then builds a caliphate and they launch like a low-key terrorist war with all of the Christian states. And so this Christian alliance builds up using NATO as a background and they have this like constant low-key war with the Muslims, where the Muslims do terrorist attacks, but they're special terrorist attacks. They're real careful not to get too big like 9-11s that they have to respond. And then the Christians sail around gigantic aircraft carriers, kind of like occasionally killing people.

It's kind of unclear what their role in the war is. And there's a number of things that get glossed over in this, including the Christian forces are made up of NATO. And the second largest army in NATO is a Muslim army in the real world. Scott didn't Google that. He actually learns just the other day that Turkey is a country. I love this. I love the mini 9-11s thing.

Yeah. It's like, we don't want to get it too, but you know, it's, it reminds me of the famous, you know, question, would you rather be killed by a horse size 9-11 or a thousand duckling size 9-11s? And I think, I think the duckling size ones is the way to go. Yeah, it's interesting. There's so much that's going on there, including like Scott's talking about how this is, you know, his, his presumption of how things will continue with like the madness of the present era. And he's writing this kind of in the, not that long after the invasion of Iraq and the post 9, 11 era.

Yeah. I assume this must have come out like, you know, 2004 or something, because he's like, this takes place in the year 2007. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, you know, that's when that's when the destruction of Israel starts, you know, y'all. Um, so I, I, there's a degree to which I understand why that's the focus.

Uh, but it's also very much like, you know, if you pay attention to America, the idea that like there could be this giant caliphate that's constantly doing low-level Terrorist attacks against us and we wouldn't lose our minds. Yeah, they don't have to kill a lot of people They don't have to kill anyone. It has to be all that all we need is like a tick-tock to go viral Making people drink the Muslims of pun-poison the water and like 40% of the country will be ready to do a genocide Yes, yes Poison the water and like 40% of the country will be ready to do a genocide. Yes, yes. I love in his America, we show restraint.

Yeah. He really does. There's this mix of like zero faith and way too much faith in the country. That's that's utterly fascinating. Yeah. So chapter one is old man. So okay, yeah, you get this, you get this guy, Alzy, and he, he, he kills all of the Jews by basically convincing Israel to give Palestinians civil rights.

And they vote themselves into power and then they commit murder. The oldest trick in the book. Yeah. Yeah. Getting legal equality and really degenerate. Yeah. Step one, to white genocide is always a wiping after Jews. That's cool. Yeah, it's good stuff. Historically, always been the case. This architect of the 20 year genocide plan then makes a big ol' caliphate and everybody's happy and he starts this low level war. And then on the other side, on the NATO Christian side,

but let's pretend Turkey's not a country. We have general Horatio Cruz, who's the guy running the Christian alliance. And now we're in 2040 and the war is kind of hitting a fever pitch. So the first proper chapter is Old Man. And I think this is going to introduce the avatar who will meet again in the second book we're going to read in this series. He's the smartest man in the world, right? Yeah.

And he's so good at thinking through things that he's basically a wizard, but he doesn't have spells. He just is smart enough that he can he can confound and flumex people. I love I love being a fiction writer. It was just like, all right, it's gonna be a story about a real smart guy. Real, real smart. Yeah, his superpower, big brain smarts. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of versions of this.

And like better artists than Scott do it too. And every time a look at TV show, where the premise of the TV show is the main characters like the best author around or the best musician. And anytime it's time, we just got this with like, at least the weekend is a pop star on this terrible the idol show, but like still it was a little. I'm thinking back like I'm still so surprised you watched the entire.

I heard it was tear. I heard it was a really bad time. It's the worst show I've ever seen in like a real long time. It's the weekend act. It was so in like a very long time. It's the worst show I've ever seen. It's pretty bad. It was so hard. He's not a good actor, but none of it worked well. You watched it. I enjoyed it every minute of it.

Oh yeah, yeah. I watched it and I was just really impressed with how they managed to make being horny sound lame. they've managed to make being horny sound blame. Like it was, it was like, you know what it felt like to me is that Sam Levinson grew up only watching PorinHub premium. You know?

And so he doesn't know about X videos. So the things that he thinks are hot are like very glossy, very shiny. And I was like, no, this guy doesn't, he doesn't get hot is, he just thinks this is hot. It's like it was written by a dude who like was raised like homeschooled as a kid like raised in a strict Christian household. Yeah. But like from the beginning was a little bit of a bad boy and found out had to get around the internet blockers. So we had access to like, to like one partially censored porn website,

but things he's really, he's like really worldly about, he's like, look guys, and then he's like sitting at a table with like a bunch of Hollywood people. All right, so picture this, he locks in the room and he's skirt up above her knee. You can see, you can see all the knee folds on this bitch. Huh, dozens of knee folds.

It's folding like crazy around that knee. Yeah, she's sweaty always, you know. She's a shiny, sweaty, hot lady. What's sad is they're like, he was not always supposed to be on the project and the original project sounded really great. I was supposed to be really great. Instead we got fucking well, there was depth smoking cigarettes in the weekend being

unworthy. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. I will say. that is relevant about the Weeknd's Terrible TV show. And this terrible book is that they both feature someone who's supposed to be the best at something. And then they try to show it. And it's like, so at the end of the idol, like this character who's this like sleazy, cult leader type, we see him like put on a show to convince these execs to like, fund a tour.

And it's supposed to be like, wow, this is the hottest, coolest music thing ever. All these guys. And it's just like be like, well, this is the hottest, coolest music thing ever. All these guys. And it's just like a bunch of like drug-addled weirdos, gyrating around the room that's like dark and the music's kind of off. And it's like, I don't want to see this. Like, I've been to a lot of awkward drug-dupped parties where people gyrate weirdly in a dark room.

And this is not a good example of the genre. You're a music executive. The idea you would sit around and watch the whole performance is the most insane thing I've ever seen. It was a hybrid of what Robert just said, which is like a weird party with people on drugs gyrating. And also like a middle schoolers performing arts camp recital. It was, and then they were like,

it was sad. Let's put this in a stadium. That's sad. I'm with the show. Also, the woman is the villain all on, ha ha ha. And the show, yeah, yeah, women dance. So like, boop boop, done. And I mean, it's one of those things.

She can have all sorts of stupid shit in your plot. But if you're telling us this person is the best at something and then you have them do it on screen and it sucks ass. Right. It's the same thing with Scott. If you're telling us this guy is a super genius and then we actually see him try to be a genius and we're like, oh, you're just a guy

who's roughly as smart as Scott Adams. And that's not impressive. And no way is that impressive. He's smartest man on earth. He is a cartoonist. He writes cartoons about guy in the office. It's called a Bill Burt. It's like Bill Burt.

Oh man, that's great. I love it. Fun stuff. This has not been a long advertisement for the idol, but it is time for an ad break. You know what the weekend will? Nope, I don't want to say anything bad about the weekend. I feel bad enough for him. Watch listen to some ads Forget that he had a TV show forget that rat tail that for some reason

for some reason. For the rest. He doesn't have a rest. Damn, for the rest. He doesn't have. I love it. He's like somehow worse than Tommy Wazoo, and I wish that AI could replace him with Tommy Wazoo. Yeah.

When they come to take what's yours. You're ready? Let's go. The only option. You're going to hate this next part. Is to fight. René. René, what would be?

From Director X. We take back what's R and give what we steal to our people. All right, let's see what you got. A classic new tool. Three were unstoppable. A legend, newborn. You wanted me? Where am I?

Robin Hood, new series tonight at Tanny's Sternon Global, also available in Stack TV. This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed. Yeah. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer

and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette-Kerrem, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student-teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic, as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand with these moments taught us about the world

and our place in it. I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay. Not a love story. Not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining C. Listen to In Retrospect on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

to your favorite shows. I'm Penelope Spheras. I'm a film director. I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine. Back in the 70s, Peter Ivers moved to LA to start his music career. He scored Ron Howard's directorial debut. I didn't know one thing about Peter Ivers. I just said, okay. Let's meet him. And even hosted LA Night Cable TV show. It showcased LA punk bands in all their glory. The crowd started getting bigger and bigger,

and then there was Beverly Danza. There was John Baloofty. But then it all went to hell. He was murdered. Peter Ivers was murdered on March 3rd, 1983. And it raised a question that 40 years later, we still don't know the answer to. Who killed Peter Ivers? Listen to Peter and the Asset King on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts. Season 2 of the Unimaginable Hones in on individuals who have led unimaginable lives by following their instinct, their gut, their passion. I'm truly inspired by these episodes because they dig into the backstories of people that know success almost as a byproduct of their unwavering dedication to their craft. From guests like Tyco YTT to your vision of what you're trying to do. It's just more pure. The family is more pure and the success is more pure. To Odessa Rae's life-changing experiences that strangely conditioned and equipped her to produce the Oscar-award-winning

documentary, Navalny. I was stuck in that Japanese prison for 42 days. This season delivers behind-the-scenes conversations about the many roads to success. Listen to the unimaginable, on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back, we're back. And we've all actually all come around and decided that the weekend having a rat tail

is a mark of character, right? Right, yeah. Yeah, it's like when a hot actor agrees to like, we're on exactly seven pounds and wear a fake nose so that they can pretend to be the ugly version of themselves, but when they get hot, yeah. Good stuff. It's really brave.

Yeah, courageous. Yeah, to be ugly for, you know, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. Anyway, let's start this book actually. So it begins, chapter one is Old Man. And there's an old man in the lobby and he wants to talk to General Cruz, the Christian leader who is described as a reddish rhino of a man, which is a little more creative than

Ben Shapiro's bear of a man. I'll give him that. Yeah, reddish rhino is pretty good. There's a, I don't, is he, it feels like an anti-irish slur, but I'll explain. Yeah, feels like an anti Irish slur, but I'll yeah, it is an anti Irish. Leroy that that's a low key. Scott Adams trained crews used his eyes the same way he used everything else like weapons.

Lieutenant bin water. Good. No, no, no, no, I think Scott now. Crushing in high five yourself, Scott. Lieutenant Ben Waters suddenly found himself in the crosshairs. It wasn't the first time Waters had seen that look. That sort of look from a man who killed people for a living. It would reduce most people to stuttering.

Waters viewed it as information, nothing more. Crouched hand-picked Waters from a thousand candidates, not because of his test scores or his combat record, both unremarkable. It certainly wasn't Waters' personality. No, it was his social media post that had a lot of questionable things to say about Palestinian. There was something else. At the age of eight, Ben Waters used the family shotgun to kill both of his parents.

It was a small town, and the neighbors agreed. Ben saved his younger brother from an unimaginable fate. No charges were filed since then the area of Ben Waters's brain that makes a person feel alive was a catastrophe of molecules. He never suffered from shame. A fence. Okay.

So what's going on here is he picked this guy. He's this general cruise is worried. He might get too powerful. So he has this guy standing next to him with the gun at all times to kill crews. If he becomes like crazy with power, which is like potentially a fun idea. If you're introducing like your idea of this world with like the leaders always follow by this guy, it's supposed to kill him if he goes mad with power. But the introduction of this character, he doesn't explain Scott doesn't explain why this guy's parents had to die. Just an unimaginable fate. There's no like, you left to assume it was probably like

molestation, but it's actually sad. I'm sure there's a good reason for it. Every time someone kills their parents, I'm gonna be honest. I'm pretty much always on the side of the kid because I'm like, there's a reason. You don't just kill your parents, so you know? You know, even that would have been better writing.

If we had just learned that this guy's attitude was like, I'm just always gonna side with the kid who kills their parents. I used to, I don't know what went on. I didn't listen. I didn't do any digging. I just figured kid kill his parents. Probably cool.

If my kid killed me, I'd be like, listen, I don't know why, but I get, I get the need to do this. We all want to kill our parents. So we're just not brave enough to do a lot about that. Which is why I support legalizing cocaine because that'll let more kids kill their parents. I don't know why we're going down this road. So this old man is here and he wants to talk to the general.

So waters tells him the old man started talking to the guards and five minutes later they left. They didn't say why. Call them her. Reans off the roof if the old fool won't leave. Shoot him. Yes, sir said Waters in a way that revealed he knew it wasn't a workable plan because the skydiving insert is able to talk the army down from shooting him for invading what is effectively the Pentagon. Adam Zincert is able to talk the army down from shooting him for invading what is effectively

the Pentagon. The whole world are fools, muddard crews, while using a ruler to drag a battle platform from the Indian Ocean. Matt Makers were a frustrated group. The old notion of a country was meaningless. Al Z dominated the entire Islamic world. Governments existed under his rule in a fashion to keep the water running, to remove garbage, and to run indoctrination

centers for children. But the real world part about Muslims, dude, is open borders. You know, it's just they just want to they just want to go to the Middle East and completely erase these borders that we totally made up in in 1917. You know, fuck a bullshit dog. It is it's yet another example of this like thing you get with with a specific kind of like and this is like particularly you get this with like weirdo Christian folk right wingers who hate Muslims, but you get it also with like atheists who hate Muslims, especially in this period where they're like they have this Attitude that like well the entire Muslim world is just always angry at America and a secularism. They're just always pissed at it, right? Whereas, I don't know, again, you spend a lot of time in the Middle East and one of the things you learn is that the people who live there are like the people everywhere else. They are mostly angry at the folks who live right next to them, right? It's just like Texas and Oklahoma. That's everywhere

in the world. That's everywhere I've ever been. Yes. Yes. Anyway, not to flatten politics too much, people are generally pissed at their neighbors. Because that's who you rub up against. Yeah. But in this, all of the Muslims, presumably Arabs and Persians and Kurds, everybody all together, anyone who's just kind of in that

region of the world is all a Muslim and they're all backing the guy who killed all of the Jews. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, so there's no countries anymore. And in the Christian part of the world, there was still a pretense that civilian governments ruled their respective countries. In reality, Cruz had the power to redraw boundaries and remove so-called leaders with

a word. He didn't need military power to getraw boundaries and remove so-called leaders with a word. He didn't need military power to get his way, although it was available if it suited him. Cruz was widely believed to be the only person who could stop the terror of Al-Z. No one felt it was a good idea to distract him. The atheists and the smaller religions were lying low, supporting the Christian power-base and enjoying safety in numbers. The most enthusiastic supporters of the Christians

were the Jews who had escaped Israel after. So that's good. Thank you. I'm glad he wrote me in there. Yeah, no, you guys got stuck in there. You got to mention. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for, you know, I like that skydiving as he was like, judging by the way. Oh, in this future, the Jews finally show some respect. They finally show some gratefulness for Christian America for helping you with this thing I invented. I am now picturing

the if Scott had gotten the made for TV movie version of this while the narration goes on. It just like cuts to a guy in like a bagel shop like saluting with a bagel. I left the camera. Just walks into a bagel shop, standing ovation by all the acidic Jews in there. Yeah. Turn to the camera and he goes, you're welcome, the Jews, and then walks away without paying for his bagel. Now, look, when people, when, when authors whose thing is not writing

about military stuff, right about fantasy, future military stuff, it's usually bad. Which is fine, but I wouldn't normally criticize someone for this, but I'm gonna criticize Scott Adams because he's, I hate him. So here's his description of the weapon system that the Christians have developed in order to fight. What appears to just kind of be a constant low level like suicide bombing using drones campaign, which is what the muslims. So that your enemy is every couple of days they kill like three people with a drone bomb, right?

Like that's the, that's the opposing side, right? So here's what they've built to counteract that. Battle platforms were a recent addition to cruises arsenal. They were the size of cities, floating on the ocean. That's way more powerful than the aircraft carriers they replaced. The platforms could be assembled in days, ringed by destroyers and monitored by an umbrella of satellites. Nothing could penetrate their perimeter. Thanks to NATO's technical breakthrough of forced particle beams that could slice through

in coming metal like a hot poker on a cobweb. The rest of the world, which was mostly Al-Z's territories and a sprinkling of non-aligned powers, used conventional missiles that were no match for the particle beam defense grid. Now, here's a thing, here's a thing, a couple of things, a couple of things. For one thing, maybe it is realistic that this is fundamentally a weapon system that would be no use in the war that they're fighting. That's not what Scott, he wants us to think this is cool, but it is useless for fighting like a low level terror campaign.

That's just a bunch of mild terrorist attacks for a lot of, I mean, for one thing, he's like, they're even more powerful than aircraft carriers. We have, but the enemy just has like some drones with grenades. Like aircraft carriers are fine for that, you know? Like, you don't need. But also, well, why, why are you, how is this supposed to help? Like, how is controlling the oceans supposed to help when your enemy is not opposing you in a direct military manner? Why is this useful? Yeah, I am, I am generally confused also as to like the amount, listen,

the amount of people it sounds like that LZ is killing is he's doing an occasional terrorist attack every couple of days killing a couple of people. Yeah. And the entire world is like, the entire world is like, oh man, we got to fucking wipe these fools off the map because literally a billion people have a murder rate of three per day. Yeah. That's pretty good. I'm just saying. Honestly, man, that's better than we're doing right now. That's not bad.

Americans kill a lot more Americans than these guys. All the time. I do want to know, like, yeah, we shoot, I don't know, like 35,000 something like that. Of us get shot to death each year in this country at least. Like, are they breaking those numbers? Is Al Z's campaign even doing that many Americans? Yeah. Anyway, fascinating question.

So Cruz has accepted that he's going to have to kill all two billion Muslims to win this war. I mean, you know, you got to do what you got to do. I will give it to Scott. That's fine. Like, that's a bad thing to do. But in terms of characterizing this dude, a bad guy, which he is, this guy's not the hero. I'll give Scott that. That's fine. Um, the tall wooden doors of cruise's war room open to a stream of military advisors, admirals and generals. There were 25 of them, one from each of the dominant NATO countries. So what about Turkey, the Muslim majority country?

Don't worry about Turkey! Stop mentioning Turkey! What the fuck? He just doesn't know. They had no decision making power. Cruz had the monopoly on that, but they were useful in maintaining the illusion that NATO enjoyed some sort of democratic input. It was thin fiction. The sort of war that a wartime population was happy to accept. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States had become over-addressed

advisors, symbolic and useless. The NATO generals were more loyal to crews than their own civilian governments and times of extreme danger. And again, they're trying to be like everyone's a slow to cruise because the only guy who can beat this man. But like, it's not ever established what he did to earn that. Like, there's a vague mention of battlefield victories. But all he talks about the Muslims doing is carrying out terrorist attacks, which where are the battlefield victories? Where the, what's the fighting that they can't

go hard about it? They're for doing. He's the best of the best. You know, when he was doing battles, doesn't matter where, you know, he was best at it. It's okay. You can, you can establish this early on by being like when he was a captain in the field, you know, he was, he was on like an embassy duty. He stops a terrorist attack, right?

And like, yeah, something, but like, no, we don't was on like an embassy duty. He stops a terrorist attack right and like, yeah, something but like, no, we don't we don't get that. Scott has this like, it's okay, whatever. Cruz gets angry that they're not murdering this old man who has somehow gotten through his defenses and demanding to talk. So he grabs an M16. He flips off the safety. So at least Scott knows that guns have safety. Is that good? You did a little research for this, right? Yeah, yeah. Credit work that is do.

Little bastard. He's up to something. Cruise muttered, watching the floor indicator. Is he just sitting in a waiting room right now? Yeah, he's in his big meeting room with all of his generals. Right. But there's like, man, his Sabbath moments. They're all gathered in their masses, you know?

Yeah. And the guy's man in the waiting room, just kind of, I'm just waiting to see the general. He's breaking his way through all of the layers of security that NATO has put up by just like being a smart old man and talking his way through. We don't need to hear or see any of this. Obviously. The one is he's getting through every single defense of the entire Christian world army. Okay. Okay.

This is just this guy being frustrated that nobody is able to stop this old man by murdering him or just like holding him, you know, like what cops would actually do if like a crazy old man was at a military base, probably just like, tasem, you know, put his hands behind his back. But he's really, he's really smart. I assume. Yeah. This doesn't make much sense either.

So he decides he's going to flee because someone in the room that he's just been in is leaking war plans. We're not told why the general is going to flee. Yeah, the general's going to leave. Okay. Yeah, he's got, he's got a bounce. Someone on my staff, someone in that room is leaking war plans.

We're gonna put some distance between that old man and me because the smells wrong. Once command a control is secured, I'll deal with the leak and the old man. Get the car. And then we're informed that he has a portable device that lets him fire a missile at wherever he wants to. Launched from a site in South Dakota that fewer than

a dozen people on Earth knew about. Cool. So there we go. I guess that's, yeah, that he's going to murder all these guys in order to secure absolute power even though he already has absolute power. I've got an app that'll blow up any McDonald's in a thousand mile radius. Cool. Yeah.

Why are we needed? Yeah. It's good stuff. How do you explain it? Plan to explain it to the world? Waters, his assistant who murdered his parents asks, I want to have to explain anything. The world will assume it was an attack from one of Al-Z's fanatics. Oh, it was right. Hundreds of buildings had blown up in the past two years alone. The military had stopped analyzing the remains of each explosion long ago, assuming correctly that they were all the work of Al Z. No one would have crest an inquiry about this blast because Al Z would be the universally preserved perpetrator, really tight ship they're running over in May, no. We just

say whenever a building blows up, we assume it's this guy. We don't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Let's try the next chapter here. Her ratio of crews takes over in NATO. Okay, interrogation. So they've captured the avatar. And we finally get a description of this old man who's been slowly talking his way through the NATO defenses. The Avatar was 62 years old, but could have been mistaken for 90. Gawt, clad in a threadbare delivery man's outfit from an earlier time. His silver gray hair was short and untamed. Looking to picture a skyd Adams, and I think we'll see why that's important. A red-plad blanket covered his shoulders clutch tight in front.

30 years ago, as a packaged delivery man, he met the prior avatar, from whom he learned the secrets that brought him to the fifth level of awareness. But it took a terrible time to learn the way of the water. He learned the way. Humans are not genetically equipped to handle this kind of knowledge. And he was no exception. The awareness aged him prematurely. He understood too much about reality, and with that knowledge, him an responsibility. And an incalculable stress that spread to every cell of his body. That's why Scott needs the Dilbert swimming pool, you know, it's the only way to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to shoulders from knowing who runs things. You know what I mean? He's rich, where he looks poor,

but the avatar's got a fuckload of money. He has his own Victorian home in San Francisco, so that's pretty nice. He got most of his money from the previous avatar, but he also invests money because he's so good at knowing patterns. Well, Scott is really giving us a lot about himself here. Yes, no, he's describing himself. I think you're going to have to explain to me what you mean by avatar here. I mean, like, this is what is what are we talking about here? Well, the the avatar is this

line of the smartest people in the world who pass on their knowledge about reality, which is mostly the world who pass on their knowledge about reality, which is mostly weird little brain tricks that Scott Adams picked up that he, that he, like affirmations in shit. Right. Okay. It's all the shit from Scott Adams's terrible business. Not the problematic James Cameron thing. No, I figured not about about you big, big Jim, big Jimmy. Oh, well, me.

So, time to go. Yeah, yeah. Big Jim Big Jimmy anyone whatever so Matters what matters is Scott Adams in describing the avatar is describing himself and it's beautiful He was painfully lonely the last avatar had an advice him to avoid personal relationships It was just obvious that he had to no one could understand the It was just obvious that he had to. No one could understand the picture he had there. He could no longer talk to normal people without leaving them changed in some way. It was so fair, he thought- He was painfully lonely. He was very divorced.

He was the most divorced smartest, divorced man in the world. The only thing larger than the NATO battle platform was the amount of divorced in this one man's art You know who else is divorced Oh man, who? The sponsors of this podcast every single one of them was left by their wives for good reason and it very much for good reason We're really proud of of there. I don't know why I'm continuing to go on about this anyway. Yeah Why don't you Divorce us and listen to these ads

Will they come to take what's yours? You're ready. Let's go the only option. We're gonna hate this next part. It's to fight From director X we take back what's on and give what we steal to our We're gonna hate this next part. It's to fight. Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Renée, Ren Robin Hood, new series tonight at Tanny's Sternon Global, also VailbluntstackTV. This is in retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Beta-Carom, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker.

Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student-teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic, as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand

with these moments taught us about the world and our place wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand with these moments taught us about the world and our place in it. I want you to really smell the ax body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay, not a love story. Not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman

from sea to shining sea. Listen to In Retrospect on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining C. Listen to In Retrospect on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Penelope Spheras, I'm a film director. I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine. Back in the 70s, Peter Ivers moved to LA to start his music career. He scored Ron Howard's directorial debut. I didn't know one thing about Peter Ivers. I just said, okay.

Let's meet him. And even hosted LA Night Cable TV show. It showcased LA punk bands in all their glory. The crowd started getting bigger and bigger, and then there was Beverly Danzola. There was John Baloofery. But then it all went to hell. Peter was murdered.

Peter Ivers was murdered on March 3rd, 1983. And it raised a question that 40 years later, we still don't know the answer to. Who killed Peter Ivers? Listen to Peter and the Acid King on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Season 2 of the Unimaginable Hones in on individuals who have led Unimaginable lives by following their instinct, their gut, their passion. I'm truly inspired by these episodes because they dig into the backstories of people that know success almost as a byproduct of their unwavering dedication to their craft.

From guests like Tyco YTT to your vision of what you're trying to do, it's just more pure, the fanatism of pure and the success of more pure. To Odessa Rae's life-changing experiences that strangely conditioned an equipped her to produce the Oscar award-winning documentary, Navalny. I was stuck in that Japanese prison for 42 days. This season delivers behind-the-scenes conversations about the many roads to success. Listen to the Unimaginable, on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back. And we're, you know, divorced as hell. Super divorced. That's, that's what Scott was trying to avoid by, by, by hiding as the avatar is, that's right. And now his divorced energy has been passed on to us. I have a race car bed. Matt, you're really into pickleball. Yeah, it's just been a calamity over here. That's right. I like to take over various tennis courts and say,

Hey, fuck you. I'm divorced and then play pickleball. Sophie's dressing like one of those, one of those guys from a 90s movie who like moves in with, with the main character who's super divorced ex and is like, you know, I don't know. I'm thinking actually the movie hot rod here, whatever. It's a great movie. Yeah. Great movie.

Anyway, well off topic. Back to the avatar. No ordinary person could understand what it was like to be an avatar, even when he did talk to people when it was absolutely necessary, he was still utterly alone. He felt as though he was one short gasp from insanity. Most of the time, he felt certain that he had a special role to play, that he was chosen, that he alone could save the world from upcoming destruction. Other times, he felt he must surely be mad because only insane people think like that. And they, as did he, have no capacity to know which category they really belong to.

Oh, that's so smart. That's so smart. How do you think of that? You know, too long ago. I was convinced he's the smartest person in the world writing a story about the smartest person in the world. This is my favorite genre of novel. And you get a lot of, I think when people like make fun of Scott a lot of like, wow,

this guy really should have gone to therapy. I don't think that's the answer for Scott. I think what Scott needed was like a normal, a full-time job that didn't pay him $700 million where like he had to, he had to like strive for something with a group of other people and like be confronted sometimes with the limits of his own capability and his shortcomings and work with other people to seal those up. That really would have been good for Scott. In a just timeline, in a just society,

he would have been a middle manager who's only making a handful of people's life hell as opposed to what he became. I think honestly, if you make Scott work in like, I don't know, like a road work crew, right? Where he's getting out there every day, he's doing something hard, but it's also something every day, you can see like, oh, we finished paving this chunk of road.

Like that's in progress, people are gonna use this, right? And you're out with other people, they're gonna call you on your bullshit when you say insane things. Yeah. Like, you know, he would have, he wouldn't have a pool shaped like Dobritz head, but I think in his soul, he'd be a happier man. No, you would have just a bunch of affirmations on his wall.

It just says, you know, work will set you free. We're gonna set you free. I think work would have set Scott free. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying. Yeah, I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. I'm broken. Sometimes work sense. Yeah, free.

Look. I don't know why I don't know why we're going there. Maybe out with the bath water sometimes. Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay. So the avatar's got to look for is among other things. And by the way, he's supposed to be in an interrogation room here.

That hasn't been introduced. We're just learning about the avatar again here. So he's looking for his replacement because he's going to die. He's old. He doesn't know whether or not it's fair for him to pass it down to somebody. And then yeah, finally, we get actually back to the story. I'm sorry, really, I am said the avatar cuffed the wall in I wing. For what? Getting caught, growled the thick necked interrogator with an oversized forehead and stubby fingers as he moved his cart of full of paint tools nearer his subject. I'm sorry

for what I have to do. This will in quickly if you tell me everything said the interrogator. That's why I'm here. Where do you think you got the paint tools? I do kind of want to know more about these paint tools. I want to know what they are. Yeah, seem like fun. He's like, that's why I'm here to tell you everything, which is what the avatar is about to do to get out of this interrogation thing. He's smart.

Yeah, he's going to use his smarts. Before I turn your guts into jam, how about you tell me, this is the interrogator, how about you tell me everything I need to know? It's a little courtesy I like to extend to my guests. Nobody has ever taken me up on the offer, but I feel it's only fair to put it out there, Jesus. This interrogator's like, this is so much worse

than torturing a man. Let's say you figure out what questions I need to ask and then you just answer them. If you make me ask the obvious questions over and over, I'm gonna get tired and that makes me cranky. You don't want that. Very well, replied the avatar. And again, I'm truly, okay, so he's doing this thing where like the tortures like you're going to

tell me everything or I'm going to kill you and the avatar clearly is going to like do some brain jujitsu that destroys the man is the force, but it just keeps going on for several pages of him being like, all right, I'm about to do my brain jujitsu. I I want to do it. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do so much smart that you're gonna be like, wow. Yeah. So a page and a half goes by, tell me something brilliant, old man mocked the interrogator.

Convinced me you're the smartest man in the world and I'll let you go. I don't think the smartest man in the world would believe that you're sincere. The interrogator flashed an executioner's grin and turned up the voltage. He moved the electric paddles towards the old man's chest. This is just to get your attention.

Do me a favor and don't die right away. Who is Patrick? Ask the avatar. The interrogator froze for a moment, then quick boiled. How do you know my brother? What bullshit is this? What else do you know about me? The old man looked into the eyes of his interrogator and took a deep breath.

I know that you were raced Catholic, but as an adult, you pick and choose the parts you want to believe. You think it's okay to hurt people as long as it's in the interest of the greater good. You convinced yourself that you'd still go to heaven so long as you accept Jesus before you die. You were treated unkindly as a child, especially by the older boys and by the better athletes. You don't sleep much because every time you close your eyes, you see your victims and you hear their voices just before you drift off to sleep and it pulls you back to your

restlessness. Sometimes you try to stop the voices by drinking. The drinking works to an extent, but it is ruined your relationships. The interrogator dropped the paddles and stepped away from the old man. What's your name? Shoot some soulful man. It kills himself. So he just, and now the avatar explains that he did a cold read which like it's not even a good read that's

Whatever I'm sorry. That's also not something that's smart. That's out. That's literally just something con Con I also I have to assume that the reason why he guessed Patrick which this dude reacted strongly to is because he's Catholic and every Catholic man has a Patrick in their Of course, yeah, very simple very simple also like half of the Catholics are I don't know like living in Latin America Like I love any Patrick Patricio maybe I love the idea of who's like a it was you know officer Weinstein Yeah, it just it looks at him. He goes like tell me about Rachel. It's like great How do you know, officer Weinstein, and he just, it looks at him and he goes like, tell me about Rachel. It's like, how do you know it? I need you to know my extended family. How did you know her name? How did you know Rachel?

Of course. Oh, it's great. I love that he's like, basically, you know, is like, I, he's kind of modeling it after every smart guy character you've seen and fucking any kind of. They'll do a fucking cold reading, right? Yes. Yeah, it's, it's, it's remarkable.

It's opposed to, I think a fun version of this character. Would he's, every time he's in like a situation and he's got a boil, someone's brain, it's just a Ponzi scheme. He just gets him to invest in a Ponzi scheme. Yes, yes, yes. Strickly. Strickly. It starts explaining crypto five minutes later a positive scheme. Yeah, exactly. He just starts explaining crypto. Five minutes later, he gives him 40,000 bucks.

You know Shane Dump and a fucking dungeon. What do you get in his return on your 401k right now? What if I were to tell you I could double your money in under six months and all I'm going to need is a check for 20 grand and a picture of your feet for feet big stuff. For say here's here's Scott explaining cold reading. For centuries phony psychics have used a version of the cold read the doop gollible customers. It's nothing but good observations combined with educated guesses and generalities.

Like that a Catholic man has a Patrick in that. Yeah, exactly. But it seems like some of the types in what now. Yeah. But it seems like so much in what now. Yeah, but it seems like so much more to the person hearing it. Some fake psychics weren't usually skilled at noticing clues from a person's appearance or mannerisms and making guesses that sounded uncannily accurate. The avatar was the best of the best. They want to recognize patterns so subtle that even the most skilled phony psychic would

have found an amazing today situation was especially easy. The interrogator was clearly Irish. So, his family was probably named Patrick. By the way, he's Irish because earlier the the avatar notices that he has a drinker's nose. That's literally how it's it's so good. I love this. I love this. I love this. I love this. And like, I knew that the Dilbert guy was like racist. He's outwardly racist, but I like that he's like, old, timey racist. I do, you know what's progressive about this? Is that we start with the idea that all Muslims

everywhere secretly just want to wipe out the Jews, which is very racist. But then we move on to the idea that like every drunk Irishman loves a Patrick. That's you can't get through that. Yeah. No, that's fucking iron clad fact right there. So that that destroys this man, right? We can that's how the avatar gets out, right?

We don't we don't need to continue on here. He's he's ruined. You're done. Every day you see your dog, you want to get your own flight, right? We don't need to continue on here. He's ruined it. Every day you see your dog, you want to get your own fight, right? Every day you master bacon, Jesus Christ. Is that how did you know this? How could you possibly have known that every time I master bacon, I cry? That's good stuff. We're going to move along a little bit because I want to get to kind of the crux of this book. Because the basic idea here is that the avatar is working to stop a cataclysmic apocalyptic, you know, nuclear exchange type deal between the Christians

and the Muslims. And the best way to do that is to get everyone to stop believing in religion at once. Because obviously this is another, like, you know, Scott has this interest, this fun mix of like Christian conservative stuff, but he's not a Christian. He's like coming out of the internet atheist community. Yes. So he has this fundamental belief that like the cause of all of the problems is that all of these people believe

these irrational religions, right? Right. Which is, by the way, mostly bullshit. Yes. Like the cause of it is that even when you look at Christians here who are pushing these bullshit laws, they're not largely doing it because they're irrational Christians, they're doing it because certain types of people make them fundamentally uncomfortable. Because they're racist, and they would be racist about something if Christianity wasn't

the justification. It's 100%. In fact, that's what I notice about the kind of evolution of the internet atheists, because I remember back when I used to be like, I'm a proud atheist, whatever. And it was completely in reaction to like, you know, conservative Christians and everything else. And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, this seems like

a very interesting front for people to just say some anti-Muslim shit. Yeah. It became just a way to be Islamophobic without saying you're Islamophobic. I hate all religion, but I only talk about Islam. Yeah, exactly. It's that same like that old stand-up thing where it's like, I'm racist again. Stammering, everybody. It's like, yeah, but there's only two slurs you use, man.

Although to be fair for Scott, as the trailblazer he is, he really, that's the first, that's the first like, that's like, that's like a degree of racism against the Irish that like the British in the 1970s would have been like, well, this is a little bit, little bit, yeah. Sorry, I apologize. I promised never to do an English accent again, and here I perfectly did it upon you. That's what it sounds like. So Scott, obviously the only thing that can resolve

this conflict between, because it's a conflict between these two irrational religions, as opposed to like a conflict between, there's like bombings and like people's families have been killed and they're pissed about that anyway. It's an irrational religious conflict. Right, right, right. It has nothing to do with colonialism or imperialism. That's just words that people use to master fact. It's about religion. So if he can just get everyone to stop being religious all at once, you know, he can sit and Scott has all these weird ideas about like persuaders and influencers. And to me, for one thing that I think Scott is a little bit ahead of the curve on,

he has been really obsessed with the idea of like influencers and connectors and shit since the early 2000s. He's got a few years on most folks on this. So his, his like obsession with Trump is a master persuader because he believes Trump is a messianic figure who's so good at persuading. He's gonna usher in a new age of human evolution by teaching us all persuasion tricks. That's why Scott wrote his terrible book, Win Bigley.

So his attitude here, the avatar is kind of like moving through the world and the major characters of this conflict, looking for like the influence or this one person who because of their network of social ties, right, could get an idea out in a way that will cascade sort of algorithmically and then convince the whole world overnight to stop being religious. That's the plot of this book, right? Yeah. Yeah. And he's going to find this person

at this cafe. So we're going to start a YouTube channel. Yeah. That'll do it. That is kind of why he does his YouTube. He secretly thinks he's the master persuader. And if he can just like tell the right joke to people, it'll change the world. Yeah. They would just stop throttling me in the algorithm. Everyone would be smart like me. Yeah, that's that's why he's got a he's got to really saddle up to Elon Musk. It's finally finally. So the avatar rolls up in front of this cafe. He had never felt a pattern like this as the hydro cap that's a hydro powered cab pulled away. The avatar stood on the sidewalk trying to get a lock on the pattern, but he had failed.

His stomach growled and the Avatar smiled, realizing his hunger must have been clogging his intuition. But now the pattern was gone, softening to a vibration. Patterns did that sometimes, rising and falling for no apparent reason. The Avatar walked towards a restaurant next to the building. Stacey's Cafe. It was the oldest business on the block, looking out of a place nestled in the modern architecture of the San Francisco metropolitan area. Area. The avatar entered and was greeted by a bartender from behind a large oval bar.

Hi, can I help you? One for lunch. We're closed behind three, between three and five. Can you come back at five? A pink-haired woman in her 60s on the other side of the room interrupted the avatar's response. She was waving a half-eaten plate of food at the chef and getting agitated. Look at this presentation. This is crap. My name is on this business and you want to serve crap. If people want crap, they can make it at home. The chef's eyes were locked in a death stare with the pink-haired woman, as she dramatically

slapped the dish on the table. I want you to care about this place as much as I do. If you don't, I can replace your ass tomorrow. The pink-haired woman, her rumped and turned away, then turned back with an afterthought. That reminds me, she said in the softer voice that seemed as though she was channeling an entirely different person. Have you written down all your recipes so I can fire you at any time I want? Almost. I have a few more to do, said the chef. Very good. Give me a hug. What the fuck? Is this the bear?

Yes, kind of the bear. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's just that like she's this woman who's in this, this is supposed to be charming that she like moves between the big and attacking. Oh, this is like a fun sassy. Yeah, yeah, she's supposed to be fun and sassy. So she decides to order for him because everyone should eat, she believes the food that she likes, which is a vegetable croutée.

So, Stacy made hand signals to the bartender who was still wiping water spots off the bar glasses. He nodded and started to pour a shardonnay. Stacy pulled out a chair and sat down across from the avatar. I think I have a headache or a tumor or something. I gained two pounds this week and my hair is falling out in clumps and I have gas. Don't say I didn't warn you. Thank you for the warning. I don't know how

I do this job every day. I'm gonna quit. I swear I am, except it wouldn't work because I own the place. I'd fire myself if I could, but I don't want to pay the unemployment benefits to myself. Hey, just such a great character. It is fun. Yeah, we get along and she and the Avatar start talking about modern politics, right? Yeah. To be clear, these guys, they're both in their mid-60s, right? Yes, yes, they're both old people

and they're both kind of Scott Adams. Okay. That's important here. So the Avatar tells her that he's trying to figure out how to stop a war and she's like, how can a guy like you stop a war? You couldn't even feed yourself until I decided to have pity on your ass. And you dress like a hobo on crack.

What's up with that? Would it be okay if I answered the first question? Stacey left. Okay, if you do a good job on that, I'll let the other one slide. Go. Think of humanity as a giant software program. Our bodies are the hardware

and our ideas are the software. Sometimes the software gets a virus. What are you talking about? Religious misinterpretations. What do you possibly mean? I have never heard this concept before. Yeah, you must have the smartest man in the world. Religions are a virus in our computer programming, right?

But, you know, yeah, it's, I guess this is sort of a very boomer attitude towards the internet, where it's just like, well, the computer's always got a virus on it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't. It's a virus. Click the links that infect your altavista. Yeah, my my my McAfee software every day tells me about new virus. I keep buying more of it more virus keep coming.

Buy a new McAfee every day. I buy three new McAfees in now. It's not not one virus. I got Muslim virus. I got two virus. I got Irish virus. It is also, yeah, he is low key being like, yes, all like Islam is a virus, you know. Yeah.

To be very serious, that's what the energy is a virus too. But I'm not less concerned about that. Yeah. This is all just a way of like, and it's just how you get to, therefore, we must eradicate blank. Yeah. No, and the biggest virus of all is being Irish, you know, that's really what Scott's getting at. Yeah. There's so much more anti-airish races in the mist that I expected. So great. So written by Bill LaPattrick. Why is Irish? So he must know a Patrick.

Yeah. He must know. He must love a Patrick. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, there's a picture of this. It's true when we're snowing. Yeah, from his, from his drinkers' nose that he loves the Patrick's must be an Irishman. That's really quite amazing. So in this next part, he's talking with this lady about I was gonna end, and he explains his concept of a prime influencer. I'm looking for the reboot button, metaphorically speaking.

I'm looking for the one person who is connected to everyone else in a chain of influence, the prime influencer. That is why I am visiting today. So like, that's, that's the thing. Everyone's connected to this person. And by the way, it took to be this pink-haired lady, right? Yeah. It's her. It's D.C. I thought, you know, and she's like, I don't believe in this because people never change their mind. You don't believe people can change their opinions as the avatar. Come on.

Who buys books written by conservatives? Conservatives. Who buys books written by liberals? People only listen to what they want to hear. Nobody changes anyone's mind. Even if the argument is very good, hasn't happened. Never will. The avatar sat back in his seat, adjusting his napkin on his lap.

I can see why you would have that view. But in reality, everyone knows one person who could change his opinion on a particular topic, usually a different person for each topic. It's not the argument to the logic that matters to people, but the source. Humans are driven by examples, by role models, not by logic. So you're saying someone can make me a devil worshiper, even if I didn't want to be. That's nutty. A year ago, you would have said that no one could convince you to wear pink tinted hair, but you seem to have embraced the trend enthusiastically. And okay. So Scott's, Scott's, this lady is like, nobody changes their mind and Scott's like, no,

no, no, that's nuts. Everyone can have their mind changed by one person whose their specific influencer and can hack their brain on it. That's right. Yeah. Their favorite podcast retails them, then they will change their minds. That is how the world works. That's true.

That's why Joe Rogan has convinced me to eat nothing but raw liver. Yeah. This is all just him going on a quest to find the Joe Rogan. He is looking for the Joe Rogan. That is what he believes though, right? Like when Trump comes out, he's convinced that Trump is this prime influencer. Which is like, that by the way,

this is another thing that like these weird online atheist types all did, which is they all found a way to reinvent religion for themselves, right? They gave up, they don't believe the Jesus that the Christians believe in, but they did like have to invent another Jesus for themselves, right? They gave up, they don't believe the Jesus that the Christians believe in, but they did like have to invent another Jesus for themselves, like Scott's.

Yeah, exactly. One way or the other, they all do it, right? Yes. Not all atheists, but all of these weird internet atheists that Scott is, right? Yes. I'm not saying this is a general trade of atheists. It's just, no, these specific assholes.

Yes, yes. Like I'm an atheist, but I just don't, I just don't say it because then I'll be subscribed to a bunch of newsletters. I don't want. Well, it's, it's also like, you know, we were talking about how like you've got people who will like use religion as the justification of like, why I want to kill certain people. But the real thing is that like they just hate certain people, right? Right.

The religion rarely is the thing that inspires it purely. It's like something else that comes out that may, but and it's the same thing. You've got all these, these sort of folks who started out as being like lefties in the early 2000s, like Jimmy Doer and whatnot. And they're all preaching like hard right shit right now and they're all super racist

and they're all really anti-trans and whatnot. And it's because like, yeah, what matters isn't actually, it's like whether or not you're a giant piece of shit, I think is primarily the thing. And people will wrap if you're a big piece of shit and you hate people. If you're inclined to pretend to be left wing or whatever, then you'll find some reason why communism

wants to kill all the trans people, or like first in the D--wing or whatever, then you'll find some reason why communism wants to kill all the trans people, or like first in the D transition or whatever. And if you're a Christian, you'll use Christianity for that. But I think it's just like, you know, some people are fucking assholes. And Scott Adams an asshole, right? So he's gonna get rid of religion and the Irish one presumes.

The avatar decided to test her light of thinking with an argument that was common. I'll be at flawed. If God exists, he must be smart to design the world so perfectly. Everything is in perfect balance. If any of our natural laws were altered in the least, life would be unsustainable. Only an omnipotent genius could create such a perfect balance in the laws of physics. Physics, schmysics, if God is so smart, why do you fart?

The Avatar waited for the rest of the argument, but there was none. The two strangers stared at each other for a moment before being overcome with a wave of laughter that brought them all to tears. So yeah, that's a love writing, writing, getting a real good laugh, got a real big laugh on the joke.

Yeah, very funny. So I'm gonna spoil the rest of this book for you. That winds up being the key to destroying religion, right? Is that this woman is the prime influencer and by getting her to like tell this joke to people, it spreads to everyone else in the world. And then they give up Christianity and Islam and they give up their wars.

And I'm gonna switch ahead to him explaining all this. The major religions changed after the war. Modernized was the word used most often for the disintegration of primitive beliefs. The free flow of ideas caused dangerous religious thoughts to perish under the weight of common sense. Most notably, the idea that God was limited by a human personality with human wants

and human intelligence evaporated. Now the mental health profession handled people who believed that God was talking to them directly. The voting public never got a chance to elect such people, whether they were charismatic or not. Religions came to be seen as traditions that lent flavor to holidays and encouraged good behavior. Nothing more. The public didn't know who had said it first, but it was the most powerful question in human history, and nine words that overturned centuries of tortured logic and magical thinking. It pushed superstition into a cage and gave common sense room to maneuver. The cause of the religion more sprung from one colossal religious misunderstanding, that God thinks like humans, except smarter, and that we people can comprehend his intent.

That crippling misunderstanding was swept away in a single wave of clarity. The question was translated into thousands of languages, published billions of times. In English, it was, if God is so smart, why do you fart? Right? Again, it's this like, we just have to puncture religion with a funny fucking logical puzzle. And then it'll go away. It's just this trap around people's brains. It's not that like people want land or resources

and have been fighting over them. And so we're angry about the history of conflicts between peoples and are able to use sort of religion or politics to kind of justify continuing them. It's not that people are like greedy. It's not that people get scared about folks who live far away from them. It's not any of that shit.

It's that their minds have been enraptured by religion and you can get common sense to maneuver if you tell a smart joke. It's like, honestly, the most fucking like buttoned up fucking elitist. It's got like smattering of liberalism in there, especially circa around this time and just a sort of ignorance that was so prevalent at the time was basically that

everyone in the Middle East they're all just fucking stupid and angry and so they all believe in this like magic spaghetti monster and so And so they all believe in this like magic spaghetti monster. And so, you know, they're at war because the spaghetti monster says so. And it's like a way to completely ignore literally any history that has happened within that region. And, you know, it's great. It's, you know, I love when the stupidest man

in the world writes himself as the smartest man in the world. It is, it is very fun. Because again, it doesn't take all that much like to learn that the reality is more complicated, right? I remember one of the big moments for me of like, you know, just going into fucking Iraq and talking to people and camps and stuff, a bunch of whom had been ISIS supporters, kind of early in ISIS's reign was them explaining like, well, you know, we supported them because the cops under the old government for like religious sectarian reasons

had punished and abused our family. And they like, yeah, they killed my brother, they killed my uncle, they tortured, you know, my dad. So when ISIS came and they said that they were, you know, getting rid of these shitty ass police, we were like, maybe this will be better. So like the Iraqi government was anything to write home about. Like, we think, and then it turned out they sucked.

So now we're fighting. And it's like, yeah, look, there's always, you know, there are brainwashed fucking extremists out there in a variety of ways. But the vast majority of people's motivations make sense, even if they're bad, even if they're doing bad, they make sense, right? It's like the Nazis. The Nazis didn't get like enthralled by Hitler magically. They wanted other people shit.

Yes, that's why they did it. Very human reasons. I think we have a tendency to take every kind of villain, or anyone who's in opposition to whatever, you know, the fucking American cultural hegemon has to say and go like, oh, it's because they are all fanatical. They must be crazy to believe that we in any way could be an enemy. And I think just in general, it's like, oh, you have to understand how absolutely

fucking regular people are. And how villainy is not necessarily this thing that comes from like, oh, everyone's a psychopath. It's like, no, it's actually much more simple. And that makes it 10 times as complicated and scary sometimes, you know. But I'm just like getting flashbacks to me like in college and just being like a atheist and just being like fucking like, yeah, man, fucking, I'm so smart. I don't even believe in God. You know, fuck yeah. It's because I'm a genius.

Yeah, the idea that like you're both saying that like look at these, look at these silly religious people who are like denying sort of the, you know, they've gotten their minds washed and they can't understand like the true complexity of reality But also, everyone does things for one reason, right? Like, all of the Muslims have one motivation and it's kill all the Jews. And if you kill all the Jews, then all of the Muslims support you, right? All of the Irish have one motivation

and it's their friend Patrick. It's their friend Patrick. And, you know, just checking down a nice fucking Guinness after a hard day's work of feeding your life So you know look take the wisdom of Scott Adams with you into the world is I think what we're trying to say here Absolutely, and the next time you see a man with a drinkers nose Tell about his Well, Patrick ask him about Patrick. You can't even see the drinkers. You can't even see the drinkers.

Yeah. I'm like, I am low key impressed at the way he went after the white ethnic. And this, you know, there was a time. Finally. When Scott Adams was cool. You know, he would just go after the Irish. Oh, my God. I am looking forward to, I assume in the sequel to this,

he finds a way to destroy St. Patrick's Day. Yeah. Yeah. Turned out all the snakes we needed to get rid of where these God dead Irish. You get a lot about like his thought process because God has, I think, a fundamentally pretty and curious person.

Oh yeah. And so he just like, doesn't do, like he didn't know that like, Sunni and Shia like exist as divisions of Islam. Didn't even do the basic research to the second largest army in NATO is like a majority Muslim nation. And his, he's just like decided, okay, well, what's something a guy could notice?

Well, if you, you can notice if somebody's got like a red nose, because they're drinking a bunch, okay, who drinks a lot? Irish people. What's an Irish name? St. Patrick's Day, Patrick! Boom! Boom, got it. I just got a whole fucking pat to a story.

I'm so funny. He's just like taking his calendar, he's marking nine. And he three hours to write this. Because this was sure was stream of consciousness. This guy is not putting a lot of thought into this. I think he just used the like talk to text app and just was like mumbling to himself. Just bang this bad boy app.

Well, man. Oh God bless him. You got anything to plug here? Oh, man, well, I'm writing a book about the scourge of the Irish. No, actually, I do, you know, this wire podcast, the wire rewatch podcast, pod yourself on gun, is the name of the feed, and it is essentially a show where we denigrate Irish Americans in the form of McNulty. Yeah.

So, you know, if you're selling all of the wire is a behind the bastards on McNulty. It really is. It's behind one specific bastard, Jimmy McNulty, and his grubby little Irish weiner. And yeah, so check that out. Check out the broadcast. It's a show where we talk about, you know, everything except for the wire. A lot of fun. I do it Vince Bansini and...

Oh right, I almost forgot. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area or any of the surrounding areas on Tuesday, October 17th at 8 p.m. specifically, my wife, Francesco, if you're in Teenie and I are gonna be headlining the San Francisco Punchline Comedy Club. So yeah, please come out to that. It is a Tuesday at 8 p.m.,

October 17th, where it voiced my wife I are going to be co-headlining. There's going to be some other great comedians coming out. It's going to be a lot of fun. You can get your tickets at punchlinecomedyclub.com. Yeah, October 17th, please, come out. It's going to be so good. I swear to God. I mean, at the very least, you're gonna get to see my wife and I Kiss like live on stage. It's a sex show. Anyways, come out to that man. I'm so glad I remember to say this. Otherwise, I'd have to

Record this audio later and then send it to you and have you figure out a place to put it in the edit. And that was just sound weird. Anyways, thank you for having me on for, you know, to talk about something light like, you know, the Irish and how religion bad, you know, smart people are influenced by some douchebag they see online. Yeah, and check out more Scott Adams and our upcoming podcasts with Scott. I don't I don't want to make any more like anti-Irish kind of joke. So we're done. We're just done with the episode. There you go. Just so everyone knows I love Irish people. Everything a joke. He's fast. Scott's bad. I was trying my favorite. We're angry at Scott for being racist, which is why I'm stopping the bit.

Yeah. Behind the bastards is a production of CoolZone Media. For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. what's art and give what we steal to our people. Alright, let's see what you got. A classic new tool. We were unstoppable. A legend, newborn.

You wanted me? Right? Robin Hood, new series tonight at Tanny's Turn on Global, also Ville Blunt's Dad TV. Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student-teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannockerim and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect, where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world

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Listen to Peter and the Asad King on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The last archive is a show about the history of truth in America. Each episode, we tell a story about people coming up with some new way of understanding the world. Histories of science, technology, democracy. This season, we've got stories on everything from mid-century songwriting machines to social network theory, and plenty of mad inventors.

Of course I go, oh my god. Well, it's Dr. Frankenstein's Monsterism. Listen to The Last Archive on the i iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.